A Woman's View

LSpecial Correspondence.] New York, - It came about in this way. My eighteen-year-old boy asked his father what protection meant, and his father with that wisdom usually found in nieu suid, "Go ask your inother, my son!" I hesitated a bit before 1 told him what I thought of it, and at last I began. "My boy," answered 1, "protection is the salvation of your country. It means putting the American dollars into the pocket of that great mass of honest men and women, the working people of América. It means giving them fair wages for good work. It means giving them the time to learn to do the worít as it is done by the best in the world. People who don't think talk about materials being cheaper in England and in France - people who don't care buy their frocks on the other side, pay the dnty on them and then count that they have got them cheap. Have they? don't wrong the working people. "They have got them at the expense of the workingman - and the small white faced children belonging to him, who teil in their hungry looks the story of the short wages father gets, are the best evidences of the wrong of free trade and the right of protection. We can do anything we want in this country - we have got the brains, we have got the money, and, thank God, we have got the men. The big manufacturera may teil you that their workmen have to learn, but the foreign workman who comes over to teach them gets in exchange for a dirty, low hovel and a miserable pittance a pleasant home with a garden about it, good schools where his boys and girls may be educated, and the feeling that he is an independent man. "You have read about all the trouble in Ireland. You know what caused it. It came from the rich people going te London to spend their money, and that will be the trouble in this country soon unless the women rise up in their might and decline to buy anything except that which is designed and made in their own country. "English women of position, realizing the way things are tending - that is, women like the Princess of Wales and the queen herself - have tried to inake Irish poplin fashionable, and today Lady Zetland, wife of the viceroy of Ireland, is doing everything possible to push irish lace, so that many of the fashionable hats are trimmed with it, and many of the court dresses have it upon them. An English woman thinks she has done Bomething for her country when she draws a design for her own gown and has it woven in English looms. That is the point we want to reach. "This spring when the court was in mourning the shopkeepers said they didn't mind very much, as the Americana would come over there and spend their money. Now why do they do it? They made their rnoney here, and the best kind of patriotism is in circulating the money made in your own country, among your own people. That is the patriotism the American women do not know, which they have got to learn and which protection teaches. A GOOD EXAMPLE BY MES. HAERISON. "Mrs. Hari'ison did her best in this direction when she wore at the inauguration ball a brocade woven in American milis, designed and made by au American dressmaker. Then, too, my boy, you remember the silver gray 1 wore and which you all liked so much? That was made of American silk trimmed with lace manufactured right here in New York city, and the material was just as pretty and the trimming as dainty as any that ever passed through a French or English man's hands." MEÜJ'S CLOTHINQ ABROAD. 'But," said the boy, "aren't men's clothea cheaper?" I laughed at thia and said: "Don't you remember your Cousin Arthur's frock coat? He thought he paid a small sum for it in London, but when he got home he had to pay a tailor here to refit it. Still it wasn't right. Then he went to another tailor; still it it didn't fit, and at last he went to another one, who had the frankness to teil him that there was no use trying to do anything with it, as, although no tailors in the world cut like the American ones, even they can't make a good job out of an English botch. So poor Arthür f ound himself, as the old proverb goes, with au elephant on his hands. His English coat wouldn't fit, cotildn't fit, and he had the doubtful pleasure of knowing that he could have got a coat for onehalf what this had cost him, could have had it made of equally good cloth, and it would have fitted him and been of soine use, though just inside the collar would have been an American tailor's stamp. "You've seen the storm coat that was brought over to me? My measurements were sent exactly, and the result is that I have a coat that trains on the ground, that is too big for me in the neck, and which it would cost more than it is worth to have altered. Next season Hl buy a new one of an American manufacturer. Now if those measurements had been sent to any big shop in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago or Boston I should have got a coat that would have fitted me decently. Then, too, when we were over there we bought a lot of pretty handkerchief s as presente. They 8eemed to be immensely cheap. They turned out to be both cheap and nasty, for at their first visit to the laundry the beautiful bright colors faded, and they were extremely miserable to look at." FREE TRADE FOR MILLIONAIRES. "Then," questioned the boy, "free trade is for the benefit of the millionaire and not for the workingman? It is for the benefit of the buyer and not the manufacturer? It is for the benefit of the noople who don't trouble themselves about the good of their country, but who think of notbing but spending their money away from it?" "That's it," I said. "Now yoii have solved the question. Protection should be the keynote to the workinginan's vote. He represents this country- he ió the bone and sinew of it. The greatest morality, the greatest ambition are found among the working people, and they have made this country what it is. Once they open its gates to free trade their wages will go down, down, down iintil they become what the workinginen are on the other side of the water - disconsolate human beings, with no pleasant memories of the past and no hope for the future. "The man who comes an emigrant to ; this country, who works well, makes j hiinself an American citizen and votes properly will, it is more than possible, live to see nis son, born liere, representing his own people and speaking for them. Where else does such a state of affairs exist? I teil you, my son, protection is like the floral nmbrella put over a bridal couple- at first you jnst think it is pretty, but af ter that when you consider it you know that it means the taking care of the gentle bride through good weather and through bad. Once free trade gains a foothold here, there will be nothing but bad weather. Now, my boy, I have told you all I know about protection." "Well," said he, "father is a wise man. He votes the Republican ticket, and when he wants me to have anything explained to me he sends me to my mother." And I tind that is what most clever üusbands do.