Loyalty To England, You Know
As editorial in the Argus of June 6th eays If the McKinley bilí becoines a law, the duty on tin píate will be inereased 115 per cent, over existing rates. This will increase the cost to consumers over 8,000,000. Every man when he buys a dinner pail will find the cost increased because a few people own one as yet nndeveloped tin mine in Dakota. Every man when he puts a tin roof on his building will find the extra cost on account of the raise in the tarifl' will increase the price of the tin required more than his state, county and school tax will amount to for a whole year. And this is the kind of relief from taxation the republican party prooose o give the people. Now let us :ee qow i. e .-. u., monis of the Arus tally with thobe ot the free trade' papers of England. Here is a paragraph from the London Iron and Steel Journal of May 12th : The most important item in the new schedule of the American tariff bill is that affecting tin plates. If this is carried the occupation of tbree-fourths of those engaged in this country in the tin plate trade will be gone, and employers and their workmen, if they continue in the tin plate business, must employ their capital and labor on the other side of the Atlantic. How does this strike the intelligent reader who has any American loyalty left? Doesn't it look like a cringing subserviency to British interests? Wouldn't the old Continental Congress just howl if they could be brought to life and confronted with such sentiments as some of the democratie papers of this ag utter? Some of them would be almost willing to sacrifice all that has been done in this land, for liberty and humanity, if in this way they could destroy their political opponents and gain their own selfish ends. They are a restless, plotting minority, not willing to accept with good grace the will of the people, and be satisfied with an open and square fight for principie, and not power alone. Suppose the McKinley tariff bill imposed a thousaiid per cent. on tin if it gives us the tin business so we can afford to own a tin pail. In what country besides this can the laboring man afford a house to put a tin roof on 1 it reminds us of what Hon. John M. Thurston, of Nebraska, said in one of his felicitous speeches, not long ago, on this very qneation of piotection to Ametican induttries: " The country has never prospered when labor was cheap. I remember a good man y years ago, as a bare-footed boy I went to town on the Fourth of Juíy to celébrate. I walked around all day and helped the town boys shoot off the firecrackers ; I saw the military parade, and I saw the stump speaker. I had a splendid time up to about two o'clock. Then I happened to stop in front of a bakery. In the window was the finestdisplay of pumpkin pies I ever saw. I love pumpkin pies. I hankered after pumpkin pie. I was hollow and hungry clear down to the soles of my bare feet. There was a sign out : ■Pumpkin Pies Three Cents Apiece.' Cheapas dirt. I didn't eatany pumpkin pie. I didn't have the three cents. Now if pumpkin pies had been five cents apiece and I had had ten cents in my pocket 1 would have been a happier boy." lam glad to live in a land where.there is universal prosperity. I heard a democrat say the other day that the American mechanic who buys a carpet for his parlor pays 200 per cent more than he would have to pay if there were no tariff on carpet?. Great God I Where is there another land in which a mechanic has a parlor to put a carpet in ? " And so it is with the tin roofs. If we continue to send our money to England as their democratie alies in this country seem to wish, there will be no tin pails or tin roofs upon which the laboring man will have to pay taxes ; and then ;he brilliant statesmen of the ilk of our sadly mistaken cotemporary, will be satisfied- but not the " people."
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Ann Arbor Register