IN TWENTY-EIGHT COUNTIES in Ireland the wages of farm laborers per week, in gold, range from six shillings sterling, to ten shillings, and average about eight shillings, or 1.78 cents, without board.

In five counties the range for six months, without board, is from $30 to $60. See U. S. Agricultural Report, July, 1870.

THERE IS SOME NONSENSE in our American heads on one matter. An Englishman is proud of wearing English cloths and using English articles of all kinds, and will always have them, if possible or reasonable. So with a Frenchman; but an average American is almost ashamed of wearing or using articles made at home. The men must have French or English or German cloths, and be shod in "French calf;" the women must be "dear creatures" in one sense at least, clad in stuffs "far-fetched and dear-bought' from Europe and farthest Ind." So strong is this absurd notion that Jersey hats are marked "Parisien " (as Jersey cider is branded champagne, the drinker none the wiser); beautiful American sewing silk, equal to any in the world, is labeled Italian, and even our woolens sometimes have foreign labels What absurdity to prefer the stranger to him who works in your midst. An Englishman's dream is, that the "rest of mankind," and especially we Americans in the West, are to raise raw materials and food, to be sold cheap, and expenses of transit to their markets paid, and to be consumed by them and manufactured in their mills, to be sent abroad again and sold at good profits to an obedient and docile world! This is our "manifest destiny"-all Englishmen from John Stuart Mill down to Laird of Alabama memory being witness. It is chronic with them, and hereditary. But that dream must never be realized.

WE ARE AMERICANS, and must have an AMERICAN POLICY, shaped in view of the wages of intelligent labor as compared with the pauper labor of the Old World, the benefit of a larger home market for our farmers, the rates of interest, the needs and obligations of our Government, and a recognition of the fair c aim of American artisans to do the work which we need and which they can perform; and such policy, benefiting all sections, should have the licarty support of our people.

The olid and lasting prosperity of the honorable and sagacious importing merchant, is best

helped by a policy which develops our own resources, builds up a great internal commerce, and adds to our wealth, so that we can well pay for such imports as will always be wanted.

The problem for each nation is, how best to develop its resources, employ its labor, and encourage skill and genius.

Manufactures must be built up, mines opened, farms improved, and Government expenses paid, and tariffs are established for protection and revenue. Without such protection, foreign labor at lower wages, capital more abundant and cheaper, and skill longer trained in some older country, would prevent the growth of this varied industry, and keep rude labor half employed in but few ways; but with it there is larger and better employ for labor and skill, and articles made at home grow more perfect and cheaper. When any articie needs no such protection, the tariff can be reduced or abolished, and thus real free trade is reached through protection.

Inventive skill must be encouraged, patents are issued-cach patent a prohibitory tariffand thus useful devices increased. Abuses may exist, but the common good is helped.

Genius must be called out in literature, and copyrights are given-each copyright a protection"-and the people gain in food for mind and soul.

Thus a nation builds up solid wealth for its share in the world's commerce, while the life and culture of its people grow broad and rich. Speculative theorists, and learned professors, who knew more of the dead past than the living present, more of the thought and life of Greece or Rome, or Hindostan, than of the work of hand and brain in Wisconsin or Carolina, or New England, may talk of "the philanthrophy of free trade," and imagine protection to home industry a selfish policy, making the few rich; but for workingmen and women the choice is between "free trade" with the pauper pay and hopeless life of British workshops, and fair "protection" with the better wages of Americans, and hope for a higher future for labor.

For Western farmers, the choice is between "free trade" with distant markets, low prices, and soil growing poor, and protection to home industry, with factories at his door, and in the East, home markets and soil growing" richer. G. B. STEBBINS. DETROIT, Mich., Sept., 1870.

GEORGE S. BOWEN, Pres.
A. B. MEEKER, Treas.
F. B. NORTON, Sec'y.

LABOR.

HOW WORKMEN LIVE IN ENGLAND.

The London correspondent of the New York Times gives a most deplorable picture of the poor of the large cities of England. Millions of people in England live almost entirely upon baker's bread. Here, for example, is the way of life of a sober, hard-working Englishman, who earns 18s. a week (say $4 50 gold stan dard), and has a wife and six children. He neither drinks nor smokes, and hands over his whole wages to his wife. This is a common practice in well-ordered families. She pays 43 a week for rent; 1s for coals; candles, soap, etc., 9d.; a penny a week each for the six children to a burial club, 6d.; on a doctor's bill due, 1s. Here are 75. 3d. of the 18s. gone, and nothing to eat Nov the bill of fare for those eight persons. One pound of bread a day for each the children scarcely taste anyting else comes to 7s. a week; 20 pounds of potatoes. 8d.; one pound of butcher's meat on Sunday, and two poun s of salt pork for week days, 25.; one pound of sugar, half pound of butter, one ounce tea, 13d., make up the week's account. No milk, no fruit, no clothing. The only way they can have that is for the children to get work or die; then something would come in from the burial club. Thousands and thousands of men work hard for two thirds of these wages, or less.

The New York World tells of a host of emigrant mechanics landing at Castle Garden, who could not live in the Old World, and of English masons and carpenters among them, telling of getting but $4 50 to $7 50 per week in gold, and paying $3 for miserable board, while laborers get from $3 to $5. Who ever heard of ship loads of American mechanics landing in Liverpool, to escape starvation and get better pay? A Mr. Hodgkius, of New York, an Englishman and a ree-trader, said lately in an essay at Brooklyn, that the ore and coal and limestone, for making iron, were as cheap and as abundant in Pennsylvania as in England, or more so, but the labor was cheaper in England, giving them the advan tage. 1 go for protecting labor in this coun try, and not for pushing it down to the pauper

level of England with her free-trade theories. A correspondent of the New York Evening Post gives the wages of five edge tool makers in that city as $55 33 a week in gold, and $35 in Londou, and the Post tries to make out that English workmen can live as well as ours, and says that their wages will buy more yards of carpet and poplin, more silk stockings and spool thread! All well, if men and women could eat carpets and use spool thread for sauce, but three-fourths of a workman's expenses are for fuel, &c., and for food easier to masticate and digest, and cheaper with us, certainly used with far more varied abundance.

Savings banks hold mainly the deposits saved by working people. In 1860 these banks in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Philadelphia and Newark, held $66,569,307, and the next year $1,238,304 less.

In 1868 the same banks (with only one dime savings bank added) held $153,823,667, an increase of $25,064,028 over 1867. Similar official reports from other regions show a like result.

EXTRACT FROM THE SPEECH OF THE HON. AUSTIN BLAIR, M. C. OF MICHIGAN-WASHINGTON, MARCH 25TH, 1870.

And here it is proper to remember that the protection of our industries is the protection of labor Great care is taken to conceal this obvious truth from the people. It is the fashion with the importers, who are themselves the most wealthy and aristocratic class in the country, to denounce the manufacturers as a body of rich monopolists who are amassing wealth out of the taxation of the people, while they affect to pity the impoverished operatives. But it needs no argument to prove to an intelligent man that in this country the success of the employers means increased wages to the employed. The operatives are now so intelligent and well-organized that they are enabled to know both the amount of wages which they are entitled fairly to demand and the most effectual methods for enforcing that demand. Every day's experience is proving that the

time has passed by when the capitalist will be able to deprive the laborer of his fair share in the profits of the business.

Wages in this country are necessarily high. The sparseness of population and the great abundance with cheapness of land makes it so. The intelligent laborer need not be a suppliant for employment; he can, as a last resort, quit the workshop and take a homestead out of the public lands which are always open to him. It is impossible, therefore, to place him upon the European rate of wages. Free trade, however, requires just this, and that is just what pro tection intends to prevent and does prevent. Can anything be clearer than this, that free trade means low wages?

Sir, all this clamor against the tariff is dėlusive. It has had its origin with a very few perBons. Among the people there are ten complaining of the internal revenue taxation where one complains cf the tariff. But these latter are not organized with abundance of means at their disposal to hire lectures and subsidize printing-presses. The free-trade league is controlled by very cuuning and unscrupulous men. They think the time has nearly arrived when the country will enter upon a period of serious embarrassment, and they intend to take advantage of the discontent arising out of it to aid their schemes. They mean to lay everything to the tariff, believing that the unthinking multitude will not be able to detect the cheat, I am not afraid of them. The country understands them, and the good sense of the people will be an overmatch for all their subtlety. Great calculations have been made heretofore, predicated upon the presumed discontent of the people under necessary taxation, but they have all failed. The repudiators set on foot a plan of great ingenuity to deceive the people, but it did not deceive them; nor will the freetrade leagues have any better success. The distresses of the importers on account of the sufferings of the people upon the protective tariff are very intense, no doubt; but they are always groaning at such a rate that we never know just when the tears ought to be shed. Lastening to them one would suppose that this was the poorest, most oppressed country and people in the world. Mr. Wells tells us plainly that the laborers of this country are nothing nigh so well paid as they are in the despotic countries of Europe. How strange that under these circumstances those well-paid, happy European laborers should be flocking to this tax-ridden, tariff impoverished country by hundreds of thousands every year! How still more strange and wonderful that a nation thus oppressed from the beginning of its existence until this time by protective legislation should nevertheless bave presented to the world the most remarkable example of prosperity and growth which history records! A nation that has never for a single year even let down the due measure of protection for its own domestic industries that it did not hasten to restore its time-honored policy at the earliest oppor tunity. It has never lacked advice from the disinterested importers or the equally disinterested manufacturers of Britain, and yet it has steadily preferred to buy its goods of American manufacturers instead of our loving and devoted cousins over the water.

To the old catchword, why not buy always where you can buy cheapest? I reply that he

Capital likes good investments and quick returns, yet it can live, and wait, and take advantage of poverty. Labor wants constant and decently paid occupation. Diversified industry is desirable to the capitalist, but far more so, and more necessary to the workman. If I had a million dollars it would need no great wit to go into a region where cash was scarce, because the people were far from market, loan money to fariners, and swallow up their farms, according to law, if not according to Gospel, by relentless foreclosure of mortgages. But suppose I invested the milion dollars in woolen, or cotton, or iron mills, bought the products of those farms for the workmen, and employed the surplus laborers; there need be no mortgages, but the lands would rise five or ten fold in value.

I should not be acting as a philanthropist, but simply as a business man, helping others to prosper that I might share in that prosperity. A factory with a capital of $500,000 will spend about that sum yearly for materials and labor, and the larger part circulates among the people.

Let the blood stagnate or move too slow in the veins and a man is sick-the strong and ready pulsation is health. So with business; it is rapid and easy circulation of money, quick returns, nearness of producer and consumer, demand for labor of all kir ds, and sale and in terchange of its products that makes health and brings wealth.

An able French journal well says:

That which, above all, agriculture claims, is the multiplication of markets, its greatest need being that of a non-agricultural population. What is it that presents itself to view

in our poorest provinces? A people thinly scattered an I almost entirely rural; not wɔrking within reach of a inirket; consuning oa the spot their own local productious; with few or no towas, no industry, and no commerce beyond that which is strictly necessary for satisfying the limited wants of their inhabitants. There the poor proprietor divides the produce with miserable tenants, the inevitable result of agriculture without a market. Our manufacturing departmeuts, on the other hand, are by far the best cultivated, and for that reason the most productive. There our agricul-. ture has proved its ability to realize, by other means, but in an equal degree, the wonders of English husbandry. Wherever a large center of consumption is formed, the neighboring farmers are the first to profil by it. This law is infallible, and allows of no exception."

OPINIONS OF DISTINGUISHED MEN.

Our forefathers felt that they must have commercial independence, always denied them by England, or their political independence would be but an empty name. The necessity of a PROTECTIVE SYSTEM FOR THE STATES, was a main subject of deliberation at the first Conyention, in 1786, of delegates at Annapolis, met to consider the formation of a Constitution, and also at the Convention of 1787, in which the Constitution was framed.

Washington, as President, met the first Congress, clad in a suit of domestic manufacture, and the second Act passed by that Congress, had the following preamble:

"WHEREAS, It is necessary for the support of Government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, AND FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT AND PROTECTION OF MANUFAC

TURES, that duties be laid on goods, wares and merchandise IMPORTED. Be it enacted," etc., etc. Tais bill being passed, was signed by Washington, July 4, 1759, marking thus, the great truth no doubt deeply felt by him, and by that august body, that the birth of political freedom should be followed by that of indastrial independence, that a great nation might fulfill its high destiny-free and independent indeed. And Jefferson, made President by a rival party, was too broad in his views to differ from Washington on this great question. In his second message, he said: To cultivate peace, and maintain commerce and navigation in all their lawful enterprises, to foster our fisheries, as nurseries of naviga. tion and for the nurture of man, AND TO PROTECT THE MANUFACTURES ADAPTED TO OUR CIRCUMSTANCES-these are the landmarks by which we are to guide ourselves."

JEFFERSON said to Benjamin Austin in 1816: "You tell me I am quoted by those who wish to continue our dependence on England for manufactures. There was a time when I might have been so quoted with more candor. We have since experienced

*

營

*

what we did not then believe-that there exists both profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other nations; that to be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourseives. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist."

The sagacious Dr. FRANKLIN, writing from London to Humphrey Marshall in 1771, said: Every manufacturer encouraged in our coun.

try makes part of a market for provisions within ourselves, and saves so much money to the country as must otherwise be exported to pay for manufactures and supplies. Here in England it is well known and understood that whenever a manufacture is established, employing a number of hands, it raises the value of lands all about; partly by the greater demand near at hand, and partly from the plenty of money drawn there by the business.

"IT SEEMS, THEREFORE, THE INTEREST OF ALL OUR FARMERS, AND OWNERS OF LAND, TO ENCOURAGE OUR MANUFACTURES IN PREFER

ENCE TO FOReign ones." Wise words, and true now as then.

In a letter to J. C. Caball, in 1818, JAMES MADISON said, "The theory of 'let us alone,' supposes that all nations concur in a perfect freedom of commercial intercourse. *

No nation can safely do so until at least a reciprocity be insured to it. A nation leaving its foreign trade to regulate itself in all cases, might soon find it regulated by other nations into a subserviency to foreign interests."

In a private letter, in 1824. ANDREW JACKSON said, "Take from our agriculture 600,000 men, women and children, be employed in manufactures, and you will at once give a home market for more breadstuffs than all Europe now gives us. We have been too long subject to the policy of British merchants. It is time we should become a little more Americanized."

In 1832, when ABRAHAM LINCOLN, our murdered Chief Magistrate, was nominated to the Legislature, he made a speech in which he

said:

"I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff."

And he held the same views all his life. HENRY C. CAREY, of Philadelphia says: "Protection, as estab- British free trade lished in 1818, 1828, 812, established in 1817, 1934, gave, as that of 1861 is 1816 and 1857, bequeathed Labor ready to give, to its free to its successor: trade successor: Great everywhere seeking to be demand for labor. Wages employed. Wages low high and money cheap. and money high. Public Public and private reve-land private revenues nues large, and immigra- small and steadily detion great and steadily creasing. Immigration increasing. Pulic and declining. Public and private property great be- pri ate bankruptcy nearGrowing yond all previons prece- lv universal. dent. Growing National National dependence. independence. Let our

"Such is the history of the past. farmers study it, and they will, as I think, understand the causes of the prosperity of the present. That done, let them determine for themselves whether to go forward in the direction of individual and National independence, or in that of growing dependence, both National and individual.

The well-known philanthropist, PETER COOPER, of New York, gives his views as follows:

"I have read your statement and the recommendations of your Association for the promotion and protection of American Industry, and heartily approve of every word and sentiment therein expressed. Believing firmly that the most reliable source of National wealth will always be found in a well directed industry of the people."

The Hon. J. W. MCCLURG, of Missouri, says: