The Texas Miner, Volume 1, Number 37, September 29, 1894 Page: 4
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THE TEXAS MINER.
THE TEXAS MINER.
WALTER B. McADAMS, Editor.
subscription rates:
One Year $1.00.
Single Copies 5c.
Advertising- Rates made known on application to the Business Office.
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY.
Entered at the Post-Office in Thurber, Texas, as Second-Class Mail Matter.
Thurber, Texas, Saturday, September 29, 1894.
'BUGBEAR SOPHISTRIES AND A BLIGHTING CURSE.'
WITH the above taking headlines the only really able daily
paper in this state (the Dallas News), in a half column
editorial, writes on the "bugbear sophistries," as they term it, of
a protective tariff, and as ably as can be done by any one that is
on the wrong side of the argument. It is too long to quote in
full in our columns, but it says ' there is neither sense nor patriot-
ism, from a broad American view, in cultivating blindness to the
disastrous trend of a protective system of repulsion and seclu-
sion."
With all due deference to the very broad assertion of the News
above, we think self-interest governs us, and whatever course
benefits the greater number of our own citizens, not considering
other nations, that should be our policy. The great Lord Bacon,
in speaking of what should be the course of English legislation,
said: "We should advance the commodities of our own king-
dom, and employ our own labor, before that of strangers." And
that has been the cardinal doctrine of the English Government
for centuries. At one time England levied a large duty on every
ton of iron imported. When her iron interests had arrived at the
point where they could compete with other countries the duty
was entirely taken off; so on other articles of manufacture. She
became the dominant country of the world through her steady,
consistent encouragement of her own people. She became the
controlling factor in the carrying of ocean freights by the paying
of a large bonus to her steamship lines. The "P. & O." Ship
company and the Pacific Steam Navigation company were en-
couraged by guaranteeing to the stockholders of those companies
7 per cent, interest on the money invested. This has been the
course of the richest and most powerful nation in the world, until
the time came when she could more than compete with other
nations, and that is protection. Our own country has always
been the most flourishing under the benefits of a protective tariff.
You know that our country was prosperous for many years under
the workings of a high tariff, a-nd as soon as the blighting threat
of free trade was likely to come to us, by the election of Grover
Cleveland in 1892, that prosperity fled, that want and destitution
was prevalent in many portions of our country. You cannot
help but know that what Mr. Lincoln said was true: "When we
buy an American product this country has the product and the
money, but when we buy a foreign product we have only the
product, and the foreigner has our money." And it is "sophis-
try" on your part to try and make it out to be otherwise. You
cannot help but know that if we in this state would manufacture
our cotton and wool in mills of our own it would be better for
our state. In your own enterprising city of Dallas you have a
commercial club, that wants to "protect" Dallas by having your
citizens buy of your own merchants; it is the perfection of the
protective doctrine.
Your Democratic tariff that has just been enacted militates
against our wool growers, our sugar industry, the raisers of cattle,
mules and horses, the latter by allowing Mexico to bring her cat-
tle, mules and horses in at a rate of duty lower than they could
under the McKinley tariff. The proposition to make coal free of
duty (it was reduced 35 cents a ton) forced the lowering of the
wages of coal miners in this state. It is sheer "sophistry" to say
if this country does not buy of other countries we cannot sell our
products to them. They will buy what they need, and no more,
and in the lowest markets. We buy of Brazil her coffee and rub-
ber, and Brazil buys of us only a tithe of what we buy of that
country. If we should place a prohibitory tariff on English man-
ufactures, and England could buy our wheat and cotton lower
than elsewhere, she would buy of us, notwithstanding our tariff.
You are not as fair and ingenuous in vour tariff arguments as
you are in other editorials in ycur paper. You say "it now takes
$100 worth of wheat to buy $20 worth of home-made iron,"
when Alabama iron can- be purchased at $8 a ton, when Ameri-
can steel rails can be purchased at $21 a ton. In our own state
we have had laid down English steel rails that cost from $60 to
$120 a ton. A few years ago American rails was selling at a
lower price than the price of English rails in England, and at the
same time there was a duty of about $18 per ton. American
wire nails are selling today at a less sum laid down in Texas,
1500 miles from the place where manufactured, than the duty
was under the McKinley tariff bill. It is not a fact, that allowing
foreign nations to do our manufacturing for us, and we supply
them with the raw products that we can raise to better advantage,
can benefit this country as a whole as much as it will to manu-
facture for ourselves. It is a fact that under the operations of a
protective tariff that in the last thirty years our country has made
greater progress in population and gain in wealth than any nation
on the globe, and it is a fact that as soon as Grover Cleveland
and a Democratic congress was elected, that a panic and hard
times came upon us and it was because of his free trade and
monometal theories that forced upon us a "condition" that, to
say the least, is mighty uncomfortable to many.
ERATH COUNTY CITIZENS,
LET'S vote for the candidate for congress against whom
there is not the slightest doubt as to how he will vote and
work for the free coinage of American silver at a ratio of 16 to
1; that's our interest. Candidates, come out and tell us where
you stand on this question that is of so much interest to us? We
go for the man that stands by us. We would like to hear from
Bell and Jenkins on this question.
DO YOU BELIEVE?
DO YOU believe that taking the dutv off of wool will raise
the price of wool ? Do you believe that reducing the
duty on coal will raise the miners' wages? Do you believe that
reducing the duty of cattle, mules and horses is going to help the
farmer? Do you believe that making diamonds free and putting
two cents a pound on sugar will benefit your pocket? Well, that
is what the new Democratic tariff does.
YES, THAT'S SO.
DEMOCRATIC orators are having a hard time to convince
the farmer that single standard money that will wipe out
all interest farmers have in their farms and pass it over to the
mortgage holder, is a "good thing to have in the house," and
they want to " know, you know," if goldbugism is so good for
the farmer, why goldbugs want it so bad.
There are sixty-three banks composing the New York clearing
house with a capital of, $61,622,700; discount line, $495,087,-
100; specie, $91,288,300; legal tender money, $115,324,000;
deposits, 586,634,400; and a surplus equal to nearly the whole
capital stock.
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McAdams, Walter B. The Texas Miner, Volume 1, Number 37, September 29, 1894, newspaper, September 29, 1894; Thurber, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth200484/m1/4/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Tarleton State University.