I am, very truly,
⸺ ⸺.
P. S.—I am a Georgian. I met you personally on two occasions at Athens. Perhaps you have long since forgotten me. I would consider it an honor to be known by you, and to know you as a personal friend. In ’96 I wrote you from Athens for a copy of the P. P. P. I had misplaced my copy wherein you showed up the littleness of Bill Arp’s school history of Georgia. You sent me a copy from Thomson; I have it yet.
ANSWER
The Republican who told you those things about English wages did not know what he was talking about. The idea of a railroad engineer getting four dollars per month, and factory hands being paid five cents per day! The figures are so ridiculous that even a Protection-soaked Republican ought to know better.
If high Tariffs benefit the laborer, why is it that workmen get better wages in free-trade England than in high-Tariff France, Italy and Germany? If high-Tariffs give the benefit to the laborer why is it that the Salvation Army had to save the factory hands at Fall River, Mass., from starvation, by ladling out free soup? The best paid laborers in the United States are the negroes of the South who raise cotton, a free trade product. The laborer gets a larger share of the cotton he produces than any employee in any protected industry.
In England the wages paid to factory hands are at least equal to those paid in the United States when the amount of the wage is compared with the amount and quality of the product.
Ask your Republican friend if he does not know that his great Apostle, James G. Blaine, made this assertion some twenty years ago.
The statement was not denied then and cannot be denied now.
There is a huge army of the poor and the unemployed in England, but it is not due to Free trade.