Protection and Monopoly

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 18, 29 July 1890, Page 3

Protection and Monopoly

TO THE KUITOR OF THE STAR. g IE| — The late and long continued depression throughout the world has been treated by the general public — and even by members of Parliament — like that saying in the Scriptures, about the wind blowing where it listetu, and no one can tell from whence it comes or whither it goes. There is this wide difference, however, that the cause of depression is to the unprejudiced who study it of much more easy solution than the vagaries of the weather. In many pha.< es of the momen - tous question, is the so-called Anglo-Saxon race on thejdecliße ? I hold that the danger from the mixture of certain races is of the greatest importance, and this has been demonstrated in America, where not only in the southern, but in some of the northern states, there has been a growing antipathy towa -ds the Negro race. By a letter published in the Eangitikei Advocate some years since, I pointed out that the Yankee had in a measure spoilt a fine country, and created a confusion that would take him a century or two to adjust by the above policy — and I still hold these views. There is little doubt that when the abolition of slavery took place in America after the Civil War that it was adyisable to ship back numbers of that race to their native and natural habitat in Africa ; this has for many years bcea my conviction, and it is a scheme that H. M . Stanley, is now atti m jting to carry out. I say nothing againsu the Negro as a nice, as thatrac possesses some redeeming tr i.ts of character, among which is a hopeful and lively disposition ; but the Nogro has qualities in a material sense diftering from the Anglo-Saxon, which makes the races better friends apart ; he possesses also a physical structure and capability which enables him to dwell in malarial parts and in a tropical climate unhealthy to Euro peans, and in the future opening up of the African continent by England and Germany there is a prospect of trade and employment for the Negro race for centuries to come. The foregoing, along with the influx of Chinese, who have entereri in • -c into general competition, not only A ucts the British working man by throwing numbers of them .out of employment in different parts of the world, but in America monopoly, aided by the allurements of Protection as a means of obtaining cheap labor, has shattered the prospect of the small or moderate farmer and dealer, and in fact threatens to do away with the middle class and create only two classes — t!ie over-rich and the under-paid, or the poor. This is not mere surmising but the inevitable tendency of the above policy in America ; and thus this curse of monopt ly A &Jts another problem of the present d «y, namely, the settlement of people on the land. The interests of the small farmers and labourers are mutual, and when wages are at. a fair rate there is a fair prospect -for small- farmers, as many of j them have sprung from labourers, and j many of them take contracts and work for wages! after becoming farmers; but the I monopolist in America no doubt grabbs as much of the first-class land that he can possibly procure, and the moderate 'arrner, i f he obtains second-rate land almost as a gift, unless fortunate enough to have other means or an independance, in which case he would likely soon join the over-rich, is a life of hopeless drudgery for the bare necessaries of life ; and what else can be expected in a land where the monopolist cultivates whole p;r.-ies o" grain to renovate his estate by the allurements of Protection and colored labor. From accounts of the market for grain in some States in America last season oats were selling at 5d per bushel, and maize was at such a low figure, that crops of that grain were burnt on the field, and yet all necessaries the. poor man requires he has to pay a high price for through taxation. According to an American writer taxation in that country takes from the rich from 3 to 10 per cent, of their annual savings, while it takes from the poor from 75 to 90 per cent. And so the delusion of Protection, the very term being a misnomer and unmeaning, unless it is to protect the rich, not only makes the working man poor, but keeps him so by heayily taxing him afterwards. — I am, &c., A Colonist.