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. It is the natural result of three things. (1) Land monopoly. (2) A diabolical financial system. (3) The host of non-producers who use the government as a means of getting their support and their wealth by oppressing the producers. The Government could easily establish a Bureau of Loans, and could adopt a business-like system of lending money direct to the people. This principle has been put in successful operation in Great Britain, Norway, Greece and other foreign countries. Not long ago, the firm of N. A. Harris & Co., of Chicago, New York and Boston, put out a Circular offering for sale “Sanitary District of Chicago” bonds to the amount of $500,000. As a recommendation of these bonds, Harris & Co., declared in the Circular that the United States Government had accepted the bonds as security for Government deposits. In other words, the National Banks have been borrowing the people’s money out of the Treasury on the faith of these bonds. Of course, the banks paid no interest. Now does it not occur to you that the Government could as well lend some of that money to you at four or six percent interest upon security equally good, as to lend it to a favored few without interest? I do not believe that Mr. Cleveland profited personally by the sale of the bonds. He acted stupidly and he acted in violation of law. The whole transaction had an ugly look because Morgan had recently been his client and Stetson (who drew the contract) had recently been his partner. But I do not think he acted corruptly. Mr. Cleveland did not get 125 for the Bonds. Oh, no. He sold them for 103½, and Morgan, Belmont, Rothschild & Co. _immediately realized_ 112¼.