MIDDLE-MEN.
These are the middle class in society, who generally make the most money, because they are simply factors, or agents, who transact business between the agricultural and manufacturing classes. The merchant buys from the manufacturer and sells to the farmer, or vice versa.
The carrier (in ships, cars, boats, or wagons) transports the products of both. They do not, however, make their living so much by the amount they carry as the price obtained for their services. If their patrons are poor and in want of profitable employ ment, while the products of their labor are cheap, then the middle-men will have little to carry, little to sell, and small profits. Therefore the interests of the producer directly affect those of the merchant and carrier. If the first are poor, the last must accept the same condition.
In like manner, all those who conduce to our intelligence, heath, comfort, and plea sure—the teacher, the artist, and the professional man—must depend on the ability of the producer. If labor and the products of labor are cheap, then their services must be cheap. Yet how few of all those hosts of middle-men (we speak respectfully, with our hats off), who depend for their living on labor and the fruits of labor, are willing to increase the prices of labor? They live on the profits of labor, yet are ever trying to cheapen labor. They are continually trying to kill the geese that lay their golden eggs. What fools our teachers are! How silly are these wise men! Yet the igno rance of the laborer is more to blame than their folly.
The "penny-wise, pound-foolish" policy of most of our railroad companies is, never theless, still more absurd. Their "dividends" are entirely derived from the profits of their transportations : the interest on their capital is derived from traffic, and their ability to buy, of course, depends on the price they receive and the amount they carry. But our railroad-men advocate low prices in asking the privilege of importing food and cheap labor, in the shape of rails, duty free. They demand the means of levelling labor and the products of labor in this country to the standard of Europe. They would
reduce prices from one-half to two-thirds their present rates, and, consequently, di minish their own profits in the same ratio. They have already sent more money to England than would have been required to develop our own iron industry beyond com petition, and have, in consequence, paid twenty per cent. more for rotten foreign rails than superior domestic iron would have cost them. But, while they thus increased the cost of railroads and their equipments, they crippled their own resources by bring ing ruin on our manufacturers, from whom they obtained their employment as carriers, and the farmers consequently burned their corn as fuel, because they had no market when the miner, the manufacturer, and the mechanic had no work and no money. It is, therefore, evident that the free-trade policy advocated by ton many of our great railroad companies has retarded the development of the regions they traverse to such an extent that they have been forced to mortgage their lines to Europe in the enormous sum of $500,000,000, on which they have paid in interest, perhaps, more than they made in profits. But had their roads been built with American iron, mines, furnaces, mills. factories, and farms would have sprung into existence, doubling the freight, while saving both capital and interest.
When low prices ruled, they could buy iron cheap; but, nevertheless, many of them went deeper and deeper into debt as long as they were governed by their own elected policy of free trade. But when high prices ruled, they paid their debts and made money. Yet so selfish and short-sighted are they that their policy leads them to carry ten thousand tons of iron or coal at low prices, even at a loss, rather than pay a high price for one ton of iron; and unless every railroad charter is accompanied with a proviso that the road shall be built with American iron, this class of men will be free-traders, and, of course, their own enemies.