Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1884 — HOW THE TARIFF PROTECTS LABOR. [ARTICLE]

HOW THE TARIFF PROTECTS LABOR.

Washington Post: The wages of nearly a thousand men employed in Roebling’s Wire Mills at Trenton, N. J., have beeiistreduced 10 per cent. The tube manufacturers of Pittsburg are considering a reduction of 10 per cent, in the wages ofjtheir employes. A 10 per cent, reduction in the wages of the miners of the Clearfield region of Pennsylvania went into effect on New Year’s Day. The Pioneer Silk Company, at Paterson, N. J., has reduced wages from $3 to about S 2 a day. The workmen are now on strike. The operatives employed in the thread manufactories at Newark and Kearny, N. J., have been informed that they will have to submit to a reduction of 10 and 15 per cent. There is a strike in the Grinnell Cotton Mills at New Bedford, Mass., against a 10 per cent, reduction in the wages of the operatives.

It is not a low tariff that is bringing about this stage of things, for we are still living under a high protective system; it is not the tariff revision of last year, for that, we are told, has not been well enough tested to enable a fair judgment of its merits; it is not the tariff legislation of the present Congress for not a Revenue Reform bill has yet been introduced. It will doubless be found in a gi eat majority of instances similar to those above cited, and that the reduction of wages have been necessitated by overproduction is something always to be feared, so long as the cupidity of producers is abnormally st i m ula te d by high protective legislation. Mr. Hewitt’s letter on this subject will bear reperusal in this connection.

“Excessive profits,” says Mr. Hewitt, ‘ are especially injurious to the workingmen of the country who are the chief sufferers when the inevitable reaction to unnatural expansion narrows the fields for the employment of labor.” It is to the relief of the condition of the workingmen of the country, now being; thrown out of employment in all directions, that Congress should first address itseli. The way to relief lies through a reduction of the tariff—a reform of

the revenue —protection to the weak rather than to the strong.