Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 February 1884 — PAUPER LABOR. [ARTICLE]

PAUPER LABOR.

THB WAY IT IS PHOTJSCTHD IN PENNSYL VANIA—SOMETHING FOR WORKINGMEN TO PONDKR. [Ph Udeiphift (P*.) Ricord.] General William Lilly, of the Valley of the Lehign, informs a Chicago newspaper that he is for Blaine, but that he and the rest of his party in Pennsylvania will support any candidate who is “opposed to the leveling down of our working classes to the level ot the poor laborers of Continental Europe.’ The profound sympathy of General Lilly for “our working classes” will not be questioned, but he need not go outside of his Valle> to contemplate the pauper* labor of Europe. If he has not witnessed it himself, he will find a description of it ill the same number of the Press which contains the interview from which we quote. A correspondent writes: “Laborers at the mines are paid as low as sixty cents a day for ten hours work: some get seventy-five cents and others eighty and ninety cents, but the average is seventy-one cents.” “The poor mine s decided to work for the merest pittance in order to keep the wolf from the door, and thus it is that they are working for such wages. Does General William Lilly of the Valley believe that free trade is likely to bring the wages lower than that? The correspondent of the Press quotes from a Reading gentleman extensively engaged in the iron trade: “Men are paid from sixty to eighty cents a day, but I don’t care to say much how they live. They exist, nothing more; but their battle to keep body and soul together on sixty cents A day must be imagined. I don’t care to describe it.” This, General Lilly will observe, is not in “Continental Europe,” but in the valley of the Lehigh, almost within sight of his own doer. Protection has brought the “pauper labor” to him. The correspo dent goes on to tell that “the ore miner rarely has a Sunday suit,” and that his family knows nothing of luxuries, and very little of books or newspapers.” On wages of sixty cents a day that explanation was hardly necessary. What is your opinion. General Lilly? The #orrespondent then proceeds to describe some ©f the poor laborers from the Continent of Europe, “such as Hungarians and Polanders, who live on boiled potatoes and molasses and bread, and who do their own cooking in shanties, sleep in the clothes they wear during the day, and cover themselves with straw in the loft.”

So much for the poor laborers of Continental Europe when brought near home for inspection. , What does General Lilly think of the picture? Strange to say .this labor which receives sixty cents a day and lives on “boiled potatoes, molasses and bread.” is very highly protected. F r every ton of ore dug out of the ground the American laborer is supposed to receive seventy-five cents a day through the tariff, besides the pay for his labor, to protect him from the half-starved labor of Continental Europe.— Now, as he digs about a ton a day, and gets sixty cents la day, what has become of his seventy-five cents worth of protection? The mine owners, who are interested only in the prosperity of American labor protest that they g?t none of id. Where. Ibeh, has it gone? Possibly General Lilly can tell. A mine owner tries to explain it in saying that thousands cf tons of ore come in as ballast free of our duty.” But that won’t do, for the last official report shows receipts from the duty on iron ore amounting to upward of $300,000, represent mg an importation of 400,000 tons. The simpie explanation is that the tariff affords no pro

tection to labor. If it did, these poor laborers from Continental Europe whose condition saddens General Lilly would not be ground down to a beggarly pittance of sixty cents a day in an occupation 111 which their labor is protected to the amount of seventyfive cents a day. But the bold protectionist asserts that if it were not for this bounty.which the laborers evidently do not get, they would be “forced so low that pauperism would soon incite not, bloodshed and re bellion.” From the cheerfulness and contentment which are extracted from “boiled potatoes, molasses and bread” at sixty cents a day under the blissful influence of protection, we are to presume that there is no cause of such fear. But it is the habitual use of such assertions to workingmen that is making the cheek of a Penn sylvania protectionist rapidly pass into proverb.