Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1888 — LABOR AND THE TARIFF. [ARTICLE]

LABOR AND THE TARIFF.

Increases of Wages from 1850 to 1880, with Comparisons. [From the Philadelphia Record.] The most important gain of the President’s message is in the fact that it has called the workingmen, more than did any previous utterance or happening, to the serious consideration of the question whether the retention of the war tariff taxes are not, after all, a reducer rather than an advancer of their wages or earnings. Heretofore a large proportion of them, especially in this Slate, have accepted the pretenses of the monppolists in the blindest of faith. They have assumed—not beoauee they knew, but because they were told, and because there was a certain plausibility in the argument—that if the tariff should be modified by the merest shaving the door would be thrown open immediately to such an influx of “paupermade" goods from abroad as would either throw them out of employment altogether or bring their wages down to the European level. It was natural almost that they should thus deceive themselves, and one

of the chief reasons why it was natural was in the fact that all the literature, o i nearly all, on the revenue-reform side cf the agitation either appealed to them as consumers only, or was constructed upo>* lines beyond their comprehension. As a result the cry in the factories is no longer for protection against foreign importations of goods so much as against high-priced raw materials, which of necessity make low wages, and high-priceJ necessaries, which make them still lower by decreasing the purchasing power of the dollar. The workingmen begin to appreciate the importance of this materials question. They are looking up the figures, and have found, for instance, that according to the 1880 census the total cost of materials in the manufactories for that year was $3,396,324,549, while the amount paid for wages was but $947,953,795, the former figure being more thnn three and one-half times the latter, with the wages considerably less than 25 per cent, of the total. Of course they know that much of this material was not what is called raw material, but they know, also, that much of it was, and their eyes are open to the relative importance of the raw materials question as never before.

And while looking up these figures in the census they have learned other things important to the elucidation of the tariff question as it affects the question of wages. They have found, among other things, that the average earnings of the workingmen in the factories of the country, according to the last four censuses, were as follows: In 1850 $247 la 1870* $302 In 1800 288 In 1830 340 This shows that the average is constantly increasing, as it most certainly should in a great country like this, with its wonderful resources, improvements in machinery, aud increasing general intelligence. But it shows, also, that the increase from 1850 to 1860 was as great as during any other decade, though the period marked no great tariff advances, and was far greater than the average of the two decades from 1860 to 1880, notwithstanding the very deluge of “protection” the latter period gave us. The teaching of all this is in line with the teaching of the message, that whatever benefits accrue to the workingman from a tariff on manufactured products are more than neutralized by the insane policy of high duties on raw materials and the necessaries of life.

♦The actual figures of the census are 377, but 21 per cent, is deducted to allow for the difference between the inflated currency values of 1870 and the hard money values of 1880. See Remarks Compendium of last census, Fart 2.