Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1888 — As to Wages. [ARTICLE]

As to Wages.

All ultra-protectionists harp continually upon the alleged high wages paid by American protected manufacturers to their foreign imported laborers, but an examination of the pay-rolls shows that the‘claim consists chiefly of imaginary money, and that in point of fact they are the poorest paid town laborers in the United States, and the more highly protected the factories are the less the wages. For example: In the silk factories, enjoying 50 per cent, bounty; woolen factories, enjoying 60 to 100 per cent.; cotton factories, enjoying 35 to 50 per cent., and in some lines still higher protection, the wages are just a grade above pauper pay. The wages paid in the coal mines are barely above the pauper standard, and the great bulk of the workmen in and about iron and steel works and ooke and salt works receive a compensation just one point higher than is paid to their fellow-workmen in Europe. The nominal wages they receive, if more, have less purchasing power.— Chicago Tribune.