Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1891 — Does It Keep Wages High? [ARTICLE]

Does It Keep Wages High?

Protectionists coolly claim that protection not only raises but that it makes wages continue to go higher and higher. The tendency upward, they say, is permanent. If these advocates of protection will refer to the report of Carroll D. Wright, which ho issued in 1883 as Labor Commissioner for tho Stato of Massachusetts, they will find somo figures not much calculated to strengthen their case. Hero are the wages in somo of the protected industries of Massachusetts in 1800 and 1880: Average Weekly Wages. JBtSO. 1880. Boots and shoes ." $11.42 ©9.t',o Carpets '. 6.02 5,87 Clothing 8.20 8.81 Cottons 6.5) 7.37 Furniture 11.77 9.95 Leather 10.01 0.03 Linen and jute 4.63 4.82 Paper 8.63 8.17 811 k 5.91 5 87 Worsteds 6.10 5.60 Average in all Industries.... 48.00 ©7.52 When protectionists are putting forth their extravagant assertions about what protection has done for labor they ougiit to have the decency to add, “Except in Massachusetts.” They have been figuring on the thing in Massachusetts with the above result. The Stato printer has put the figures into type, and everybody can read it. No wonder that the old superstition that protection raises wages is dying out among the workpeople of Masachusetts.