Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1891 — Post-Election Wage Reductions. [ARTICLE]

Post-Election Wage Reductions.

Now that the autumn elections are over the reduction of wages by the beneficiaries of the tariff has been resumed. The day after the election the operatives of Newell’s pearl button factory, in Springfield, Mass , went out on strike on account of a reduction in wages The report says “that the strike will extend to other button factories in the city to-morrow.” Having secured a duty of several hundred per cent, on imported pearl buttons, the manufacturers are but doing what they intended to do, namely, to appropriate all the tariff bonus themselves At tbe same time another reduction in the wages of iron workers is announced from Pennsylvania. One of the shining 1-ghts of Pennsylvania Republicans is B. F. Jones, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Blaine campaign of 1884. He is the senior member of the firm of Jones & Laughlin, iron manufacturers. Mr. Jones is a believer in the McKinley theory of prohibitive duties on imports—to raise the wages of workmen. Last Thursday, however, he posted a notice in his works announcing to his 500 employes that their wages would be cut down from $1.50 to $1.35 per day, tho change to go into effect at 6 o’clock of the sartie day. In the iron industry the manufacturers are more resolved than ever not to share the tariff bonus with their workingmen. Meanwhile Andrew Carnegie shouts: “Don’t touch immigration: let it flow on. ” And why? Because he and his fellow tariff beneficiaries believe in “free trade in labor,” the only thing the workman has to sell, and “McKinley duties” on everything the laborer has to buy. This is the high-tariff policy.