Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1892 — TARIFF AND WAGES. [ARTICLE]

TARIFF AND WAGES.

Bttference in Factory Wages at Ims and Abroad. Workmen and others have frequently asked, says the Philadelphia Record, t® state the difference in factory wages in this country and in Europe. Satisfactory answers could not always bp given, because of the unreliability of like data. Earnings greatly vary with other industrial conditions. In some industries the daily wages are much higher than in others, while the days of labor are much less; so that, taking all the year ’round, the earnings are nearly equal in their respective employments. At the same time there has been a strong disposition in officials gatherers of statistics to fit them as nearly as possible to the favorite theory at hand. Thus protectionist doctrines have habitually exaggerated the earnings of labor in this county, and depreciated them in free trade England, in order to make out a plausible case for tariff spoliation. In this economic work the protectionist manipulators have carefully refrained from producing the statistics of wages in the “protected” countries of continental Europe, since the results would have completely overturned their argument when contrasted with the results under the free policy of Great Britain. * But Mr. Carroll D. Wright, chief of the department of labor, has just transmitted to President Harrison a comprehensive and exhaustive statistical report upon the comparative condition of work and wages in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. Mr. Wright’s authority in this domain of investigation is of the highest character, and to the arsenal of facts which he has collected both parties in the tariff controversy will be obliged to go for ammunition. If the advocates of McKinleyism can find consolation in these industrial data, the friends of tariff reform will have no cause to grudge it to them.

Without further reviewing these statistics at present, let us take the comparative figures in the cotton industry, for an example. In the United States the average annual earnings of a family in the cotton factories are $658; expenses, $611; net income, $47. In Great Britain the annual earning of a family in the same industry are $556; expenses, SSO2; net income, $54. In Germany the earnings are $302; expenses, $283; net income, sl9. In France, the earnings are $966; expenses, $334; net income, $32. In Switzerland, the earnings are $358; expenses, $347; net income, sll. In the highly protected woolen industries of this country and in the same Industries in England the wages are lower than in the cotton manufactures, while in the iron and glass industries they are higher. But the relationsibetween earnings and expenses are much the same. In Germany the average earnings of a family in the woqlen industries amount to $245. and the expenses to $282, leaving a deficit of $37 at the end of the year.

American workingmen, whose ears have been stunned with cries over the “blessings” of protection and the “curse” of free trade in generating pauperism of labor, can hardly fail to draw an instructive lesson from Mr. Wright’s statistics. While the “protected” workingman in a New England cotton factory has a surplus of $47 at the end of tire year, the victim of “pauper labor” in free trade England has a surplus of $54. Leaving ont of question the miserable condition of labor under the protective systems of Germany and France, the adwocates of tariff spoliation will find nothing to help their argument in this comparison of industrial conditions in the United States and Great Britain. While the American cotton spinner works more hours, and produces more, he is able to save less than his unprotected. rival in free trade England. Is this because he spends more for luxuries and superfluities? Not at all. The statistics of Mr. Wright show that while the workingman and his family in the United States expend annually $9.36 for pleasures and recreations, the English workingman expends not less than $36.20 on the same account. The reason of these differences lies in a tariff system which, in the name of protection to American workingmen, makes the cost of indispensable necessaries of living greater in the United States than they are in free trade England. While nominally receiving more money for more extensive labor and a greater amount of production, American workingmen’s wages have less purchasing power than have wages in England because of the insidious taxes upon so many of the necessaries and comforts of living. Since figures honestly, patiently and intelligently collated will not lie, the advocates of tariff spoliation will find a perfect mine of truth in the figures of Mr. Carfoll D. Wright.