Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1904 — THE COST OF LIVING [ARTICLE]

THE COST OF LIVING

What an Intelligent Laboringman Has Learned In the Hard School of Experience. An intelligent laboring man, who is trying to support a family ( of six, writes the Huntington News-Democrat in criticism of the figures of Carroll D. Wright, chief of the National Bureau of Labor, and plainly intimates that the figures have been Juggled to meet the exigencies of the pending campaign. Speaking of his own experience, he says: “Last year I paid |301.25 for clothing, Including hats and shoes. This was for a family of six, myself, wife and four children, an average of a trifle over S6O each. Upon each of the articles of clothing there is a tariff duty averaging 60 par cent., or on the total amount of my purchase, $180.75. This amount of $180.75 was the tax levied and paid to the manufacturers of the articles purchased by me and went to them as a bonus. From this $180.75 I received no value whatever. It was an involuntary contribution on my part to the manufacturer of these articles. What I had to do, every purchaser of the same goods was compelled to do. "I believed in 1896 and 1900 that a high protective tariff was necessary In order to give constant employment at good wages to the American workman, and hence voted as I believed, but have changed that opinion. I see now. from experience, that I was mistaken. The effect that It had on myself and others situated as I am has been to increase the cost of living without a corresponding increase of wages. Without the tariff I would have bad $16./.'<s of my earnings. Its only effect has been to make me poorer. Out of the promised full dinner pail I have lost, by rap reason or fault of my own, this very tidy sum of $180.75, which in addition to the loss of ROO hours of labor, makes the sum total of $420.75 out* of an income of S9OO, or all hut 50 per cent. Each year I And the space between what I can save and Ihe cost of living grows smaller and in another four years it will take all a man can earn to buy the ordinary necessities of life for his family. “In that event what can a man situated as I am look forward to? I have not been able to save anything aside from my home for the infirmities of old age. 1 am to become a burden upon my children. They must become the wage-earners and take my place in the endless chain of hard work, selfdenial, frugality, in order to supply, as we call it, ‘a living.’ It Is neither a cheerful nor a hopeful outlook.”