Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1890 — American and British Workingmen. [ARTICLE]

American and British Workingmen.

When forced to admit that towages paid to mechanics and laborers in the United States, under policy of Protection, are from one-'-half to three-fourths higher than wages paid in England in the same lines of service, the free trade attorney claims that this is justified by the difference in cost of living in the two countries* And as usual he is wrong. That his contention is not true can be proved by market quotations within reach of every man who cares to investigate. The fact is that only a very few of those articles required for family use are higher in Chicago or New York than in London or Manchester. These are sugar, house rent, and a few articles of woolen Clothing. The English workman can save something on the item of fuel —not in the price, but in the quantity consumed; because in a milder climate so much is not required. House rent is higher here because the men who prepare materials and build and furnish houses in this country are better paid than English mechanics who do the same work. The fact that so much of what the English consumes is drawn from this country, is demonstration that in meats, breadstuffs, butter, cheese, coal oil, and some of the fruits. Americans have the advantage in price. True that the American workingman does spend more for the table supplies of a family than his English cousin does for a family of equal size; but investigation will disclose the fact that this is because the American’s table is more bountifully supplied. He spends more because he gets more money for his labor, and choses to give his wife and children .the benefit of the surplus. i sssS

However enchantingly England’s sirens may sing the blessings of free trade this side the ocean, they cannot conceal their failure to convince the masses compelled to live and labor under that policy of its much lauded advantages. Free trade has had its fullest test in Great Britain for over forty years, and yet for a long time more than one-third of all European immigrants to this country were from that kingdom alone. Weary of effort along the dead level of “the markets of the world,” more than three thousand British subjects each week find refuge from inevitable poverty under a goverment committed to the protection of its working citizens.