Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1892 — WAGES AT HOMESTEAD. [ARTICLE]

WAGES AT HOMESTEAD.

( Facts that Democratic Investigators Did Not Look For. % The Democratic House sent a committee to Homestead with the hope of making 1a shewing of distress and poverty among the laborers in protected imdustries. They hoped to show that workmen in protected industries get no benefit from a protective tariff. But they will not show that. What they found was workmen getting $1.40 a day (the lowest rate, and that only to a few) up to as high as sl6 per day. There were men offered' SI,OOO, $2,500, $3,600 and even $5,000 per annum, and working apout 270 days in the year —and yet they had learned to feel and believe, under the experience of a protective tariff, that they ought to have more. No wonder Congressman Bynum, Democrat, of Indiana, and a member of' the committee, inquired with some show of eagerness, whether there was a chance for him to secure a position in the works. v When Hugh O’Donnell,'* the leader of the strikers, was on the stand, Mr. Boatner, (democrat, of Louisiana,) asked him: “You. are one of the skilled workmen, are you not?” “Yes sir.” • • >» * “About what were your wages?” “About $144 per month.” John McLucaie, a member of theJAmalgamated Association and a burgess of Homestead, complained to the committee that the McKinley law reduced the tariff on steel billets, and that wages, therefore, began to go down with the price of steel billets after its passage. He advanced the somewhat extraordinary opinion that the securing of the reduction of tariff on steel billets was part of a conspir-

acy to reduce the wages of workingmen. He also charged that the company “shortly converted the Duquesne works into a billet plant, increased the production, flooded the country so that prices maybe reduced, and thus affect our wages, Duqnesne produces large atbount of Billets.” Representative Oates, of Alabama, the Democratic chairman of the Democratic committee of investigation, was interviewed after he returned from Homestead, and said: “That the workmen at Homestead wore far above the average in intelligence and seemed to be fairly prosperous, living in good, comfortable houses. He saw none of the poverty common in great manufacturing centres. Many of the men, particularly the skilled workmea, made goM some of them fus high as 9275 per month. Othen made only 960 pei

month. The common laborers earned from $1 to §1.50 per day. “As Mr. Frick bad positively declined to disclose to the committee the cost per ton of producing steel " billets at the Homestead mills, Mr. Oates could not- say whether the contention of the men that the company was making a great deal of money at the present prices Was true or not. He was satisfied, however, that the allegalion of the men that the company had purposely produced an overstock of steel billets in order to reduce the scale of wages of the workmen was untrue. AH the above wages were paid for days of only eight hours each.