Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1894 — The Pottery Strike. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Pottery Strike.

In the settlement of the pottery Strike the wage scale hangs on the degree es protection accorded the industry in the democratic tariff bilL This is a practical illustration of the point which republicans have made and democrats denied, and there can be no wriggling out of it The demncrats will have to take their medicine. The democratic politicians can no longer throw dust in the eyes of the men who earn their living in American potteries. They have learned, if they did not know before, that the tariff has something to do with wages. Some of them understood this thoroughly and did not wait for the democratic par tv and sad experience to teach them the lesson.—The Intelligencer, Wheeling, W. Va.

Wages In Japan.

The Japan Mail, published at Yokohama, is authority for the following, in regard to the wages of mill operatives in Japan, also as to the value of Japanese money and the cost of coal, all of which may throw some light upon the problem of successful industrial competition with the “Yankees of the east”

The daily wages of a factory gird in Iliogo is nine sen, whereas in Tokio it is thirteen sen, and 10,000 pounds of coal, costing from twenty-two to twenty-three yen in the latter city, can be had in the former for from eighteen to nineteen wen. One yen equals a Mexican dollar. One Mexican dollar equals 50 cents United States gold. One sen is one one hundredth part of a yen or one-half cent gold. Nine sen for a girl is equivolent to four and a half cents gold per day. Wages of a girl for one year, or 300 days, sl3. 50 gold, or $27 silver, per year. Coal at nineteen |yen for five tons equals about $1.90 per ton.

In 1892 we had absolute men employed in our business forty-five, and these forty-five remained with us up until October, 1393, whenfbusiness fell down to such an extent that we cut them down to forty. April 1, 1894, yve cut the men down to twenty-three. This gives the standing exactly of the house to-day. In 1892 with a capital of half a million we employed fortyfive hands. The same capital, the close of 1893, could only give employment to forty hands. The same capital in 1894 can only t employ twentythree hands. In addition to this we have been obliged to cut off six branch houses, which, in 1892, yielded good returns; but made a loss in 1893 and the continuance of them in 189-1 would have been ruinous. Comment is unnecessary and the figures stand for themselves. The articles we have manufactured and sold are agricultural implements, every one of which was manufactured in the states of New York, Ohio and Illinois and fitted up and finished here.—Charles H. Dodd, president of Charles H. Dodd & Co., dealers in agricultural implements. hardware and steel, Portland, Ore., April 21, 1894.