The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1884-09-11
The Tariff and Labor.

Protectionists are at their old game
of trying to make it appear that the
price of labor is enhanced by protec-
tiop. While such declaration is being
repeated the working men of this
country are being squeezed down to
starvation prices, but the republican
party, as blind, again guarantees
to labor fair and adequate wages"
Its candidates reiterate this empty
declaration, while evidences are
produced on every hand to prove the
falsity of the ground assumed. Eng
land is free trade country, and
In a late report of the representa-
tive of the United States at
Manchester it is officially announced,
that the English laborer is growing
rich" This and the further fact that
the condition of the coal miners of
England is better than that of those
of the United States is ignored by
protectionlsts, while the reign of the
barons it seems is their main purpose
to perpetuate. To make fair COM
parison between the effects of protect
ion and free trade, let US consider the
condition existing in different
countries, governed by asimi-
lar influences. The rates of
wages in every department of manu-
featuring industry have steadily in
creased in England since the introduc-
ton of the free-trade policy forty
years ago. The workingmen of that
country are il the enjoyment of far
greater comforts than in the protec-
zionist period, and the savings of la
Dor are constantly accommodating. An
other very decisive fact is that the
workingmen of England are better
paid than are the workingmen of any
protectionist country IN Europe.
Germany and England have much
the same landed systems, in which
the soil is owned by comparative
few. If tariff be the prime factor in
making wages, how comes it that
work1ngmen in every industry are
better paid in free-trade England than
in protectionist Germany? Here is
a better means of testing the virtues
of one and the other system than in
any comparison in which the United
States may be placed. In France the
lands are subdivided into small and
holdings. There are almost
as many millions of land proprietors
in France as there are thousands in
England. Yet in France, with It's
high protective system, the wages of
labor are uniformly lower than its
free-trade neighbor. Were the tariff
to influence prices of labor rates
would be uniform in the same
industries in the same country. Yet
It Is a fact, that operators in southern
cotton factories are not paid as high
wages as in northern factories, and
the condition of the one is better than
that of the other. The wages of agri-
cultural labor materially vary in diff.
ferent parts of the country, and
though protectionists claim that max
imum rates paid in the east have
raised values of land there, it is
well known that manufacturing
labor is better paid in the
west than in the east. When the
west is more thickly populated, |
when more land is cultivated there,
when lands become dear, the differ
,nee will cease, because agriculture
will then not afford so inviting field |
% operatives. Working people viii
never be relieved until they, as well as |
III other consumers, are permitted to |
,uy necessities with less money. Their |
wages are not adjusted to their out
avs, and will not be until raw materi-
is, entering into the manufacture of
IL they need, are relieved of this
normous tariff.