Northern tribune. [volume] (Cheboygan, Mich.) 1875-1885, 1884-10-09
NORTHERN TRIBUNE,
THURSDAY. OCTOBER, o, 1884.
The Hooking Valley Complications.

The Hooking Valley Complications.
From the Inter Ocean.
II would be more honest for the Demo-
cratic journals, which are trying to
make some capital for free trade out of
the Hooking Valley strike, to inform us
whether there is anything whatever
either in protective tariff or In a free
trade tariff that can by any possibility
help to decide in what proportions the
product of the joint services of capital,
land, and labor shall be divided between
them, or in other words, how much of
the product OF the joint efforts of the
three indispensable agents OF production
shall be paid out In wages, how much
in rents or construction and repair of
plant, "and how much shall remain to
the enterpriser as profits. All that a
tariff or free trade can do is to affect the
question what mines can be worked at
all at profit and what cannot. Both
the owners and wOrkmen in the Hook
ing Valley and in all other valleys in
the manufacturing and mining sections
of the United States are pretty well
agreed on the point that protective
tariff will cause far more mines to be
worked in this country than Morrison
Carlisle tariff. This is evident because
the demand for coal is very nearly pro-
portionate to the general prosperity of
the manufactures of the country, and
the latter in turn depends on the pro-
tectiveness of the tariff.
This being settled the general effect
of protection must be to increase CON-
petition among employers for the hire
OF labor in the United States, while per-
IN Ia0o m ,h. Intf
not absolutely.
But protection cannot decide that be-
cause W. p. Rend q Co., in the Hooking
Valley, choose to pay 70 cents per ton
for mining coal the other Hooking Valley
companies shall pay the same price per
ton. Mines may differ in the rates at
which miners can afford to mine, or en-
plOyars TO operate them. If they did not
we must still sustain everywhere in
America the freedom of the labOrer to
work or not work at given price,
which necessarily implies the freedom
of the employer to 90 on with his work
at those rates or stop. There is no mo-
nOpoly In the mining business. Every
coal minel can buy government coal
lands at $3.50 per acre and mine on his
own account If he thinks it more profit
| able to mine himself than to mine for
| another.
In the Hooking Valley it is said there
| are 1000 miners and $500 furnace men
out of employment because their en-
| plOyels think the coal strata are so near
the surface and 50 easily worked that
men can make good wages, say from
$500 to $3.50 a day for mining, while
coal is selling so low that the company
can better afford to keep its coal than
cell 1t at the price that would remain
after paying 70 cents per ton, though In
times past they have paid that price.
Two dollars per day or 1924 year is the
price at which hundreds of thousands
of highly cultured men and women are
working throughout the United States
as preachers, bOOk-keepers, salesman
secretaries, cOpyists. In recent glance
| at a Canadian paper we found advertise
ments OF principals of high schools ad
| vertised for at 5000 per year. 1t Is
| exactly twice the rate at which either
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, or John
Roach performed the first years work of
their lives, and on which they laid the
basis of their fortunes, although each
| dollar has to-day purchasing power in
| relation to the necessaries of life con-
siderably greater than 1t had when
these undevelOped CrOesuses worked at
that rate. 1t is rate which enables
the Hooking Valley miner to earn as
much in two days and half as most
miners OF England earn in week. 1t is
six times as much as the highest income
of six millions of working Germans,
who, with their families, form more
than half the population of Prussia,
and whose incomes are returned below
e2l per annum.