The Republican journal., 1886-09-02

CAME IreeIuen there mas been great change
in the variety and skill of the labor performed
by colored men in the South. The great
mass are, of course, still engaged in agricul-
tural work, but thousands and tens of thou
sands, and in fact hundreds of thousands,
have entered and are entering the mechanical
and semi mechanical field. They are making
pig and bar iron in Tennessee and Alabama.
They are manufacturing cotton in Georgia
and the Carolinas. They are brick-layers
and plasterers everywhere; they are carpen-
tiers and painters they are blacksmiths they
make wagons and carts; they make cigars
they tan leather and make harness
they are fremen and pilots on river
boats; they calk vessels in southern ports
they lay railroad track they are switchmen
and section men on the line and fremen on
locomotives. In fact, they are generally en-
terlng all the avenues and channels of skilled
labor. of course they are undergrad. They
receive far less than has been paid in wears
past to Northern mechanics for similar
work. They are able to take no part
in making laws for their own protec-
ton and they are consequently and in
evltably unable to maintain fair standard of
wages or to receive a fair proportion of their
proper earnings.
L do not dwell on this subject at length,
though it could easily be presented in agra
waiting detail. | mention it only to place it
before the Labor organizations of the North,
with this question addressed to them-Do
you suppose that you can permanently
maintain in the Northern States one scale of
prices when just beyond an imaginary line on
the south of us far different scale of prices
is paid for labor? The colored mechanic of
the South is not SO skillful a workman nor so
intelligent man as you are, but II he will
lay brick in new cotton factory in South
Carolina at half the price you are paid, if he
will paint and plaster it at the same low rate,
he is inevitably erecting an industry which,
if the same rate of wages be maintained
throughout, will drive you out of business or
lead you to the gates of his own poverty.
The situation is therefore plainly discerni-
BILE and demonstrate, viz: Flrst-If the
Democratic party shall succeed, as they have
been annually attempting for twelve years
past, in destroying the Protective Tariff, the
artisans of the United States will be thrown
into direct competition with the highly skilled
and miserably paid labor of Europe. Second
If the Democratic party shall be able to
hold control of the National Government, the
colored laborer in the Southern States will
remain where the Southern Democrats have
placed him politically, subject to the will of
the white man, and unable to fix the price or
command the value of his labor. The colored
man will, therefore, under those conditions
and influences, remain constant quantity in
the labor market, receiving inadequate COM
pensation for his own toll, and steadily
crowding down the compensation of white
labor, if not to his own level vet far below its
just and adequate standard
At every turn, therefore, whether it be in
exposing the white American laborer to the
danger of European competition by destroying
the Protective Tariff, or whether 1t be in re-