Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1888-10-22

night, was the dropping into the ses
of our national anxiety pebble, which
put in motion the billow of suppress
sion, which rolled on until the rebel
lion was overwhelmed.
Marble and the Tariff
During the canvass of this state
we presented some facts and figures,
furnished by practical granite cut
ter, to show that free trade in gran
tie would crush out that branch of in.
dustry in this country. 1t was clear
ly proved, by the facts of trade it.
self, that, owing to the wide differ
ence between the wages of granite
cutters il this country and in Scot
land, the rough granite could be ship
ped to Scotland from the American
quarries, cut and reshipped to these
shores, at cost much lower than a
similar monument could be produced
in this country. We were much in
terested by an almost parallel state
ment of facts in a recent issue of the
Detroit Tribune, respecting the diff
ference between the labor cost Of
marble cutting in the United States
and in Italy.
Under the existing tariff, the duty
on rough marble is sixty-fve per cent
per cubic foot; on manufactured
marble, fifty per cent ad-valorem.
AS reported, the Mills bill put mar
BILE on the free list and reduced to
thirty per cent the duty on wrought
marble. The marble schedule was
subsequently modified, not out of re-
gard to the interests of the North, as
represented by Governor Proctor and
others, but, forsooth, because mar
BILE quarry had been discovered in
Georgia, a southern state. But the
lower duty, even as finally retained
in the Mills bill, would injurIously af-
feet the marble-workers of this coun-
try, and by the facts of a recent
transaction in the city of its publica.
ton, the Tribune shows what would
be the effect of free trade in marble
upon the price of American labor en-
ployed in that branch of business.
A dealer who had risen from the
ranks of common workmen to the pro-
prietorship of a prosperous business
ordered from Italy a monument of
exactly the design and finish furnish
ed by several American manufacture
ers. The contract price was Sl05.
The dealer paid the freight and duty,
which amounted to $48, and RENTED
balance, S57, to the agent of the
foreign maker. The agents commits
sion was S21, and the cost of the
marble in the quarry in Italy, S22.67.
What was left to the Italian work
men who cut the monument appears
from the following statement:
Price in New York $1,000
Duty and freight to New York $500
Agents commission 21O0
Cost of stock in quarry in Italy 2267
91.e7
Remainder 1888
Out of this 1888 the Italian max
er must pay his workmen and get his
profit.
From Rutland the Tribune obtains
the following statement of the amount
actually paid for work on monuments
of the same pattern:
Twelve days cutting $27.OO
Two days polishing urn $40
Ten days cutting die $3.50
FIVE DAYS polishing die 500
One and one half days cutting base 3.37
One and one half days polishing base 2.4O
Total s6s.47
There were thirty-two days work
on the monument for which the Amer
lean laborer gets S6G.47, or an aver
VI S-'Oo Il liO AOstiisth
workman, with no allowance for his
employers profit, gets 1888, OF less
than forty-two cents day.
The marble industry is one of YER
mont's chief sources of income. In
different sections of the country there
are great marble quarries, and there
is scarcely a city, village or hamlet in
the land which has not at least one
marble shop or yard. Under free
trade the workmen in these establish
ments would either have no work to
do, or they would have to compete
with italian labor at less than forty
two cents day. Protection or free
trade-choose We between these two,
workingmen of Vermont and Ameri-
ca Waterman.
WA CHTNGTON T,ETTER