Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1888-06-14
A TALK TO WORKINGMEN.

A TALK TO WORKINGMEN.
New York sun Dem.)
There is only one country in Europe in
which the wages of labor are within
half of what they are in this country.
That is Great Britain.
Wages in Germany, France, Belgium,
and Switzerland are not one-third of
what they are here. Those of Italy are
not one quarter.
One duty of government is to protect
the labor of its citizens. Last year cheap
foreign labor was imported into the Uni
ted States in the shape of manufactur-
ed goods to the value of 692,3l9,768.
This was a great wrong to American
labor. In that immense amount of i'm
ports, permitted by our insufficient and
defective tariff, the labor of women en-
ployed in the Manchester, England, cot
ton mills, whose wages do not average
$50 a year, came into competition
with the higher priced labor of our
Southern and Northern cotton Spinners.
In that mass of imports was the labor of
German factory workmen averaging less
than S115 year, and that of women
averaging less than $50 year.
Munich is gallery and center of art.
German women with as many as six
children saw wood in its streets for Is
cents day. May merciful God sink
the United States ten thousand feet un-
der the sea before that hideous specta-
Gle shall become an incident of our civ
ilization!
Nearly seven hundred million dollars
worth of the starvation labor of Europe
in the form of manufactured goods i'm
ported into this country last year! That
which came from Belgium in bales and
boxes represented the wages of p cents
a day for women and 43 cents for men;
and the highest priced labor in loose
cargoes of Belgian steel and iron repre-
sented wages less than 80 cents day.
Compared with these the wages of Car
negie's men at Braddock are the income
of princes.
Italian labor in Italian merchandise
was imported into this country last year,
in competition with American labor, at
prices that should fill sensitive souls with
horror, and alarm the thoughtful for the
human race. The pay in the cotton fac
tories of Naples is 20 a cents a day; of
the NeapOlitan marble and granite cut
ters from 40 to so cents day, according
to skill; of coachmen, so cents; of wO-
men in lace factories, 10 cents, and girls,
cents; of soldiers in the army, 81
month Of all the workmen in the glass
works of Italy, only the skilled blowers
receive as high as dollar day, and Ia
bUrers on farms, hoeing, or making hay,
from Is to IS cents day, working from
sun to sun. God save America from
such wages!
In the Swiss silk goods which came
into our half protected country last year
in those seven hundred millions of i'm
ports was the skilled labor of men at Al
cents day, and women at 20 cents, both
competing with the silk weavers of Pat
erson, New York, Philadelphia, and
Cheney. Glasgow, in Scotland, is the
steamship factory of the world, and its
blast furnace owners and iron rollers
howl for free trade day and night. OF
the families in that manufacturing Sod
ON, II, 900 out of 100000 live in one
room, and half of the men and women
in that city are chrOnically out of work.
That one room for a family of father,
mother, daughters, and sons tells what
wages are in Scotland, and how they
drag humanity down into bestiality and
misery.
Brothers! the Mills bill to reduce the
tariff is the first step to that one room
for an American family. Fight it with
out delay and fight it to its death; and
then make your tariff so protective as to
shut out cheap foreign labor in the form
of manufactured goods.
THE Democracy have chosen lovely