Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-11-02
WAGES IN AMERICA.

Assertion is made very frequently by republican organs that protection in the United States has been the cause of re- duction to the consumer of the cost of many of the articles he uses. Such an assertion is palpably absurd. There has been a steady decline for some yea IS in the market value of manufactured products and this decline has not been confined to the United States. It has taken place all over the world, in free trade England as we'll as in protected Germany, Italy, France and the United States. And, curiously enough, this decline in the price of manufactured goods has been accompanied by an advance in the wages paid to those engaged in the manufacture of these commodities.
 It is common error for people to believe that as prices go down wages go down also and that prices must go up if wages are to advance. This is not the case, however, as is shown by the experience of forty years; the exact reverse has happened in all large branches of industry in this and other civilized countries. This is largely due, of course, to labor saving machinery but also to the increased skill, intelligence and industry of the workers. A we'll known writer has illustrated this point by showing that two centuries ago one day s wages of an average English workingman were about the equivalent of two days wages in China. But at the present time one days wages of an English workman l ] oI, be produced by forty days labor, as much tea in India as cost seventy days labor, as much sugar in Cuba and as much hemp in Manila as is equivalent to seventeen days labor, and as much wool in South America as equals seven days labor; that is, the skilled workman has been able to produce results at such low cost that it is ecOr omy U employ him even at ten, twenty or thirty times the cost of employing the low grades of foreign and tropical labor. In many forms of productive industry, where labor saving machinery can be employed, the work of one man is equal to the work of three or four men of half century ago. and the pay of one man is more than was given fifty years ago to two or three mer similarly employed. Labor, with the help of impro we'd machinery and greater intel igence, is better paid now, because it ac complishes more. It is paid more because | it is worth more.
 With piece work for basis we will fni that the labor cost of almost every article made in the United States is lower than that of any other country. At the sam. time the rate of wages is rather higher witt us. As shown by such careful investi gators as Schoenhof, Mulhall, Blaine Evarts and Wright, the productive capacity of the American workman is very mucl greater than that of the English or conti mental workman, and so when he is pait better wages it is due to his own produc tiveness rather than any extraneous cause like a protective tariff. The American workman owes his high wages and hi
 generally superior condition to his own in
 telligence, skill and energy rather than tc a system of governmental bounty of which according to the gifted fat-fryer Foster } the manufacturers receive the most directly 1, important benefits. To assume otherwise
 is gratiutous insult to American labor The American workman is paid accord } ing to the demand for his labor, not ac cording to the amount of protection in posed on the product of his toll.