The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-09-17
TIE TRIBUNEs VISION ABOUT WAGES

The Tribune continues to make discover
one, vague and semi-poetic, like dream or
vision:
When two lakes are connected by stream
which has no lock in it, there will he no rest in
either lake until they reach exactly the same
level. When the labor of one country is con
nected directly with the labor of another with
no lock between, the result must be that the
price of labor in each country will, sooner or
later, reach the same exact ground.
That is the reason, we suppose, that the
price of labor is the same in each state of
the union, there being no lock between;
thus, carpenters average S641 year in
New York city and S416 in New Jersey;
farm laborers were reported QSS5) at
s2S. % monthly in Massachusetts,. $3.50 in
Pennsylvania. sl2.S5 in North Carolina,
S3S. rs in California; male teachers average
Sill monthly in Massachusetts, 1888 in
Pennsylvania, and SO in California. In
the manufacture of agricultural nipple
ments, a blacksmith gets Is per cent,
more in Illinois than in Indiana, while a
foreman gets so per cent, more in Penn
sylvania than in New York, and a painter
gets nearly 20 per cent, moro in Pennsyl-
vania than in Maine. And so we might
fill columns from the census reports and
The government statistical abstracts.
This smile between lakes and labor may
be good enough theory, for aught we
care. for protectionists who delight in
speculative dreaming; but tested by facts
it has little practical value. Wages depend
partly on the demand, but mostly on the
skill or productiveness of the laborer The
reason the American farmer lives better
than farmers in other countries is because
he makes his farm yield more And the
reason for this again, is the cheapness of
farms, the abundance of land, in this broad
country, The reason American mechanics
and operatives get higher wages than for
eigners is that American workingmen 90
more work than do the workingmen
abroad. As a rule, American labor
is cheaper-ccSts less for the
same Professionalism any forcing
labor. Wages are paid out of the product
and the greatest obstacle to large product
for given expenditure is the high price of
our raw materials The chief obstacle
then, to high wages in this country is the
high price of raw materials as a whole
American cotton goods are sold nearly all
over the world. in competition with the cot
ton produced by 'pauper labor'' because
the raw cotton is cheap. American woolens
are not exported because of the DEAFNESS of
the necessary kinds of imported wool.
What is wanted is the world market.
which cheap materials would give us, and
then American labor would be by far the
best paid and, judged by the amount it pro-
duces, the cheapest also in the world.
Speaking of hinges. bars, bolts and heavy
goods, Mr.. J. B. SARGENT. a hardware
manufacturer Of New Haven, who employs
from 1,500 to 1000 men, varying with the
season, and whose factories cover four
solid blocks, and roof nearly
twelve acres of ground, partly with
five-story buildings, says: eve have sent
forty five tons of these goods cut on domes-
tic orders ana about three tons on foreign
orders. If it were not for the duty on raw
materials, could send out $50 tons day to
foreign markets and fifty tons on domestic
orders. These heavy goods cost manufac-
turers at least 30 per cent, too much be-
cause of the duty on raw material. If that
duty were removed, for one would take 10
per cent, of the saving to undersell the
English in foreign markets; would add 10
per cent, to the wages of my men, and the
other 10.per cent, would lodge nicely in my
pocket"
| 1t is curious. by the way, that the
Tribune did not wonder why, if its WAGES
theory were true, wages in England have
not declined to the level of those in Ger
many, France or Italy, since she has no
''lock" tariff to keep them up; or why
these three countries Protect their cheap
labor against the dearer labor of England
when by removing the tariff, the wages
would, ''sooner or later.n become the same.
There is no telling what might happen
''sooner or LATER" because we cannot live
few thousand years in order to find out
but the last forty years have shown no
tendency to any such result, for the diff
ference between the wages of British
workingmen and the wages of those on the
continent has steadily grown greater dur
ing this time.
The Tribune man is greatly given to
dreaming dreams and seeing visions, which
he then writes down as if they were
actual facts.