Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1890-09-05

non-WorkerS must get a smaller one;
and since the non-workers consist
chiefly of the children of the workers:
the proposition resolves itself into
the claim. that protection enriches the
laboring man by robbing his children.
If we exclude from the laboring
class all brain workers, manufactur-
ers, professional men, bankers, legis-
latcrs, etc, and assume that pro-
lection effects a division Of wealth
more favorable to the laboring class,
as thus restricted, and necessarily
discriminates against the opposite
class. Then the lame and impotent
conclusion is, that the class of men
who control legislation in this country,
although composed of the most in
teIligent portion of the people, are
still so stupid, and short-sighted, as
to enact and enforce laws which ben
eft another class, at their own expense;
or else that they have arrived at such
state of moral perfection, as to vol
unfairly sacrifice their own interests
to those of others; in short, that they
are either saints or idiots. [ need
hardly suggest that neither of these
explanations is entirely satisfactory.
Protection was originally devised for
the benefit of capitalists, not for labor
ers; and as it is still maintained by
them, we can only conclude that they
are not mistaken in their estimate of
its advantages to them.
There is no reason whatever, to be-
lieve that protection increases general
wages, by aportionlng among the
laborers a larger share of labor's prod
uct. There are however, some very
sound reasons for maintaining con-
trary opinion.
Third. Laborers can obtain more
wealth by the expenditure of more
labor,-by working harder, or longer
hours. 1t is sufficient to point out
that this result is dependent on pro-
lection. Protectionists will hardly
care to affirm that their system makes
laborers richer, by making them work
harder; besides, it is open to the OBJ
lection that they could get richer by
working harder without any p4otec-
ton: and might reasonably be ex-
cused under the circumstances. for
desiring to know what good it does
them.
Fourth. And now we come to the
final assumption, that protection in
creases general wages by increasing
the efficiency of labor. Under free
competition the prices of all COM
modities conform in a general way to
the respective quantities of labor en-
bodied in them,-due regard being
had to the kinds of labor. Protection
lessons imports, and raises the prices
of corresponding home produced ar
ticleS. Two explanations of this in
creased price are open to us. We may
regard it as pure steal, made possible
by the partial monopoly conferred on
the home manufacturer by protection;
or we may adopt the more charitable
view, advocated by protectionists, that
the increased price is a correlative of
the increased cost of manufacturing
in this country, owing chiefly to the
higher wages paid to labor, as COM
pared with others. Let us regard this
as the true explanation; then the rea-
son why we cannot compete with for
eigners under the conditions of free
exchange, is because general wages
are higher in this than in other
countries. Why are wages higher?
There can be but one answer to this
question. 1t is because labor pro
duceS MORE i'll this country than in
others. Labor is more valuable here,
because the returns from labor are
greater than elsewhere. The rewards
of labor are none other than the prod
uct of labor. Where the product is
SMALL wages must be LOW; where
wages are HIGH, labor MUST be highly
MUST BE PAID FROM TIE RESULTS OF
TIE LABOR. This analysis brings us
to the concl usion, that the only reason
why we cannot compete with foreign
erS in certain lines of manufacturing,
is because our labor is too valuable;
we can not afford to compete with
them; we are not POOR enough; and
why should we desire to compete with
them, when we can make more money
in other ways? Our labor yields larger
returns in other occupations; if it did
not, it would not be too expensive to
employ in manufacturing. But pro-
lection steps in and destroys part of
the value of labor, and places us on
a footing where we can compete with
less valuable labor. 1t employs
part of the. labor in occupations yield
ing less than the average returns, and
taxes all laborers to make good the
deficiency, and thenhugs the fond de-
fusion that it has invented more
economical method of doing things
discovered a short cut to national pros
perity.
Increased eficielency of labor means
increased production as compared with
labor expended,-it means greater
abundance of commodities, and
greater abundance makes them pro-
durable at lower price,-at a lessened
cost of labor, or money. But protec-
ton makes things dearer, and increased
cost iS nvpr an attribute OF ;DoraoeoJ