Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-07-29
vent new attempt to produce artificial
scarcity in the fuel of the East
A NEW DEPARTURE.

While the published statement of Mr.
Mcclure called renewed attention to the
fact that the late carpenters strike was
unauthorized and disastrous, eotempor-
ary statement brought out compensation
in the fact that large share of the strikers
have gone to work as contractors on their
own hook. The assertion is made that a
very considerable portion of the building
now going on is done by men who were
working for wages year ago and are now
taking contracts, some in partnership with
their fellow workmen, and some employ
ing few hands at regular wages.
This indicates that though the carpen-
ters were defeated they have made more
real advance in the lasting solution of
the labor question. The DISPATCH
has always believed that the real solu-
ton of all wage disputes lay in making
the workmen their own employers
where it is economically possible. 1t is
one of the shallow ideas common to the
time that competition crowds down wages.
1t does so where the competition is solely
that of workingmen for wages. But
where the competition is thatof employers
for labor it restores the balance. This is
practically what is done when working
carpenters or journeymen of any sort in
the building trade take contracts for them
selves. They remove their own competi-
ton for wages and furnish instead en-
ployerS for their own labor and that of
Others. Where there is large element Of
labor doing its own contracting we may be
sure competition viii not depress wages
unduly.
Beyond that the building trades in this
city afford an especially favorable field for
a departure of this sort. Not in the
larger buildings necessarily, where capital
and organization are needed on consider
able scale, but the average building here
is one on which two or three carpenters
and the requisite number of bricklayers,
stone masons and painters do the work.
On such buildings the element of superin-
tendence and direction can be more salts
factorily furnished by the contractor who
himself works than by the large contractor
who, having a score of such contracts in
various parts of the city, leaves the super
intendence to his foremen. In this and in
other respects the new development can
materially bring down the cost of building
and at the same time increase their own
earning by simply reducing the excessive
margins charged by contractors and
material men. We know of cases under the
old regime in which contractors have
charged for work in which they did
nothing more than send workmen to do it
and charged 40 per cent profit on the
mems wages. 1t is plain that the work.
men themselves could have contracted for
this work at price which would have
given them 20 per cent advance on wages
and saved the customer 20 per cent on the
cost. If the new departure should come
in conflict with that peculiar feature of the |
Builders Exchange which seeks to enact |
that only privileged class shall be per- |
mitted to buy building material, with the
inevitable result Of establishing new COM |
petition in the supply business, to be con-
Quoted on democratic principles, it will not |
at all diminish its favor with the public.
There is a disposition among labor
leaders to regard this very satisfac-
tory development as an outcome of the |
strike. 1t seems to be so at the first blush;
but more careful consideration will show
it to be instead an outcome of the strug-
gle. The importance Of the distinction
will appear by single suggestion. 1t is
that the loss Of wages to
by the strike amounted to an
immense sum. Suppose that instead of
standing idle the men had kept at work
md devoted half or even a third of their
wages to building up this independent
business of contractors from among their
own number. Would not all have been
better off now, and would not the compe-
-ition from the independent element be
much further advanced than it actually is?