The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1892-10-10
LABOR AND THE TARIFF.

All the great champions OF so-oalled
"protection to American industry" have
repeatedly declared that the great OBJ
ieot Of that system is the increase OF
a to American laborers, and they
have said over and over again that il
protection did not maintain and increase
the rate OF wages it could not be justi-
fed at all.
We quote exclusively from ultra pro.
t~ectionlsts. Mr.. Milliken, NJ. G. from
Maine, said in 1884 that all tariffs taxed
poor men much more heavily than rich
ones, and that the only justification for
allowing any tariff to exist was that a
protective tariff increased wages eve
more than it taxed the laborer. Mr..
Walker, M. C. from Massachusetts, him
self a protected manufacturer, said not
long ago that the manufacturers did
not need protection and could make
more money without it, but that it was
needed solely for the benefit of the Ia
borers. Senator Frye. of Maine, in a
speech to which | listened, said that
capital needed no protection, and it's
sole justification was the increase of
wage which it brought to the wage
earning classes.
Every protectionist newspaper harps
forever upon the same string.
If, then, protection" brings no in
crease of wages, it does not deserve to
live for a single day. Has it done 80 in
the past? Is there any reason to expect
that it will do SO in the future?
Protectionists assert that protection
has brought high wages to the laborers
Of this country, and that wages are
higher here than in unprotected Eng
land. Let it be conceded that wages
are high in America; has protection
made them high?
If it has, why has not the same pro-
lection made wages equally high in
every other country which has a high
protective tariff?
Canada has a high protective tariff
just as high as the manufacturers care
to have it. Why is it that protection,
lists are always telling us that wages are
SO low in Canada that we must be pro-
tected againstit it? Russia, Spain, Portu-
gal, Italy, France and Germany ali have
high protective tariffs, and have had
them for many years. Yet in every one
OF these countries wages are very much
lower than IN England, which has no
protective tariff at all. Mexico has a
higher protective tariff than any that
we ever had, and it always has had such
a tariff. Yet wages are and always
have been miserably low in Mexico, and
only about one-fourth of those paid in
poor, free-trade ruined England. With
the exception of the United States and
Australia, every country in the world
having a protective tariff pays lower
wages than England or even Ireland.
The higher the tariff the lower are
wages.
is not this single fact enough to n
vince any one with a grain of common
sense and candor that protective tariffs
can have no effect in raising wages? Is
1T not clear that something wholly I'M
connected with the tariff must nave
been the cause Of the high wages paid
in the United States? 1t is, indeed, as
plain as the sun at noon.
The fact can be proved in other ways.
All parts of this country are under the
same tariff and are equally blessed by
protection" Why are not wages the
same all yer the country?
If the tariff makes wages high in Mas
eachusetts it must make them equally
high in South Carolina. II it Is the
tariff which makes high wages in Pitts
burg it must make them as high in
Philadelphia. Yet it does nothing of
the kind. Wages in the cotton and
wOolan facforiaa IF Massachusetts 60
vastly higher than in similar factories
in the Carolinas, Georgia or any south
ern state, while such wages in those
states are actually lower than they are
in England for the same work or any
work at all like 1t. The wages paid tc
iron and steel workers in Philadelphia
or anywhere else east of the Allegheny
mountains are and have been for many
years much lower than those paid in