Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1892-07-21
CAPITAL AND LABOR.

CAFlxAA AMI LkADOn.
The people can not, if they would,
longer be blinded to the fact that there is
open warfare between capital and labor.
1t is problem We must solve. The con-
ditions that precipitated the battles at
Homestead and in Ceur d'Alene are
conditions that obtain in greater or less
degree wherever the relation of employer
and employee exists.
1t cannot be denied that the employer
has the right to employ whomsoever he
chooses. But along with that right goes the
moral right OF every employee, who has
demonstrated his skill or fitness, to con-
tinuous employment at wages graduated
SO as to enable him to participate in the
profits, or bear his proportions of the
losses. This is the ideally perfect rela-
ton between employer and employee for
which the theorist has been contending.
Practically wages have been regulated by
the laws of supply and demand. And
here is where the political aspect OF the
conflict comes in and assumes such enor-
nous proportions. 1t is impossible to
hide the political side. There isone that
stands out too plainly to be concealed.
The republican party has been telling
the workingman that he should favor
protection, because high wages flowed di-
rectly from protection. Carnegie has
boasted that protection has made him a
many-time millionaire. 1t continues to
make his works yield him an immense
profit. He has proclaimed that he pro-
poses to devote the remaining years OF
his life to philanthropy. With his wealth
and the continuing profits from his works,
can he justify himself in the eyes OF man.
kind for refusing the equitable demands
Of his employees?
Protection will continue to make large
profits possible for the employer, but the
laboring man is deaf and blind ii he inn
AGNES he will participate in those profits
before the millennium.
The Oregonian, that heretofore ardent
advocate Of the Mckinley bill as pro-
Queer Of better wages, in its desperation
over the straits into which the Home
stead conflict has involved the republican
party, says;
A protective tariff may hold prices up
somewhat above the level of the prices OF
Great Britain, and consequently may
hold wages up somewhat above the same
level. But when the pressure is added
from the product of the cheap wages and
cheap output of Alabama, Georgia and
Tennessee, prices of iron and steel al
Pittsburg, and consequently the wages
that produce them, must come down.
This is sad; and by it the Oregonian
itself shoots away the last leg protective
tariff had to stand on. Its own logic
leads to but one irresistible conclusion
The only hope for the laborer in Penn
sylvania is protective tariff against
Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. Free
trade between all the states must be
abandoned in favor of high protective
tariff whenever an industry in one state
comes in conflict with an industry in
another state. Along with that will have
to 60 a graduated export tax in all our
ports in order that cost Of production
throughout the United States may be
equalized.
There would be just as much reason
in this as in the present barrier erected
against commerce around the United
States by the Mckinley bill. 1t is false
to say there is any protection given the
laboring man by that bill, and the Ore
gonian admits it when it instances the
cheaper labor of the southern states.
There is the freest kind of free trade in
labor among the states of this union, and
between the states and the Dominion OF
Canada. There is nothing but the price
Of steerage ticket that keeps the laperer
of these United States from competing
with the so-called pauper labor OF Europe,
and the number of immigrants landing
daily shows how much protection that
affords.
The laborer can not longer be made to
zee why he should not be sharer with the
manufacturer OF The bounty so literally
bestowed by paternal government upon
his employer, especially as he is begin
ming to see that this same bounty makes
the cost to him OF the necessaries of life
so much greater.
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