The evening herald. [volume] (Shenandoah, Pa.) 1891-1966, 1892-11-08
THE TARIFF Provides
WORK FOR THOUSANDS
What Tt Has Done in Developing
the Pearl Button Industry.

American WOrkingmen Given a
New Field of Labor at Good Wages
in Two hundred Large Factories,
and More Are Coming
NEW YORK, Oct 90.
The development of the pearl button in
dusly under the fostering provisions OF
the Mckinley act has surpassed even the
most sanguine expectations of the pearl
button trade To a reporter who called at
the office Of the Standard Pearl Button
company, Of Detroit at No 345 and 347
Broadway, New York, William Le-
land a stockholder and representative OF
the company, said;
Under the old order Of things we dealt
IN imported goods only, no manufacturer
worthy of the name being in existence IN
this country The buttons were made
principally i'm Austria. and a skilled oper
ator there-a man with wife and family
helping him docs not make on an aver
age more than $3.50 a week.
Under the change brought about by
the Mckinley act our company has been
Incorporated with "A capital of s6OOOJO
We employ 400 American worNngmen and
women, with prospect of an increase to
200 within the next three months, and have
daily output Of B. O00 gross The pauper
labor of Europe has given way to the EN-.
ployment Of Americans at the highest
wages paid anywhere in the world We
use machinery Of the most improved kind,
and our buttons give satisfaction in every
instance, both as to quality and price BE
fore the Mckinley act went into effect
there were not more than twenty factories
IN the United States, with about thousand
people to run them, but as soon as W'
swoke to the fact that American industrie'
must be protected, up went the number n
factories TO POO and the number oi en-
ployes to almost 5000
81 .etters from manufacturers continue
10 come in and they all have the sam
statement, that the demand for American
made buttons exceeds by far the supply
Another leading manufacturer said
t'Free traders will do well TO avoid maxim
any reference 20 the American pearl hui
tons when they wish to make an impoltan
point This industry under the new lari
had a very large protective duty placed {"
H.. yet such were the peculiar condition
under which the business in foreign cuui
tries was operated that this duty W.
necessary. When the American pearl bu
ton makers had 10 face the competition {
birmingham they found it very close sal
ing. but still they could exist; but whe
some years ago Vienna taskmasters n
duced the wages of their poverty strlcke
employees tn the starvation point Il
American manufacturer had to withdra
from the field as the conditions und
which his workmen lived made him unah
10 compete. The result was that the d
uestio industry was almost killed. VIII
foreign pearl bnttons were sold In tii
country at low prices, yet u Is Iacl w
known 10 those in the trade that middI
men reaped large, profits than they we
sntitied TO,
1T is simple ignorance to talk, in c
face of such rate Of remuneration, abo
the Americans right 70 buy in the chea
est market and 10 say that in the end Tho
matters viii regulate themselves, beeau
We as a people insist on our working clas'
living in a condition Of decency in resp'
40 dwellings and sanitary arrangement
We compel them directly or indirectly
aontribute 10 the suDport OF the pub