Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1892-02-17


enough to pay to the 100000 the
difference between their wages and
the wages of the same number of
foreign laborers engaged in making
like products, its burden would be
so small that it would be impossible,
i'll a country as insensltive to taxes
as ours, to raise a great cutlery
against it. To be sure they are the
only parties and that is the only
purpose fer which protective duties
are claimed, but when it comes to
levying tariff taxes it is seen at once
that they are not at all the direct
beneficiaries of those taxes, nor, in
deed, can be. The tariff lays no tax
on the importation of the foreign
article that completes with what
these laborers have to sell, viz, their
labor. There is and always has
been free trade in labor. The tariff
tax is OH the Importation of the
product that completes with what
the employer has to sell. 1t is the
employer, not the laborer; the cap
italist, not the workingman, who is
the direct beneficiary of Protection,
and it is his pocket that receives the
ample bounties it bestows. How to
get those bounties out of his pocket
and insure just distribution of
what the public contributes among
those for whom it's contribution is
asked is question that yet has to
be solved.
This fact was well brought out
several years ago in testimony be-
fore the Senate Committee OH "The
Relations of Labor and Capital" by
Mr. John Jarrett, president of the
Amalgamated Association of Iron
and Steel Workers, an organization
made up of the skilled operatives in
the rolling mills. 1t may not be
amiss to add that Mr.. Jarrett was
not only, then as since, superzeal-
Gus advocate of protection, but that
he is the same person who gained
notoriety in 1885 by being sent into
Colonel Morrison's district as the
emissary of Pittsburg monopolists
to compass the defeat Of that emf
nent tariff-reformer, and that he
has been rewarded for his various
services to the protected interests by
being made Consul to Birmingham
under the present Administration
He said: "Where the workmen are
organized and understand that there
is tariff, and understand what they
should receive, they do command
proper wages!' Although the peo-
pie are heavily taxed to make their
wages, the workmen cannot get
those wages out of the pockets of
the employers, unless % they are
organized, and (2) understand that
there is a tariff, and (3) understand
what they should receive. OF the
manufacturers he goes on to say:
"The majority of them, where they
have workmen in their power, the
tariff Or anything else will make but
very little difference as to the wages
they pay; they will pay very little
above the wages paid abroad Sig
nifcantly, too, he testifes that the
steel works, among the most heavily
protected Of all our industries, have
been steadily substituting foreign
labor, imported or otherwise, Hun
garians, Poles, Italians, Bohemians,
at lower wages for American un-
skilled labor, and machinery for
American skilled labor.
Here, then, is the blunt admission
of leading workingman, whom it
is no injustice to call professional
advocate of protection, and who has
made himself so serviceable to the
protectionists that they select him
for their secret missions and reward
him with their substantial Offices,
that the tariff goes directly to the
pockets of the manufacturer and
that his workingmen get their share
of it when and as they can. And
Mr.. Jarrett is entirely right. What
he learned by his own experience as
a labor leader Secretary Robert j.
Walker had already well stated in
his report accompanying the tariff
bill of 1915:
A protective tariff is question
regarding the enhancement of the
profits of capital. That is its object,
and not to augment the wages of
labor, which would reduce those
profits.
When, therefore, we try to follow
up the taxes which the tariff exacts
from us to their direct benefciaries,
we find that it is not the great mass
of workingmen that receives them,
nor yet even the 100000 employees
in the protected industries, but the
EMPLOYERS of these latter alone: not