St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-08-28
NELSON'S RECORD.
His Position in Congress in 1888
Compared With His Present

Compared With His Present
Ideas.
The price of labor is primarily gov
erned by the law of supply and demand.
The protected producer does not meas
ure the wages he pays by the amount of
protection he gets, but by the ease OF
difficulty with which he can procure
labor, or by the fact whether labor
is plenty or scarce. A protective tariff
only helps labor indirectly by enlarging
the demand for it. One of the second
AIRY results of 4 very high tariff is over
and suspension, from which comes to
the laborer lower wages, lOckOutS,
strikes and untold miseries. 1t has been
the fashion of certain economists to
aScribe the marvellous growth Of this
country for the past twenty-five years
wholly to our tariff laws. Statistics of
growth in all conceivable forms have
been paraded. accompanied with the
exclamation. Behold the tariff This
Is all pure eXaggeratiOn.
The tariff, with multitude of other
causes, all combined, produced the
magnificent result. The chief factions.
however, have been our abundant sup
ply of the most fertile lands in the
world, which we have freely given
away under our homestead laws, to-
getfler with the immense tide of immi
grafton, with all its capital of money
and muscle. This has produced our
great home market. Our oceans of land.
as free as water, and the develop
ment of the same have covered
a multitude of sins, and, not
least of all. some of the
sins which lnrked there, Turk in our
MI I'm rol
staples are breadstuffs and cotton. The
latter is theoretically and the former
practically, SO far as our producers are
concerned, free of duty. The home
price of wheat is fixed by the export
price. and the farmer of Minnesota has
to compete, without any governmental
aid direct or indirect, with the farmers
of India in the markets of England.
And it is in these great and unprotected
agricultural industries that our growth
has been the greatest and most pro-
nounced.
The farmers of this country. paying
as they do a tariff royalty on every in
duStry but their own, and paying rela-
lively higher wages for labor than any
other Industry in this country, and hav-
Ing their home price fixed by the export
price. are, Notwithstanding all these
disadvantages, able to, and. with head
erect, do enter the markets of the world,
and compete, not only with the sO-called
pauper labor of Europe, but also with
that great and uncounted horde of
Asiatics in the valleys and plains of
India.
AS it has been our fashion to ascrbe
all our growth and prosperity to the
tariff. so it has been the fashion to
ascrDe the higher wages paid in this
country over that of England wholly to
a protective tariff. Figures have been
paraded comparing wages here and over
the sea, and then we have been gravely
told that the tariff is the sole cause of
all the difference in our favor. l am
not a disbeliever in just and fair pro-
tective tariff, but abhOr putting it on
false pretenses. Comparisons are worth
less unless the conditions are similar,
and in this instance the conclusions
claimed prove too much.
England is called free trade: Austria,
Germany, Italy and France are as de.
cidedly and as highly protective as this
country. In respect to density of popu-
latiOn, cost of living, interest on money,
aud cost of land, England is more oil a
par with those countries than our OWL,
and yet in England the wages are much
higher than on the continent. Here is
what Senator Frye, in his speech deliv-
cred OIL what he ''saw in Europe"
says, and, mind. he is an unwilling wit
ness:
but I am not going to weary your
patience. have spent enough of your
time on the question OF what wages are
worth in Europe. l say, from all my
observations made there, and they are
made as carefully as [ could make them,
and in all honesty of purpose, there is
only one country in Europe that comes
within one-half of our wages, and that
IS Great Britain; that in Germany,
France, Belgium and Switzerland they
are not one-third of orr wages, and in
Italy not one-quarter.''