The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1894-03-17

of Their 'Feudal Tenantryn
Here Is u part of what Chairman VIM.
J.. Wilson said on the wage question in
his great speech:
The workingmans wages depend on the
products of his labor. Whatever goes into
that labor as tax on the material he uses
is so p;aeh diminution of the wages of the
laboring man. As you cheaper his mate
rial you widen the field for the product he
makes. With untaxed iron and untaxed
steel in its cruder forms, and including coal
and wood, you allow him to put his I'm
ished fabrics on the market ut rate that
will double aud ever constantly increase
the number OF his consumers; that will
widen the field for his products and in this
way secure to him abundant work, in
creased wages and that personal indepen-
dence that he can never enjoy under
closed, high tariff market.
Trusts, combinations, great corporate
capital, may thrive in closed market, be-
cause they can control the output and reg
ulate prices TO secure their profits, but all
of that is done at the cost of the personal
independence and the wages Of the great
body of the laboring men Of this country.
Years ago in an inquiry conducted by
the distinguished senator from Vermont
fMr. MORRILL, into the relations between
labor and capital the president Of the Anal
gamaIed Association of Iron and Steel
Workers testified in substance that it was
not the tariff that made their wages, but 1t
was their own organizations, their power to
combine, their power to treat on equal
terms with their employers, that gave them
the lever-thc engine by which they could
secure for themselves good, profitable and
paying wages.
With the entire world for our market,
with South America to demand our iron
and steel products, and Russia and Asia
and Africa as customers, with all our mills
running with orders ahead, labor can con-
troll its own wages.
The question of wages was the vital
question of all this agitation about tariff
reform. am willing to base the whole
controversy on the consideration oil tins
question of wages alone. If protection
increased wages. made work for the labor
ing people and improved the well being of
the American laborer, | would hereafter
be protcctionists. But neither reason
nor experience gives maintenance to any
such idea. The wages of the laborer are
paid from The products of labor. The
general prnducliveness of every country
determines the wages of the aburing peo
pie of that country. The general intelli-
gence of the laboring people of a country
also in equal measure determines the wages
of the laboring people Of that country. We
have higher nominal daily wages in this
country than elsewhere, first, because we
are a great new country in an era OF de-
velopment, and, secondly, because we have
the most intelligent, self respecting labor
ing men in all the world, and any industry
that cannot maintain itself except by tax
alton on the people of the country, instead
of increasing the wages to the extent Of its
protection, diminishes the wage rate OF all
the laboring people of the country. Every
industry that leans upon taxation for It's
support, that calls upon the law to make
the consumers of the products pay more
than they would otherwise be Obliged to
pay for them, whatever we may call 1t, is
a pauper industry supported by the self.
supporting industries of the country.
Even if it were true that the tariff upon
the protected goods mentioned in its sched-
ules was laid for the purpose of protecting
the American laborer and giving him GER
tain wages, how is it possible that tariff
which under the closest and most accurate
analysis only touches in that way the wages
Of 5 per cent of the laboring people of this
country could increase the wages of the
other 95 per cent? So far from maintain
ing wages, the effect Of the protective sys-
TEN has been to lower the wages of all the
industries of the country.
Any one who will read the successive
reports of Colonel Carroll Wright, when
he was labor commissioner of the State of
Massachusetts, will learn the history of
the inundation of those who we're then
called the Chinese Of the east, the French
Canadians, into the textile mills of New
England. Any one who will read the vol
umes of testimony taken by the gentleman
from New Hampshire Mr.. Blair,) when
he was holding his Senate investigation,
will find in the testimony of John jarrett
and others how, in the great iron and steel
mills of Pennsylvania, machinery was con
stantly displacing skilled American labor,
and imported foreign labor was constantly
displacing the cheap, unskilled American
labor There is one fact which may not
have attracted general attention. Why is
it that in every annual report ofthe Amer
lean Iron and Steel Association, along with
the statistics of the production and of the
trade in iron and steel and coal, there are
also carefully prepared statistics of foreign
immigration Why is it that it always
takes pains to specify the number who have
come over last year from Hungary and
Poland aud Italy and those countries that
are producing the cheap workers in the
mines of Pennsylvania and around the
rolling mills of Pennsylvania For what
reason, except for the purpose Of telling
the iron masters about the increasing sup
ply of their labor, does it always include
in the annual report these statistics of the
immigration of labor :?
1t was stated by the men who represented
the labor organizations that the employer
and the laborer were drifting farther and
farther apart that there were no longer
the pleasant and friendly relations between
them that there had been in the past.
1t was stated that whenever laborers
went and demanded or asked for an in
crease of wages, no matter in what luxury
or wealth or splendor or extravaganza their
employers might be living, the constant
and invariable answer was that they were
making nothing, and that there was no
money in the business of which they could
raise the wages of the laboring men, And
so strained and so entirely perverted have
become the relations between the laborer
and employer that those who represent the
great employers of the country begin to
use language about their labor such as