The Coconino weekly sun., 1895-06-06
RISING WAGES.
A Direct Consequence of Republica,
 Victories.

hrect Consequence of Republican
 Victories.
 The advance in wages is a blessin0. It is also the direct consequence of the overthrow of the party which proposed direct competition with the ill-paid labor of other countries, and there fore lower wages for Americans, so that every advance in wages is de- feat of democratic principles. It is c direct consequence of the restoration of the lawmaking power to the party which has for more than thirty years sought to maintain good wages for American workers through the restric- tion of foreign competition, so that every advance in wages is victory of republican principles. It Was because of republican victories in 1893 that the tariff proposed by democrats was emasculated. If any such tariff as the democratic party demanded had been passed, there must have been further decline instead of any advance in wages. But these are not reasons for exaggerating any advance that ap- pears.
 It is a favorite fiction of some jour- nals that every rise in wages, whether in works whose products bear protec- tive duties or not, is a tribute to the excellence of the existing tariff-a tariff acknowledged to be packed with duties that are practically iniquit- ous favors sold to various monopolies in return for the votes of senators con- trolled by those monopolies." It ap- pears enough to answer that an ad- vance in wages which did not come until six months after this bill of sale had been passed, and not until the democratic congress had vanished to be followed by republican congress, is not the fruit of democratic policy, but of its complete overthrow. Still, genuine joy on account of the improve ment is not a reason for padding the returns, so to speak; for putting into the list all the separate establishments about Pittsburgh and in the Mahoning valley, of which separate mention can be found, and then following with other general statements, as ''ten thousand workers" about Pittsburgh and "seven thousand men" in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.
 Really, the reports do not need that sort of imitation. They are highly grat- flying without it, and while the state ments given in dispatches do not actually cover tenth part of the five million manufacturing workers, nor a sixth part of the six hundred thousand hands in iron production and fashion ing, nor fifth of the five hundred thousand hands in textile works, yet the intelligent and candid will readily infer that the movement shown in news columns is in the nature of things likely to extend over other | manufacturing establishments, unless arrested by untoward events Just ss | no specific statement was ever made | about more than a tenth of the estab- | lishments which reduced wages from twenty to thirty per cent. in ls9, and | 1894, so the partial or complete restor- ation at many establishments will l never be chronicled. Readers who know the conditions understand that, | when the prominent works in any in- | dustry grant an advance, the demand for similar advance in other works in the same region and business soon becomes irresistible.
 What, then, is this gratifying change so far? In the great majority of cases it is the restoration of the wages cut of at the second reduction. where there | were two, or the restoration of about half the wages cut off where there has been only one reduction. There are | numerous, though not relatively nu- merous, exceptions, in which the en- tire reduction has been balanced by the advance. The same conditions | cannot govern all manufacturing, nor | all the works in the same branch of any manufacture, and the works which are least exposed to foreign competi- tion, as respects their chief products, are those at which the recovery of wages has been relatively greatest At the large majority of work, as already | stated, the advance thus far is about | equal to the last reduction in 1894 But of this it is not always possible to speak with certainty, because no avail able records, even in the most careful trade journals, show just what reduc- tions were made in 1894 at different works. So far, moreover, the upward movement appears to be sustained 10 a | gratifying extent by an improvement in the demand for American manu- factured products. If this continues and enlarges, the recovery in wages may be lasting and may be expected to make still further progress.-N. Y. Tr,hrnA