The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1895-10-24
FOOLISH WAGE-EARNERS.


FOOLISH WAGE-EARNERS.
Three men-a printer, binder and
printing employe-proposed to the Fed
Grated Trades Council the other day. at
which but tw enty delegates were present,
series of resolutions, which were adopt
ed, commanding the proposed Railroad
Commission horizontal rate reductions of
one-quarter. and denouncing the wage
earners' mass meeting of last Saturday
night for presuming to express itself
without consulting the council.
The burden of the song of these tools
of the demagoguss. for the resolutions.
besides being false as to alleged facts, are
Illogical and demagogic, is that rate re-
duction will no. decrease wages, because
in California there is compulsion to pay
the present rate of wages in order to
secure skilled labor, and that if the re-
duction craze should take effect it would
make no difference if all the railroad eni-
ployes were cut down in their rewards
because they are so small number com
pared to the aggregate OF those TO be
benefited. Yet but little while ago these
same men were telling US of the thou
sands of unemployed skilled and I'M
skilled workers in California.
or all fallacies that is the most glazing
and absurd, to say nothing of the abso-
Lutte inhumanity and cold-blooded cruelty
of the declaration. If there is any one
this, that wage advance has been the
pacemaker of civilization: or, if any pre-
fer this formulation, civilizations pro-
gress has brought along with it wage
advance from the time when the worker
was slave and the master might brand
him for being laggard, to this time when
his opportunities are greatest, his COM
forts most numerous. his liberty largest.
and his political position on level with
that OF all other men.
| Whatever makes men more interde-
pendent makes them more human. Good
wages augment liberty of action and
| opportunity, and hence increase the in
Independence of men, and this always
and everywhere. as every man with an
ounce of brains knows, tends to the good
of the wage-earner. In the fourteenth
century the wages of such skilled work
ers as were then developed was $50 wear.
In 1890 the same class OF wages had ad-
vanced TO $500 and $1,000 year, and are
still advancing, except where such arbi
trsry action as is proposed by the Rail-
road Commission depresses them aud
limits the leisure, freedom and capacity
Of the wage-earner.
AS the thousand workers who met in
know best how the rate reduction will
affect them, the attempted rebuke by
twenty men of the Federated Trades is
nothing less than impudence and AFRO
gance, not to say an effort to tyrannize.
When it is asserted that wages are what
they are by reason of necessity, the state
ment of an untruth was promulgated,
since it is absurd to say that the en-
ployers of the East paying from 10 to 30
per cent. less than those of California do
not get as skilled and good labor. anu that
the same wages might not easily be es
tablished here.
The allegation that the benefits of rate
reduction would run to the larger num-
Der assumes an untruth, since it has not
been shown that reduction is needed or
would flow 10 the consumers who con-
stitute the larger number. 1t lie In testi-
mony that one-quarter reduction on
merchandise freight would not reduce the
retail price of an article OF food, clothing
or shelter. Raiment, sustaining food,
lum Der, rents, luxuries would stand at
the same price they do now. This is the
testimony of the merchants themselves.
More than this, it would tend to increase
more of the products OF convict labor of
the Eastern prisons, more of the pro-
duets of lower priced labor of the East,
and so augment the volume without re-
ducing the cost to the consumer of his
supplies, and thus the dealers at home
would themselves suffer great loss. be-
cause OF the diminished purchasing
power of the wage Garner.
The resolutions are false and ignorant
in the charge that heretofore there has
been no rate reduction. The records
show that railroad rates of transportation
and carriage have steadily declined in
California for fifteen years or more, and
that California Railroad Com omissions
have made reductions so that the rates
are more than third lower than at the
beginning OF the California railroad era,
until they have reached level com;Den
surate with population. business and ca
pac;y TO endure, even If tho only elastic
Of all railroad charges. the wages of labor,
/ is cut down.
If, under the fallacious reasoning OF tho
resolutions, wages are reduced among the
/ fifteen Thousand railroad employees. the
] reflex action along all lines of wage earn