The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1897-08-12

! impression thut COOlip or contract lu-
! Dor would he held unconstitutional i'm
the United States on the ground that
II was involuntary servitude. But i'm
| the case of Robertson vs.. Baldwin,
| decided January 2j of this year, that
| Court had occasion to consider the
constitututionality of certain statutes
that rendered penalty enforceable sea-
mems contracts i'm much the same
way as that i'm which our statutes
make our labor contracts enforceable
| The statutes were held constitutional
on two grounds: O) That the consti-
! tutional provision against involuntary
servitude, considered historically, was
intended to apply only to slavery or
its equivalent, and GU that a servitude
was not involuntary if voluntarily en-
| tered into at its inception. The court
distinguished between labor contracts
for life, which might be void as
against public policy, and those for
| limited period. which the court held
perfectly valid, although penalty en-
forceable, but which the court thought
would not be tolerated in the United
States except in the cases of soldiers,
sailors and Il few others. The court
| said that such contracts were at one
time very common in England and re-
! ferred to an English statute passed in
1923 which enacted that if any SER
| want in huSbandry, or any artiicer,
calico printer, handicraftsman, miner,
collier, keelman, glassman. potter. la
borer or other person, SHOULD contract
to serve another for II definite time,
and should desert such service during
the term of the contract he was made
liable to criminal punishment" Our
|
tally the same line of reasoning in
unfolding our contract system under
a somewhat similar constitutional
provision in the case of the Hilo
Sugar Company VS.. Mosh. in 1891.
The contract feature of our labor sys-
TEN may now he dismissed in this dis
cussion as of comparatively little i'm
portance.
The other feature. that of the char
acter of our labor. out of which arises
the other three phases of our labor
problem, is of greater Importance.
Half the difficulty with this lies in the
tendency to accept without question
certain popular notions, which seem
plausible indeed, but which every
authority on economics pronounces
fallacious. There is as great need of
scientific method in treating the la
Dor problem as there is in treating
the problems of cultivation and manu-
facture. In economics more than in
physical matters we are apt to rely
on our general notions, however con-
trary they may be to the facts obServ-
able on every hand. 1t is said, for in
stance, that high wages indicate high
cost of production, and that therefore
high priced laborers cannot compete
| I, "a l,,l,
talists who pay high wages cannot
compete with those who pay low
wages. From such notions as these
we infer that white labor connot COM
pete With Chinese labor and that the
planters cannot afford to employ
white labor. If these notions were
tenable, how could we explain the
fact that the California farmer pays
high wages, high prices for his i'm
, | PIGMENTS, the expense of transport
tatien by rail to San Francisco and by
sea fifteen thousand miles around
Cape Horn to England, the expenses
of interest and insurance during this
long and perilous voyage, and is still
: able to sell his wheat in the same mar.
. Iet and at the same price as the Eng
! lish farmer who has paid much lower
, | wages, has not had similar expenses
of transportation, interest and insur-
. ance, and has obtained his nipple
ments at lower prices? In the same
market and at the same price is sold
also wheat raised by the East Indian,
, who has paid wages much lower than
those paid either in England or in
California. In these instances, not
only do the high priced laborers COM
pete with the low priced ones, but the
| rs or hn hn u -
make the larger profits. Moreover,
: in each of these countries, in the
same industry and on the same farm,
different laborers are paid different
rates of wages, whether for the same
or different kinds of work, and not
only do the capitalists find it just us
profitable to employ the high priced
laborers as to employ the low priced
ones, but the laborers themselves con-
tinue to hold their own against each
other. These are not exceptional
cases; similar facts are conspicuous
in every industry and in every coun-
try. They directly contradict the no.
tons above referred to. The truth is,
that high wages indicate low cost Of
production, that is to say, they are
the result of low cost, not the cause
of high cost, and high priced laborers
are not at disadvantage in COMPETE
ton with low priced ones: nor is a
capitalist who pays high wages at a
disadvantage in competition with one
who pays low wages.
The factors of production are man
and nature; man labors to obtain n
living out of nature; the objects of
his industry is the satisfaction of
wants; the cost of production is the
| nj To to oh