Arizona republican., 1900-09-08
TRUSTS. TARIFFS AND WAGES.


 law as a trust breeding measure. - Kansas City platform, 1900
 Some of the men who helped to put in this plank were large shareholders in the ice trust. others wer- financially | interested in cotton and silver. The writer who spoke of this age as ''an era of shams." must have had prophetic knowledge Of he Kansas City plat form. As an unprotected industry, with which the tariff has nothing to do, the Standard Oil trust is remarkably prosperous. while it is well known that several trusts whose products receive tariff protection. have failed. Some of the trusts are hurtful i'll sOmt' respects; but all of them have been beneficial in one respect; that is. by keeping the factories and workmen from being idle when a market for their products can be found. By discarding out-Of-date machinery and methods and at great expense substituting Improvements. by limiting overprOduCfion and minimiZ- ing the expenses of distribution, the trust has preserved and safeSuarded the profits of the manufacturing indus tries of this country, and by this means enabled them to continue their opera diOns, avoiding the bankruptcies, stag nation and starvation which character ized the years 1S93-1S96, while at the same time giving thi.-;y per cent in crease in wages. without increasing the rrice of products beyond what was rendered imperative by the law of sup ply and demand.
 The value of the trust, or of any agency which gives steady work and 1.,l.. f1,. perceived when it is remembered that nine-tenths of the value of manufac- tured articles consists. of wages paid. for their production. John Roach, the American shipbuilder. writing in the North American Review, October, 1884, said: "The value of a manufactured article is made up almost exclusively of the amount of labor expended in it's production. and this is as true of the ton of ore taken out of the earth and made into q railroad truck as of the most ingenious piece of mechanism ever contriVed. |" |" Two or three years ago, in conjunction with some friends. I built d blast furnace and roll ing mill which cost upward of $500, 000 Of this sum not less than ninety-five per cen' was eXpendCd q furlaioor and not over five per cent for the raw material When was planning the furnace, the iron was ere in the mine, the stone was still iE :he quarry. the bricks wore clay. To transform them required la bor, and that it was which gave them their value in the completed struc- ture''
 MT. V. k Moore of Detroit Mich. one Of the lessees of an iron mine in the MenonIncc district. testified before the house committee on tariff revision in December. 1889. that the company paid forty cents per ton royalty on the ere, $1.25 per ton as wages to miners, 75 cents freight to Fscanaba, $1 per ton to Cleveland: total, $2iO and sold the orc in Cleveland for $3.75 per ton. This gave B cents. or not quite ten per cent to the company for the use of their capital. superintcndcnce, machinery and risk w4::le labor received 33 1-3 per cent at the mines, and 46 2-3 cents in transit from mine to market. the rail- road company and its employees being hired laborers hauling the ore.
 A gentleman residing in q western town told me that he and a partner leased and operated q blaming mill for. ten months, clearing $11u cash. or ies3 than SIP per month. whill. paying each of their employees $75 q month, and dO- ing q good share of the work them selves. This Illustrates the subject of risk, or the difference that sometimes occurs between an estimated output a, an expected price and the realization of a paying profit.
 Taking all these things into consider ation, an average of ninety per cent tn wages has been estimated by our most careful and conservative statis:icians; and the only variations from this esti- mate are arrived at by the m g .ake. fatal to accuracy, If failing to remember that wages accumulate in the product Thus figures, < well as alphabetical characters, are often made 70 tell lies If you wish to compare tho profits ol labor and capital, wages must be com- pared with interest, not with wages; and when has interest, usury or use. money, which represents the actual profits of capital or money, been so low as under the administration f William Mckinley?
 It is true that independent capital is sometimes engaged in the promotion of industries, and this is as it should be. A low rate of interest drives indepen- dent capital into business enterprises. The reports haVt come from Kansas and Nebra ska, that aforetime money
 lenders, unable to longer loan their money at a rcmuperatlYe rate, nave been insttuting inquiries in the differ ! ent towns in order to discover where profitable industry can be located. But 1 in democratic times capital is timiI, money commands a high rate of inter- est, and money lenders can better af- | ford to sit in their rocking chairs and | cut coupons for a living, providing | they can obtain good security for their | loans, which is the most difficult mat 1 ter they have to contend with. Blu chanan, like Cleveland, had to borrow money to run the government, but his bonds went below par al d high rate of
 interest because democracy had then
 been in the saddle almost continuously
 fC< thirty years.
 | Labor expendcd oH the partial com pletiOn of produce becomes a perma-