The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-08-18

ALD, THURSDAY, AUGI of the cost to it's people of making and raising it, and if they will not make anu raise everything of their own accord.
 then the people ought to be taxed, until somebody consents 10 accept the pronts oI oI hewly-ereated industries for the altru- lstle purpose of giving them away to American, Polish, Hungarian and other labor.
 New Jersey Bananas.
 T have known people foolish enough 10 answer; That if New Jersey had
 created great New Jersey banana industry We will say (because bananas could be easily raised there under glass and In forcing beds) 1t would have made bananas very much more costly than common people would like, and that per maps It Is better for New Jersey to raise potatoes and peaches and manufacture various things naturally profitable and, with the profits of capital and labor thus plebianly employed buy bananas But the men who say that, or course, are lacking in patriotism-'a cheap banana makes a cheap man. and we hurl foul seorn at those who are so lacking In self-dependenee as not to pe willing to pay whatever is necessary to be paid out of the pockets of consumers in order to prevent the pauper banana, raised by pauper labor grown on pauper soil nour- ished by pauper sunshine-vile foreigner, as 1t is-from invading New Jersey. I know there are lot of old-fashioned out of date people, principally democrats, who say that the watohword of industrial progress among communities is not isola- tion and independence of productivity, but reciprocity and nter-dependence; that isolation leads to feelings of es- arrangement and inimity among the people; that industrial inter-dependence consti- tutes sort of world-effective bond to keep the peace l need not stop to tell you that such men are mere theorists One of them might be granted plenary power for a thousand years and at the end of that period would not have given any change of occupation to such capi- talists and workingmen in Maine, as are, or might be made to be, desirous of raising sun-kissed plants. The base Cob denite would leave the workngmen of Maine and New Jersey unprotected to devote their labor selfishly to other things, merely because the cultivation or manu- facture of these other things is natuarlly more profitable
 Question of Wages.
 How In the world 1t has happened (though I confess it did happen) that during colonial times, when there was no custom houses between the several colonies and when all the products of Great Britain had free access to our markets, our laborers yet worked at wages very much higher than those which then prevailed in Great Britain, cannot understand. How it has happened, since we became a federal nation, the comparatively pauper negro labor of cen- tral Mississippi has not been able to run the high priced white labor of central New York out of the farming business. I also cannot understand. Nor can I un- derstand how 1t is that wages in Calfor- mia should have been for years two or three times what they were Tn Maryland, although the products of the comparative ly pauper labor of Maryland had free ac- cess to California and although the com paratively pauper labor itself was secured by the constitution itself in the privileges of migration to and soiourn in California Stranger yet, the pauper labor of all Europe was daily hoeking both to Mary land and California; l again do not un- derstand-I doubt even if Uncle Joe Can non himself can fully understand-these lOOllSn ldtlS. 0pIut ptbDit nave bttll Sll- ly enough to say that the white man in central New York need not fear the competition of the black man in central Mississippi, nor any diminution of his wage because of that competition. They say, forsooth. that the white man in New York is a more efficient laborer-quicker, steadier and more intelligent-than the black man in Mississippi that he does more work in day, turns out more prod uet in an hour, works more days in a week. is idle fewer weeks In the year, has more self-control, foresight and fru- gality and, being himself for these reas- ons, more prosperous, makes the commu- nifty in which he Hives more. so. These same people are absurd enough to add that the highest priced labor ls as rule, the dearest labor and that some how, 1t has happened in the history of the world that the home of low priced labor has never been the home of highly developed agriculture or prosperous indus trialism, and that the most prosperous and profitable industrial communities have always paid the highest daily wages They even go so far as to say perhaps you, like me, have with astonish- ment heard them say-that the very reason why certain labor Is high priced is because it is efficient and therefore a DtlttI investment IpT tHDlldl NlfH pro- ductlvity is considered, than the lower priced labor with whose prouuets II comes in competition. Of course, you and l know better than that-we have learned better from our republican friends. We know that the reason why labor was more highly paid even in colonial times in America, than the same labor for the same work, was paid in Great Britain, must have been the existence of some sort of protective legislation, keeping out of America the pauper labor zno the prod uets of the pauper labor of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It is true that we have not thus far found the law upon the statute books and we are told by ignorant historians that there was no such legislation, but, whether that sort of legislation has been yet found or not it must have existed, be- cause superior wages and the prosperity of the workingman must be had, and can only be had by force of a policy of legislative protectionism. The lost stat ute will be found after awhile-never fear, sir-because the theory cannot be, sustained in any other way, and the theory, as our republican friends tell us, is our fixed national policy hence to doubt it would be disloyalty.
 Demand and Supply.
 "A wise man entertains a sovereign contempt for great many sorts of errors, but the sovereignist or all should be visited on the designing idiot who says that the price of labor depends upon the amount of work to be done in a country and the number of men capable and de- sirous of doing 1t; in a word, a demand for and supply of labor. That particular sort, of peculiarity inspired idlotic at-