The copper era. (Clifton, Graham County, Ariz.) 1899-1911, 1906-09-13
Low TARIFF OF tses-1s9
REPUBLICAN, PROTECTIVE rAR1fP OF 1897.


1906 .....-......... LAB, 000OO0 1,226 GOO 900
Total. ..... .Sl3 Oil 100000 S9,Oll 100000
Yearly. ............. 1881, 0OU.OO0 9O1 100000
Giving Si90,00O,O00 yearly excess
of exports for ten years, or $500, $780,
900 year more foreign money, or its
equivalent, transferred to American
pockets in each of the ten republi-
can protective tariff yeare than in
four democratic low-t tariff years,
making a total republican protective
tariff gain since the last democratic
low-taritf year, 1896, of So, 900, 900.
Is not that worth standing pat" on?
Bear in mind, reader, that if tariff
revision of the hasty character now
urged by democrats and Weakened
republicans means anything, it means
''revising" the present tariff down
ward, to please certain individuals
and profit certain class interests
probably not more than per cent. of
| the country, all told, at the expense
of, ard loss to, the other 95 per cent,
the bulk of whom are wage-earners
for their support in the family, or
supplying goods to those families
The farmer wants a good price for
his products: how can he get it if the
wage-earner's purchasing power
were reduced, as it would be, as it
always has been, under any revised
downward" or low tariff policy?
The point with us wage-earners,
and most of us are really wage-earn-
ers, whether we are paid by the hour,
the day, the week, the month or the
year, is not the theory as to whether
the present tariff-revision craze is an
attack on the principal protection
or not, but the fact, the cold fact
that it is an attack on the protec-
ton, the active, assuring protection
under which we are getting plenty of
work at higher wages than were ever
paid before in the United States, and
enormously higher than are now be-
ing paid, or ever were paid, in any
| free-trade, low-tariff, or ''revised"
| tariff country. On this point the
United States Bureau of Labor has
| announced that careful investigation
by its special agents shows that the
average American wages were 2l.5
per cent. higher in protective tariff
1905 land they heave not been re-
duced since) than they were in low
tariff 1894: and that actual weekly
earnings were, in volume, 1871 per
cent. high. That authoritative
statement, accepted by all the lead
ing newspapers in the country, demo-
cratic and republican, protectionist
and revisionist alike, proves just two
things, namely, that wages are 2l.5
per cent. higher in rate, and work
1871 per cent. greater in volume I'M
der the present tariff undisturbed
than under the last tariff disturb
ance. Is not that worth "standing
pat'' on?
The Bureau of Labor report also
shows that factory wages were 1.65
per cent. higher in 1905 than in 1904,
and $50 per cent. more persons were
employed in the former than in the
latter year. This is on a comparison
in identical establishments for each
year-not identical trades, but the
very same establishments each time,
and the same number of hours of
la Dor.
Further-the average wages per
hour in 1905 were 1879 per cent. high
er than the average for the ten-year
period from 1890 to 1899 inclusive,
while the retail prices of the princi-
pal articles of food, which accord
ing to family consumption of various
articles, was only I2.4 per cent.
higher in 1905 than was the average
price for the ten years, 1889 to 1899.
Those are 1905 figures of fact, not
1916 theories.-Times.