The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-16
LABOR COST" PLEA
DaSOHEDiTED BY HISTORY AND BY
 PRESENT DAY FACTS.
Monopoly's Last Ditch."-Hon. Holm De Witt Warner of New York Writes oo the Tariff Issue in this
 Campaiwn.

According to the Republican platform, the
 true principle of protection" requires
 such duties as will equal the difference between the cost of production at home ana abroad together with reasonable profit to American industries" The addi- ton of "a reasonable profit" is new in the history of tariff discussion and indefensi- ble from any standpoint. If a protected American industry Is put on a perfectly even footing with foreign competitors by equalization through tariff duties 1t certain ly can find no just basis for any further de- mand.
 Let us consider for moment the claim that protective duties are needed to equal ize the costs of production. This term is generally understood to refer chiefly to E Tabor cost" It is said that without pro tection" our labor will be reduced to the level of underpaid foreign labor. The pretexts for the establishment of our high tariff were the greater costs of production caused by the civil war internal revenue taxes and the insufficient supply of labor left after the raising of immense armies These pretexts having been snatch ed down from the employer by the aboli- ton of the internal revenue taxes except those on spirits. by the disbandiag of the armies and the introduction of foreign la- borers on an enormous ocale. the protected intereitt have rallied about the labor cost of production, not because of the inherent strength of this. position, but because 1t is their last ditch. There is reason to sus- pect that 1t is because they have felt more and more the shailowness of this fortifica- tlon, that they have now attemtped to eke out their defense with the false and awk- ward breastworks of reasonable profits"
 The argument founded on differences in labor cost has no basis of fact to support it. The allegations on which it is based are simply not true The question is not as f0 hA daf Nay0w Al 4k.A A IA borer as compared with foreign rates of wages but as to the labor cost in given product, and there Is admittedly no consid. erabie protector industry in which the efficiency of our labor and the enterprise of our inventors have not reduced the labor cost we'll below that in any competing for. eign industry.
 The high tariff of the civil war, adopted chiefly to allow the manufacturers of the country to get back from the people at compelled by the internal revenue system to pay for the support of the government. was accompanied by another measure about which little was said--the contract labor law of 1ss4. Under the guidance of MT. sherman in the Senate and Mir. Morrill, in the House this labor law. demanded by the manufacturers. was put through. It pro- vided for official laborers to come to the United States and gave assistance to Amer Scan employers contracting for labdrers abroad for ths express purpose of reducing wages here. SO that the veterans of our armies returning at the close of the war found their jobs gone and were forced to compete with the contract labor thus im- aported..q a4r ft+ -
 This brief Historical outline shows that the 1hiEher wages argument as the basis of theS demand tfor tariff dutiea is merely an Afterthousht laid hold Of as a drowning man 1snatches at a straw because nothing eli ia
 Does s'proteetion' raise wages? As al- amount and quality product are taken into account. But the real question Is, Why are money wages high here?
 In 1773 Adam smith. noting the diff ference in money wages between British and American workmen. concluded that "pIenty of good land and liberty to manage their own affairs in their own way seemed ready noted, wages are not high here when to be the two. great caHses of the pros perity of all new countries Every eolonist," said he. ''has more land than he csn possibIycpltivate. He is, therefore, seagef to secure faborers from all quarters and to reward them with the most liberal wages"
 Alexander Hamilton noted the same fact and explained it in the same way, while Clay reasoning thes same lines. argued that. though wages might fall on account of the importation of foreign labor. yet
 
 stItute, an adequate security against an excess in manufactures and also against oppression on the part of capitalists toward the laborinG portions of the cornmuhity'- in other words, that our unprotected in- dustriesl would always be & protection to labor against the oppression of protected capital.
 In late years wages have advanced more rapidly in Great Britain than in the United States, and the same was true in Germany until her tariff legislation of recent years This result coincident with extremely high and in creasing protection in America, suggests one of the open secrets of the general advai1ce in wages. Another is sug- gested by the fact that the constantly im- proving physical and mental condition of the worlds workingmen has made their hands and heads more efficient in pro- duction and themselves more plucky to in- sist upon an equitable share In thls couuftyr about the only one whose inhabs- tants have never as a whole been hungry whose children have never as whole been wretched and whose women have never as A whole sunk under unwomanly labor. the .result-the greatest prosperity since the sun ahone upon Eden---is due to our free soil and the blessings of Providence neither of which waited for or came through the custom housa.
 John De Witt Warner.