Brownsville herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1910-current, 1912-10-09
GREAT INTERESTS
AND LABOR MARKET
WOODROW WILSON TALKS ON
QUESTION IN KANSAS.
Some of Most Highly Protected In
dustries in this Country Pay Much
Lower Wages Than the Unprotect-
ed Industries.
Associated Press.

| very meu VINO nave Deen most sue
cessful in building up the trusts are
also the very men who have been
most successful in preventing organ
ization of labor" was the contention
of Governor Woodrow Wilson in an
address here today devoted largely
to what he characterized as "the per-
vasive power Of the great interests
which now dominate our develop
ment."
Don't you know" he asked that
one of the objects of their combina-
tion is to control the labor marke
And do you imagine that they have
ever sat deliberate plans for giving
the workingman anything comparable
in the way of wages to the proportion
of the profit which they themselves
pocket? They do not have to give tn
laboring man any more than he C.
get in the competition of the market
And they do not give him any more
AS a matter of fact, some of the mos
highly productive Industries in
country pay very much lower wages
than the unprotected industries pay
wges that are below the living scale
at the same time that the prices they
are making are SO great that the
can build new factories out Of their
surplus every second year. 1t is on
Of the grandest pieces of bluff and
humbug that has ever been known
in the history of political deception.
II want to widen The market for
American labor | want to see con-
ditions exist in which men will COM
rete for American labor. / want again
to see time come when we shall
realize that the highest priced la
bor in the world is the cheapest la
Dor in the world, that what is pro-
duced by brains and intelligence and
than what is produced by stupidity
and dullness and the whip of the mas
ter.
81 tell you this, that American la
Dor up to date is the cheapest in the
world ! can prove it, American man
ufacturers compete in foreign mar
kets in the scale of goods manufac-
tured in those markets, near those
markets, by labor that receive only
one-third the remuneration of Ameri-
can labor. Now, what does that
mean? 1t means they can afford to
pay American workingmen three
times as much and still undersell
their competitors in the foreign mar
kets and yet the American working
man is told that the amount of his
wages depends upon the protective
tariff. 1t doesn't. 1t depends upon
him. depends upon what is inside of
his thinking box. And when you once
get 20 a system of regulated monopo-
ly, then you get to a system of CON
trolled labor, don't forget that. Mar
row the lines of competition and you
stiffen the lines of labor control. You
have not free market for your cor'
modities; for under this system Of
monopoly regulated or unregulated,
the monopolist can determine the
amount Of goods to be produced and
therefore determine the amount of la
borers to be employed and the prices
that the goods are to bring.
LAS I travel from one part of the
country to the other" he said, 81
see no essential difference among
the people in the different parts of
it The same thing is written in their
eyes and il is not a CLEAN of fierce
ness. IL is a light Of self-confidence
They know what they went, and they
know they are going to get it. Any
body who supposes that economic
questions and political questions are
two different things is very much
mistaken because these things have
been so closely married with one an
o her in our recent political prac-
tice that ii is impossible to discrimin-
ate between them.
And this gives me an opportunity
to allude TO some thing that I read
very recently in an influential news
paper. 1t was an editorial in which |
must say that the editor did me per-
. sonally more than Justice But ne
; saw in me an unintentional Machia-
I velli 1t is said in effect. This is an
( honest man; he honestly believes that
: protective tariff is unconstitutional
and il he gets a chance. being an
honest man, he will upset that uncon-
stitutional arrangement That is
Il
CONTINUED on page six