Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-05-20
TARIFF AND CURRENCY SECONDARY TO
! GROWING LABOR TURDULENCY ISSUE

coming from use of modern ma
chinery. While the manufacturers
have increased their product and
profits, they have been able to hold
wages down by employing immi-
grants at wages slightly higher than
those paid in Europe.
While machinery has cheapened the
cost of production, the monopoly of
machinery and capital has made II
possible, with the help of the tariff,
the patent monopoly and other privi-
leges enjoyed by the manufacturer,
for him to keep up or even increase
cast u the consumer
Organized labor has been busy in
seeking to protect its own members.
1t has been successful to some extent,
but it's membership has generally in
cluded only skilled and semi-skilled
labor. There has been little or no
attempt to include or to protect the
ill-paid men, women and children in
the minis and factories of the country.
Unorganized. they have had to take,
generally, what they could get and
while organized labor has TO de-
gree fixed its own wages and hours,
the wages and hours of the laborers
in the mills and factories have been
fixed BY the employers, who have nat
urally got the most they could for
their money. This has been especial
" true in the textile industries, where
little skill is needed to run looms
and machines. and where the influx
of immigration has given the en-
ployers at all times a free field to
draw upon for cheap employees,
They Are the l. w. w. Recruits.
1t is this poorest paid labor, the
men and women furthest down in the
industrial scale. which is fiocking to
the ranks of the Industrial Workers
of the World And the men, women
and children who are drawn into this
fight. are offered by this organization
and it's leaders the first hope that
has come to them of improved condi-
lions. They fight desperately and are
not likely to show anybody greater
than they have been
shown. 1t is a new element with
which capital has to deal. And it is
a serious problem. because for the
first time the unorganized cheap la
Dor of the country, which has been
exploited for twenty years for the
enrichment of wealthy employers, has
begun to combine, and TO show its
and to assert it's rights.
Since Woodrow Wilson took his
seat as President. hardly a day has
passed in which the newspapers have
49, -aoo-da5 soy,,a nau- 10 bof. trouhla |
or some new development of an old |
industrial disturbance in some part |
Of the country. Just at the period |
when the American Federation of |
Labor had received its greatest rec
ognition In the form of a seat in the |
Presidents cabinet, and when labor
leaders and capitalists were pluming |
themselves upon the agreement that
arbitra ton would succeed strifes as
a means of settling disputes between
capital and labor, the country has |
seen and is seeing the most violent |
and widespread Industrial disturb
VIII Destroy States Rights Idea.
1t seems likely too, that Industrial
issues, which are complicated with
the economic and political issues af-
fecting high cost of living, low
wages, swollen fortunes and progress
and poverty, will have much to do
with the obstruction of the States
rights idea Within three months |
since the great States rights party
of the country came into power, the
administration has been forced to