El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1914-09-05

Ito IS cents. with an extra allowance foI
night work; bakers get 81 to SO cents
Higher in Far West.
The scale Of wages is not the same
however. in all American cities. Thus
in san Francisco, where labor Of all
kinds is exceptionally high, q brick
LAYER gets S71z cents an hour. a car
penter 62k cents. a painter 81 cents
l a plumber IS cents, a stonemason 81 y
J cents, a ulelayer IS cents, q hOd car
I rier so cents In St. Louis a bricklayer
| at sewer work tolls A hours a week at
I 81 an hour. Every Saturday his pay
/ envelope contains S44.
] No man, who does not possess a for
tune Of mis- own, is more independent
than the American workingman- For
/ him this country is n verttable para
disc No wonder that he is an object Of
envy TO the European tOiler. In no
other part OF the world does the man
who works with his hands enjoy so
much freedom and so many comforts.
Yet, oddly enough, nowhere else in the
world are there so many labor trou-
bles" and such frequent strikes.
Some Chinese Wages.
7 In Aslauc countries, as every one
knows, wages are much lower than IN
Europe Thus in China a bricklayer gets
only q cents g day, carpenter p
cents, painter p cents, paperhanger
p cents, a glassworker 30 cents, q
stonemason "a cents, a printer 35 cents,
it viii be noted, are much less than
American workers in the same employ
ments receive per hour a Chinaman
laboring in the fields expects no more
than Is cents q day. The daily pay OF a
seamstress in that country is only 10
cents-though women who do sewing
for the families OF foreign devils"
sometimes get twice that much
In India wages are about as low. A
weaver, for example, is fairly paid at
$3.50 TO S. a month These are very
old countries, deusely populated The
low wages Of the working people in
Belgium doubtless have relation to the
fact that that kingdom has more people
10 the square mile than any other part
on the other hand. in the United
States, which is a new and rapidly de-
velopiner country, the population, even
though exceeding 100. OO0, 600 today is
relatively sparse. There are more things
to be done, in the present stage Of our
growth. than there are people 70 do
them. Hence the abnormally high and
steadily rising wages
Cannot Last Forever.
Is Il TO be expected that this. condi-
ton of affairs viii last indefinitely
Unfortunately. the answer to that uues-
ton must be in the negative The
United States is rapidly filling I'D with
people After a while its population
viii be as dense as that Of Europe La
Dor will become more plentiful, rela-
to be done, and wages will begin to
drop. They viii descend as steadily and
inevitably as they have gone I'D hith-
erto. Competition will drive them
down. The law Of demand and supply
is memorable, and not to be controlled
by labor unions or by any other human
power.
If, on the other hand, wages in the
United States are abnormany high. in
Asiatic countries they are abnormally
low. Bat they are showing a tendency
very markedly to rise Thus, for ex-
ample, in japan they have doubled in
the last decade, and as a result at least
20 cents a day has been added to the
income Of the average workingman' s
family in the mikado's empire.
This has had a remarls bic effect
II has had largely to do with the fact
that Japan's annual imports of foreign
goods have increased since 1891 from
$40 to SO per CAPITA Increased
wages make trade grow. As the wage
scale moves up, the purchasing power