The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-04-13

couraging incident of the spring. It was made public on the very day when Charles M Schwab spoke not very hope fully of business conditions in the United States What Mir. Schwab says respect ing business usually receives a good deal
 of attention He is thought to say whaV he thinks although he does not always speak for publication with the fullness of utterance which characterizes some of
 his private conversation. It has been known for sometime that MT. Schwab has not regarded the outlook for the steel and iron industry in the United States as very favorable. He speaks from experience judging the industry as an expert who has often been spoken of as
 the most highly qualified expert on this subject both upon the manufacturing and
 commercial side in the United States The Question of Wages
 Mr Schwab in this later statement re- fers to importations of foreign steel not only at San Francisco, but also al Boston and at Galveston. While the business world has been informed of large impors tations of this commodity at san Fran
 cisco. and furthermore that importations | of this kind are likely to increase at | that port it has not been a matter of
 common knowledge that the commodity | is now brought from foreign lands both | to Boston and to Galveston
 | Mir. Schwabs statement confirms reports
 which have been prevalent for sometime | that representatives of iron and steel | manufacturers in Great Britain and upon
 the continent of Europe have been in the | United States feeling of the markets, get ting information so that they may be able to make reliable reports to their employ
 CTS.
 | In fact there have been within the past 1 four or five months a good many repre- tsentatives of manufacturing and other in | terests in nations across the sea who have | visited us. Very few persons have been | aware of the visit of a member of the | Chinese government to the United States | ostensiby with intent to inspect the | American mints to study the American | system of coinage and presumably the | American method of converting gold al
 most immediately into a circulating meo-
 ium through the issue of gold certificates. l This member of the Chinese government. l who was educated in the United States, | has also made study of the methods | chara cteristic of the London gold market, ] which differs greatly from our own. lie has returned to China and presumably
 will report favorably to his government respecting the American mint and our
 methods of handling new gold each year by converting much the greater part
 of it into gold certificates.
 This man, however. is only one of many lrepresentives of interests in other lands. who has been recently in the United States, he differing from the others in this respect that he has been seeking for information which may be of value to the l finance department of the Chinese gov-
 ernment. MT. Schwab refers to the mat
 ter of wages, intimating that he regards
 the wage scale of the United States in the | steel industry as one of the important factors which may tend to impair Amer ican competition with foreigners in the
 steel trade He does not complain of the high wages paid to skilled artisans in the l steel industry, averaging about S9o for ] each employe per year, but he does say that it is something for the American peo- pie to consider when discussing the abil- lity of American manufacturers through | efficiency to compete with the manu- | facturers of Germany that the average | of wages paid in Germany is only about l one third of the amount paid to the artl- sans of this country in the United States. | Of course, MT. Schwabs intimation is
 that this difference of $500 for employees in
 wages is factor which the highest eff 1 fciency and the greatest economy in manufact cture and the utmost skill in mar
 keting the products cannot fully over 1 come In other words. Mir Schwab ap- | parently believes that if the steel indus | try in the United States Is to pay its | employees an average of $500 year more | than Germany pays hers. there should be lrecognition of this in the tariff sched- ules. MT. Schwab is one of the few ma,u- lecturers representing very large inter ests who have been willing to speak for publication in such manner as to suggest that there does exist real business de- rression in the United States. The state m,nt recently made by him is likely. | however. to be to some extent offset by the report from Washington which tells of
 the prospect that the greatest harvest Of
 winte.' wheat ever garnered in the Unite.l States will be that of the year