The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1915-07-24

AND THE WAGE SCALE

marty fairly revel in inconsistency Of
statement. How President Wilson can
expect good team work from such a
hodge.podge Of amateur economists IS
a mystery to the practical mind.
Edward e. Pratt, chief of the Blu
reau of Foreign and Domestic Com
meree, in a recent address to the tx
port Managers association at Chicago,
predicted that after the war labor in
Europe will be scarce and able to
command better wages, while taxes
will be very high, giving Americans a
better opportunity for competition.
Here is an acknowledgment, uneon-
seious to be sure, on the part of a prom
inent Democrat, that the European
wage scale is an important factor in
the cost of production, a contention
which the Republicans ave always
upheld, and which the Democrats have
almost invariably denied.
Mr.. Underwood, in presenting the
Tariff bill which will forever stigma
tIze his reputation as a statesman,
counts so much as it is the efficiency
of labor ; the unit cost of pro
d~uction in America is cheaper thar
abroad This statement was made in
the face of thousands of pages of ex-
pert testimony to the contrary, and the
solons of the Democracy solemnly
bowed their approval. As a canon of
economies it is a gem.
Speaking before the Boston City
club, January 81, 1912, President (then
G~overnor) Wilson sprung this remark
able dictum:
"Any intelligent labor can COM
pete with any pauper labor, and
the intellectual absurdity of "pro-
tecting'' intelligent men from un-
intelligent is too patent to need
explanation. When / hear the re-
ports that tell of protecting the
American laborers that I know of
against the pauper labor of Eu-
rope, | can only smile that my fell
low voters are so guilible."
When it comes to the question of
cost of production, however, the Pres
ident, like other Democrats, wobbles
all over the road. In his address to the
Economic club, Hotel Aston, May 20,
1912, he said:
"It is hard for any mar who
hoe sc o4.1so1 II
to restrain a cynical smile when he
is told that an intelligent body of
his fellow citizens are looking for
the "eost of production" as a ba-
sis for Tariff legislation.
1t does not exist as a scientific
demonstrable datum factp
He gave this statement in his
"cocked-hat' treatment when he re-
ferred to the power of the Federal
Trade Commission in his Indianapolis
speech, and the way in which he pat
one over'' on Congress:
THAT commission is authorized
and empowered to inquire into and
report to Congress not only upon
all the conditions of trade in this
country, but upon the conditions
OF trade, cost of manufacture, the
cost of transportation-an things
that enter into the question of the
Tarif-in foreign countries as well
as in the United States.i
OF course, If the cost of production
"does not exist as a scientific demon
strable datum fact this particular
power is as useless as the Federal
Trade Commission is in general.
Coming back to Mr.. Pratt's state
ment, the history of the periods of
European national readjustments, fol
lowing ON the heels of international
wars, will not bear him out. Natural
~, impoverished nations and prostrat-
ed industries will reduce instead of
raise the wage scale. Theodore H
Price, editor of Journal of Commerce
and Finance, points out there are some
people with ability to look ahead who
foresee 1.-THE reaction that will follow
the war, when millions of men fighting
shall resume peaceful industry at low
wages and flood America with the
cheaply made goods that impoverished
Europe cannot buy" But they are
not Democrats who foresee this, and it
is only by ousting the Democrats from
control that the American laboring
men can hope to escape drowning in
the huge backwater of European man
utactures which will submerge the
American market if they are retained
IN power.-Manchester IN. H. Mirror.