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$293, and in the protected silk manufacture $292; all being below the general average. On the other hand, the average is raised by the high wages paid in innumerable other branches of manufacture, all of which are oppressed and dragged down by the heavy taxes which the tariff lays upon their raw materials.

Even in the iron manufacture, where women and children cannot be employed, and where, therefore, wages average higher, the census shows that the average wages of iron workers were only $1.25 a day, while the unprotected carpenters all over the country earned from $1.50 to $2.50, and even farm hands earned an average of nearly $1.50 per day.

Thus the census returns (which, it must always be remembered, are made up from statements of the manufacturers themselves, whose interest it is to show a different state of facts) clearly establish that the more protection is given to any class, the less wages that class pays to its workmen.

3. But it is constantly said that at any rate wages in this country are higher than in England, and that this is due to protection.

Now, nothing can be more clear than that protection never helped to make wages higher in this country than in England, because it is a fact, perfectly well established, that there was more difference between mechanics' wages in England and in this country before we had a protective tariff, than there is to-day. In a statement made to the tariff commission by a strong protectionist, who manufactures the same goods both in Ireland and New Jersey, he admitted that, under our present stringent protective system, the wages of the workmen whom he employs in his American factory have been steadily going down, while the wages of the workmen whom he employs in his Irish factory have been steadily going up.

4. While it is true, that wages generally are higher in this country than in England, it is not true, that they are

higher in all the protected industries. On the contrary, one of the results of the twenty-two years of steady protection, which the cotton and woolen manufacturers have had, has been that the employers have finally succeeded in cutting down wages in this country below the rates paid in England. An official report on these manufactures, issued by the state department in October, 1882, states that the wages paid on an average in England, which compared with those paid in America, for the same number of hours' work, show the following result :

WAGES PAID FOR 52 WEEKS OF 64 HOURS EACH.

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Thus it will be seen that already protection has attained its greatest triumph, and accomplished the purpose for which, in fact, it was intended, that of cutting down the wages of the American operative to a point lower than that of the Englishman. But even these figures do not show all that has been accomplished. For they show the English wages in 1881, and the American wages in the spring of 1880. Since that time American wages have been reduced, and English wages have been raised.

An English expert, who examined the whole subject carefully in 1879, found that American workmen in cotton mills did about 25 per cent. more work than English work. men did for the same money.

Surely protection has been an incalculable blessing to the poor working people in the cotton and woolen factories of New England!

Of course, it will be said in answer to all this: "Why do English workmen come to the cotton and woolen mills of this country, if they get lower wages here than at home?" The answer is very simple. They do not come. The cotton

and woolen mills import Swedes, Irish, and Canadians; but the English emigration stopped long ago; and thousands of English workmen, who were attracted by the higher wages of ten years ago, have already gone back or gone into other work.

5. But, as usual, the most conclusive answer to the whole claim made for protection on the wages question is to be found in the statements of the protectionist organs. The New York Industrial League, the largest protectionist organ. ization outside of Pennsylvania, employed Mr. Charles S. Hill, of the State Department, to prepare statistics and an address for the Tariff Commission. In this document, which was endorsed by the League, and triumphantly published by their organ, The American Protectionist, it is explicitly stated that the workmen employed by American manufacturers produce, on the average, 100 per cent. more than those employed by English manufacturers, man for man. It is not claimed, even in this paper, that American wages aver. age more than 50 per cent. higher than English wages, all 'round; and not only do the facts already stated show that there is no such difference, but even the report of that packed and bigoted protectionist body, the late Tariff Com. mission, admits that the difference between English and American wages in cotton, woolen, linen, and silk manufac tures, is very small. No one can honestly claim that manufacturing wages are, on the average, more than 25 per cent. higher here than in England. If then our workmen produce, man for man, even 50 per cent. more than the English, is it not clear that wages are practically 25 per cent. cheaper here than in England?

There is no doubt that this conclusion, startling as it may seem, is entirely correct. This is a country of hard work. The average working hours of an English workman are 54 to 56 a week. The average hours of American workmen are 64 to 69 a week. The same class of merchants that in

England attend at their offices on an average six or seven hours a day, with a half holiday on Saturdays, will be found at their offices in America every day, Saturdays included, for ten hours in the dull seasons and fifteen hours in the busy ones. All classes of business men here, whether employers or employed, work harder and faster than the same classes in England. The very same man who in Manchester cannot be persuaded to run more than three looms at once, will manage five in Lowell; and he who in Lanca shire runs five looms, will run eight in Fall River. For this increase of 60 per cent. in their work they get, at the utmost, 20 per cent. advance in their wages. It is a well-known fact that, a few years ago, bricklayers in Lancashire were for bidden by their trades-unions to lay more than 1,000 brick per day, and that the same men came to New York and laid easily 3,000 brick per day. Their New York employers paid them double their old wages, and even then got their work practically 30 per cent. cheaper than the English employers.

VII.-HOW PROTECTION PROTECTS MANUFACTURERS.

Protection does not even protect the manufacturers as a class. It cannot possibly protect more than a few. Most of the manufacturers know that it does nothing for them directly any more than for farmers, because it is not possible for as much as one-eighth of all the manufactured goods that we use to be manufactured abroad. In 1880 it appears by the census that the total manufactures of this country amounted to about $5,400,000,000. All the manufactures that were imported from abroad in the same year did not exceed in value $300,000,000. So the home manufactures were eighteen time as large as the imported ones. tariffs were abolished the manufacturers of Europe could not possibly send us more than twice the amount which they now send; and all the rest of the goods that we want

would have to be made here just as they are now. Indeed the vast mass of manufactured goods could not be made anywhere else. Tariff or no tariff, our flour and other manufactures of agricultural produce would be made here, and so would our houses and furniture and most of our clothes and food. There are not factories enough in the world, outside of our own country, to make all the iron and steel or all the woolen and cotton goods that we need. And as not more than one-eighth of the manufactures needed by the country could ever be imported, it follows that seveneighths of the manufactures cannot possibly be benefited by protection.

But even as to the one-eighth of the manufacturers who think they are benefited by protection, they are almost always mistaken. They have to pay so many taxes upon the things which they use, that the higher prices which they obtain by reason of protection on things which they sell are generally of no profit to them.

The iron manufacture affords one of the very best illus trations of this truth. It has had prosperous periods both under low tariffs and high tariffs; and it has had some bad times under low tariffs; but much worse times under the present high tariff. Now, whenever the present high tariff has succeeded in shutting out foreign iron, which is the very thing for which the tariff was created, the iron manufacturers have been nearly ruined. And whenever the American iron manufacturers have been prosperous, the quantity of foreign iron that has been imported, in proportion to the whole amount used in the country, has been larger than it was in the days of low tariff. Thus, in 1860, the tariff tax on pig and scrap iron was $2.50 to $3 per ton; and the importation of foreign iron was only 8 per cent. of the amount made here. In 1880 the tariff tax was $7 and $8; and the amount imported from abroad was 33 per cent. of the amount made here. Now, there were five

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