XIX. Protection and Wages

CHAPTER XIX. PROTECTION AND WAGES. W E have sufficiently seen the effect of protection on the production of wealth. Let us now inquire as to its effect on wages. This is a question of the distribu. tion of wealth. Discussions of the tariff question seldom go further than the point we have now reached, for though much is said, in the United States at least, of the effect of protec tion on wages, it is asa deduction from what is asserted of its effect on the production of wealth. Its advocates claim that protection raises wages; but in so far as they attempt to prove this it is only by arguments, such as we have examined, that protection increases the prosperity of a country as a whole, from which it is assumed that it must increase wages. Or when the claim that protection raises wages is put in the negative form (a favorite method with American protectionists) and it is asserted that protection prevents wages from falling to the lower level of other countries, this assertion is always based on the assumption th~t protection is necessary to enable production to be carried on at the higher level of wages, and that if it were withdrawn production would so decline, by reason of the underselling of home producers by foreign producers, that wages' must also decline.* .,. Here,for instance, .taken from the New York Tribune during the last Presidential campaign (1884), is a sample of the arguments 195 196 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADEf But although its whole basis has already been over.

thrown, let us (since this is the most important part of the question) examine directly and independently the claim that protection raises (or maintains) wages. Though the question of wages is primarily a question of the distribution of wealth, no protectionist writer that I know of ventures to treat it as such, and free traders generally stop where protectionists stop, arguing that protection must diminish the production of wealth, and (so far as they treat the matter of wages) from thi's inferring that protection must reduce wages. For. pur.. poses of controversy this is logically sufficient, since, free trade being natural trade, the onus of proof must lio lIpon those who would restrict it. But as my purpose is more than that of controversy, I cannot be contented with showing merely the unsoundness of the argument& for protection. A true proposition may be supported by a bad argument, and to satisfy ourselves thoroughly as to the effect of protection we must trace its influence on the distribution, as well as on the production of wealth.

Error often arises from the assumption that what benefits or injures the whole must in like manner affect all its for protection which are manufactured about election-times for the consumption of "the intelligent and highly paid American working man": "All workers know that labor in other countries is not paid as well as it is here. But this difference could not exist if the products of 50-cent labor in England or Germa,nyor Canada could be sold freely in our market, instead of the production of $1 labor here. Hence, this country compels the employers of the 50-cent labor abroad to pay duty for the privilege of selling their goods in this market. That duty is called a tariff. If it is made high enough to :fit the difference in rate of wages, so that labor in this country can not be degraded toward the level of similar labor in other countries, it is called a protective tariff. Such a tariff is a defense of American industry against direct competition with t:Pe underpaid labor of other countries."

PROTECTION AND WAGES. 19'1 parts. Causes which increase or decrease aggregate wealth often produce the reverse effect on classes or individuals. The resort to salt instead of kelp for obtaining soda increased the production of wealth in Great Britain, but lessened the income of many High .. land landlords. The introduction of railways, greatly·as they have added to aggregate wealth, ruined the business ~f many small villages. Out of wars, destructive to national wealth though they be, great fortunes arise. Fires, floods and famines, while disastrous to the com munity, may prove profitable to individuals, and he who has a contract to fill, or who has speculated in stocks for a fall, may be enriched by hard times. As, however, those who live by their labor constitutf} ir: all countries the large majority of the people, there is a strong presumption that no matter who else is bene., fited, anything that reduces the aggregate income of the community must be injurious to working-men. But that we may leave nothing to presumption, h,.owever strong, let us examine directly the effect of protective· tariffs on wages.

Whatever affects the production of wealth may at the same time affect distribution. I t is also possible that increase or decrease in the production of wealth Inay, under certain circumstances, alter the proportions of distri bution. But it is only with the first pf these questions that we have now to deal, since the second goes beyond the question of tariff, and if it shall become necessary to open it, that will not ··be until after we have satisfied ourselves as to the tendencies of protection. Trade, as we have. seen, is·a mode of production, and the tendency of tariff restrictions on trade is to lessen the production of wealth. But protective tariffs also operate to alter the distribution of wealth, by imposing higher prices on some citizens and giving extra profits to 198 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADEf others. This alteration of distribution in their favor is the impelling motive with those most active in procuring the imposition of protective duties and in warning work men of the dire calamities that will come on them if such duties are repealed. But in what way can protective tariffs affect the distribution of wealth in favor of labor?

The direct object and effect of protective tariffs is to raise the price of commodities. But men who work for wages are not sellers of commodities; they are sellers of labor. They sell labor in order that they may buy com modities. How can increase in the price of commodities benefit them? I speak of price in conformity to the custom of com paring other· values by that of money. But money is only a medium of exchange and a nleasure of the com parative values of other things. Money itself rises and falls in value as compared with other things, varying between time and time, and place and place. In reality the only true and final standard of values is labor-the re3.1 value of anything being the amount of labor it will comm'1nd in exchange. To speak exactly, therefore, the effect of a protective tariff is to increase the amount of labor for which certain commodities will exchange. Hence it reduces the value of labor just as it increases the value of commodities.

Imagine a tariff .that prevented the coming in of laborers, but placed no restriction on the coming in of commodities. Would those who have commodities to sell deem such a tariff for their benefit ? Yet to say this would be as reasonable as to say that a tariff upon com modities is for the benefit of those who have labor to sell. It is. not true that the products of lower-priced labor will drive the products of higher-priced labor out of any market in which they can be freely sold; since, as w~ have already seen, low-priced labor does not mean cheap PROTECTION AND WAGES. 199 production~ and it is the comparative, not the absolute, cost of production that determines exchanges. . And we have but to look around to see that even in the same occupation, wages p'aid for labor whose products sell freely together are generally higher in large cities than in small towns, in some districts than in others.

It is true that there is a constant tendency of all wages to a common level, and that this tendency arises from competition .. But this competition is not the competi. tion of the goods-market; it is the competition of the labor-market. The differences between the wages paid in the production of, goods that sell freely in the same market cannot arise from checks on the competition of goods for sale; but manifestly arises from checks on the competition of labor for employment. As the competi tion of labor varies.· between employment ftnd employ ment, or between place and .place, so do wages vary. The cost of living being greater in large' cities than in small towns; the higher wages in the one are not more attractive than the lower wages in the. other, while the differing rates of wages in different districts are mani festly maintained by the inertia and' friction which retard the flow of population, or by causes, physical or social, which produce differences in the intensity of com..

petition in the labor-market. The tendency of wages to a common level is quickest in the same occupation, because the transference of labor is easiest. There cannot be, in the same place,. such differences in wages. in the same industry as may exist between different industries, since labor in the same industry can transfer itself from employer to employer with far less difficulty than is involved in changing an occupation. There are times when we see one employer reducing wages and others following his example, but this. occurs too quickly to be caused by the competition of the 200 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE' goods-market. It occurs at times when there is great competition in the labor-market, and the same condition~ which enable one employer to reduce wages enable others to do the same. If it were the competition of the goods market that brought wages to a level, they could not be raised in one establishment or in one locality unless at the same time raised in others that supplied the same market; whereas, at the times when wages go up, we see workmen in one establishnlent or in one locality first demanding an increase, and then, if they are successful, workmen in other establishments or localities following their example.

If we pass now to a comparison of occupation with occupation, we see that although there is a tendency to a common level, which maintains between wages in differ ent occupations a ~ertain relation, there are, in the same time and place, great differences of wages. These differ ences are not inconsistent with this tendency, but are due to it, just as the rising of a balloon and the falling of a stone exemplify the same physical law. While the competition of the labor-market tends to bring wages in all occupations to a common level, there are differences between occupations (which may be summed up as differ ences in attraction and differences in the difficulty of access) that check in various degrees the competition of labor and produce different relative levels of wages. Though these differences exist, wages in different occu pations are nevertheless held in a certain relation to each other by the tendency to a common· level, so that a reduction of wages in one trade tends to bring about a reduction in others, not through the competition of the goods-market, but through that of the labor-market.

Thus cabinet-makers, for instance, could not long get $2 where workmen in other trades as easily learned and practised were only getting $1, since the superior wages PROTECTION AND WAGES. 201 'Would so attract labor to cabinet-making as to increase competition and bring wages down. But if the cabinet makers possessed a union strong enough strictly to limit the number of new workmen entering the trade, is it not clear that they could continue to get $2 while in other trades similar labor· was getting only $1? As a matter of fact, trades-unions, by checking the competition of labor, have considerably raised wages in many occupa tions, and· have even brought about differences between the wages of union and non-union men in the same occu pation. And what limits the possibility of thus raising wages is clearly not the free sale of commodities, but the -difficulty of restricting the competition of labor.

Do not these facts show that what American workmen have to fear is not the sale in our goods-market of the products of "cheap foreign labor," but the transference to our labor-market of that labor itself? Under the con ditions existing over the greater part of the civilized world, the minimum of wages is fixed by what econo luists call the" standard of comfort "-that is to say, the 'Poorer the mode of life to which laborers are accustomed the lower are their wages and the greater is their ability to compel a reduction in any labor-market they enter. What, then, shall we say of that sort of "protection~f American working-men" which, while imposing duties upon goods, under the pretense that they are made by ~'pauper labor," freely admits the " pauper laborer" himself? The incoming of the products of cheap labor is a very different thing from. the incoming of cheap labor. The effect of the one is upon the production of wealth, increasing the aggregate amount to be distributed; the effect of the other is upon the distribution of wealth, qecreasing the proportion which goes to the working c classes. We might permit the free importation of 202 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE7 <Jhinese comlnodities without in the slightest degree affecting wages; but, under our present conditions, the free immigration of Chinese laborers would lessen wages.

Let us iInagine under the general conditions of modern civilization, one country of comparatively high wages, and another country of comparatively low wages. Let us, in imagination, bring these countries side by side, separating them only by a wall which pernlits the free transmission of commodities, but is impassable for human beings. Can we imagine, as protectionist notions require, that the high-wage country would do all the importing and the low-wage country an the exporting, until the dernand for labor so lessened in the one coun.try that wages would fall to the level of the other 1 That would be to imagin.e that the former country would go on pushing its commodities through this wall and getting back nothing in return. Clearly the one country would export no more than it got a return for, and the other could import no more than it gave a return for. What would go on between the two countries is the exchange of their respective productions, and, as previously pointed out, what commodities passed each way in this exchange would be determined, not by the difference in wages between the two countries, nor yet by differences between them in cost of. production, but by differences in each country in the comparative cost of producing differ ent things. This exchange of commodities would go on to the mutual advantage of both countries, increasing the amount which each obtained, but no matter to what dimensions it grew, how could it lessen the demand fot labor or have a,ny effect in reducing 'wages?

Now let us change the supposition and imagine such a barrier between the two countries as would prevent the passage of commodities, while permitting the free pas sage of men. No goods produced by the lower-paid PROTEMION AND WAGES. 203 labor of the one country could now be brought into the other; but would this prevent the reduction of wages t Manifestly not. Employers in the higher-wage country, being enabled to get in laborers willing to work for less, could quickly lower wages. Wh~t we may thus see by aid of the imagination accords with what we do see as a matter of fact. In spite of the high duties which shut out commodities on the pretense of protecting American labor, American workmen in all trades are being forced into combinations to protect tbemsel ves by checking the competition of the labor-market. Our protective tariff on commodities raises the price of commodities, but what raising there is .of wages has been accomplished by trades-unions and the .Knights of Labor. Break up these organizations and what would the tariff do to preven t the forcing dow{l of wages in aU· the now organized trades' A scheme really intended for the protection of work.

ing-men from the competition of cheap labor would· not merely prohibit the importation of cheap labor under contract, but would prohibit the landing of any laborer who had not sufficient means to raise him above the necessity of competing for wages, or who did not give bonds to join some trades-union and abide by its rules. And if, under such a· scheme, any duties on commodities were imposed,· they would be imposed, in preference, on such commodities as could be produced with small capi, tal, not on those which require large capital-that is to say, the effort would be to protect industries in which workmen can readily engage on their own account, rather than those in which the mere workman can never hope to become his own employer. Our tariff, like all protective tariffs, aims at nothing of this kind. It shields the employing producer from com· vetition, but in no way attempts to lessen competition 204 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE t among those who must sell him their labor; and the industries it aims to protect are those in which the mere workman, or even the workman with a small. capital, is helpless-those which cannot be carried on without larg fl establishments, costly machinery, great amounts of capi tal, or the· ownership of natural opportunities which beal a high price.

It is manifest that the aim of protection is to lessen competition in the selling of commodities, not. in the selling of labor. In no case, save in the peculiar and exceptional cases I shall hereafter speak of, can a tariff on commodities benefit those who have labor, not COIll modities, to sell. Nor is there in our tariff any provision that aims at compelling such employers as it benefits to share their benefits with their workmen. While it gives these employers V~~~bot~~:;: "in 116 goods-market it leave~~ them ,£l'Qo~ ~:;a.de in the labor-market, and for any protec tion they need workmen have to organize. I am not saying that any tariff could raise wages. I am merely pointing out that in our protective tariff there is no attempt, however inefficient, to do this-that the whole aim and spirit of protection is not the protection of the sellers of labor but the protection of the buyers of labor, not the maintaining of wages but the maintaining of profits. The very class that profess anxiety to pro tect American labor by raising the price of what they themselves have to sell, notoriously buy labor as cheap as they can and fiercely oppose any combination of workmen to raise wages. The cry of "protection for Ameri can labor" comes most vociferously from newspapers that lie under the ban of the printers' unions; from coal and iron lords who, imp9rting "pauper labor" by wholesale, have bitterly fought every effort of their men to claim anything like decent wages;. and from factory~ owners who claim the right to dictate the votes of men.

PROTECTION AND WAGES. The whole spirit of protection is against the rights of iabor. This is so obvious as hardly to need illustration, but there is a case in which it is so clearly to be seen as to tempt me to reference. There is one kind of labor in which capital has no advantage, and that a kind which has been held from remote antiquity to redound to the true greatness and glory of a country-the labor of the author, a species of labor hard in itself, requiring long preparation, and in the vast majority of cases extremely meager in its pecu niary returns. What protection have the protectionist majorities that have so long held sway in Congress given to this kind of labor? While the American manufac turer of books-the employing capitalist who puts them ,on the market-has been carefully protected from the competition of foreign man ufacturers, the American author has not only not been protected from the com petition of foreign authors, but has been exposed to the ~ompetition of labor for which nothing whatever is paid.

He has never asked for any protection save that of com mon justice, but this has been steadily refused. Foreign made books have been saddled with a high protective duty, a force of customs examiners is mt¥ntained in the post-office, and an American is not even allowed to accept the present of a book from a friend abroad with out paying a tax for it.* But this is not to protect the * Although a great sum is raised in the United States every year to send the Bible to the heathen in foreign parts, we impose for the protection of the home "Bible manufacturer" a heavy tax upon the bringing of Bibles into our country. There have recently been complaints of the smuggling of Bibles across our northern frontier, whieh have doubtless inspired our custom-house officers to renewed vigilance, since, according-to an official advertisement, the following p:roperty seized for violation of the United States revenue laws was 206 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADEf American author, who as an author is a mere laborer 1 but to protect the American publisher, -who is a capitalist.

And this capitalist, so carefully protected as to what he has to sell, has been permitted to compel the American author to compete with stolen labor. Congress, which year after year has been maintaining a heavy tariff, on the hypocritical plea of protecting American labor, has steadily refused the bare justice of acceding to an inter national copyright which would prevent American pub lishers froln stealing the work of foreign authors, and enable American authors not only to meet foreign authors on fair terms at home, but to get payment for their books when reprinted in foreign countries. An inter· national copyright, demanded as it is by honor, by morals and by every dictate of patriotic policy, hns always been opposed by the protective interest.* Could anything more clearly show that the real motive ~}f pro· tection is always the profit of the employing capitalist, never the benefit of labor?

What wQuld be thought of the Congressman who should propose, as a "working-luan's measure," to divide the surplus in the trea.sury between two or three railway kings, and who should gravely argue that to do thIS would be to raise wages in all occupations, since the railway kings, finding themselves so much richer, would at once raise the wages of their employees; which would lead to the raising of wages on all railways, and this again to the raising of wages in all occupations? Yet the sold at public auction in front of the Custom-House, Detroit, on Saturday, February 6, 1886, at 12 o'clock noon: 1 set silver jewelry, 3 bottles of brandy, 7 yards astrakhan, 1 silk tidy, 7 books, 1 shawl, 1 sealskin cloak, 4 rosaries, 1 woolen shirt, 2 pairs of mittens, 1 pair Of stockings, 1 bottle of gin, 1 Bible. * An exception is to be made in favor of Horace Greeley, whQ, though a protectionist. did advocate an international copyright.

PROTECTION AND WAGES. 207 contention that protective duties on goods raise wages involves just such assumptions. It is claimed that pntection raises the wages of labor -that is to saYr of labor generally. It is not merely contended that it raises wages in the special industries protected by the tariff. That would be to confess that the benefits of protection are distributed with partiality, a thing which its advocates are ever anxious to deny. It is always assumed by protectionists that the benefits of protection are felt in all industries, and even. the wages -of farm-laborers (in an industry which in the United States is not and cannot be protected by the tariff) are pointed to as showing the results of protection. The scheme of protection is, by checking importation to increase the price of protected commodities so as to enable the home producers of these commodities to make larger profits. It is only as it does this, and so long as it does this, that protection can have any encouraging effect at all, and whatever effect it has upon wages must be derived from this.

t have already shown that protection can~ot, except temporarily, increase. the profits of producers as pro ducers, but without regard to this it is clear that the contention that protection raises wages involves two assumptions: (1) tha,t increase in the profits of employers means increase in the wages of their workmen; and (2) that increase of wages in the protected occupations involves increase of wages in all occupations. To state these assumptions is to show their absurdity. Is there anyone who really supposes that because' an employer makes larger profits he therefore pays higher wages? "r I rode not long since on the platform of a Brooklyn horse-car and talked with the dri ver. He told me, bitterly and despairingly, of his long hours, hard work 208 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE' and poor pay-how he was chained to that car,a verier slave than the horses he drove; and how by turning himself into this kind of a horse-driving machine he could barely keep wife and children, laying by nothing for a "rainy day."

I said to him, "Would it not be a good thing if the Legislature were to pass a law allowing the companies to raise the fare from five to six cents, so as to enable them to raise the wages of their drivers and conductors?" The driver measured me with a quick glance, and then exclaimed ~ "They give us more, because they made more! You might raise the fare to six cents or to sixty cents, and they would not pay us a penny more. No matter how much they made, we would get no more, so long as there are hundreds of men waiting and anxious to take our places. The company would pay higher divi4 dends or water the stock; not raise our pay." Was not the driver right? Buyers of labor, like buyers of other things, pay, not according to what they can, but according to what they must. There are occasional exceptions, it is true; but these exceptions are referable to motives of benevolence, which the shrewd business man keeps out of his business, no matter how much he may otherwise indulge them. Whether you· raise the profits of a horse-car company or of a manufacturer, neither will on that account pay any higher wages.

Employers never give the increase of their profits as a reason for raising the wages of their workmen, though they frequently assign decreased profits asa reason for reducing wages. But this is an excuse, not a reason. The true reason is that the dull times which diminish their profits increase the competition of workmen for employment. Such excuses are given only when employ· ers feel that if they reduce wages their employees will be compelled to submit to the reduction, since others will PROTECTION AND WAGES. 209 be glad to step into their places. And where trades anions succeed in checking this competition they are enabled to raise wages. Since 'my talk with the driver, the horse-car employees of New York and Brooklyn, organized into assemblies of the Knights of Labor and supported by that· association, have succeeded in some· what raising their pay and shortening their hours, thus gaining what no increase in the profits of the companies would have had the slightest tendency to give them.

No matter how much a protective duty may increase the profits of employers, it will have no effect in raising wages unless it so acts upon competition as to give work illen power to compel an increase of wages. There are cases in which a protective duty may have this effect, but only to a small extent and for a short time. When a duty, by increasing the demand for a certain domestic production, suddenly 'increases the demand for a certain kind of skilled labor, the wages of such labor may be temporarily increased, to an extent and for a time determined by the difficulties of obtaining skilled. laborers from other countries or of the acquire. ment by new laborers of the needed skill. But in any industry it is only the few workmen of peculiar skill who can thus be affected, and even when by these few such an advantage is gained, it can be m.ain tained only by trades-unions that limit entrance to the craft. The cases are, I think,few indeed in which any increase of wages has thus been gained by even that small class of workmen who in any prote'cted industry require such exceptional -skill that their ranks cannot easily be swelled; and the cases are fewer still, if they exist at all, in which the difficulties of bringing workmen from abroad, or of teaching new workmen, have long sufficed to maintain such increase. As for the great mass of those engaged in the protected industries, their 210 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE' labor can hardly be called skilled. Much of it can be performed by ordinary unskilled laborers, and much of it does not need even the physical strength of the adult man, but consists of the mere tending of machinery, or of manipulations which can be learned by boys and girls in a few weeks~ a few days, or even a few hours. As to all this labor, which constitutes by far the greater part of the labor required in the industries we most carefully protect, any temporary effect which a tariff might have to increase wages in the way pointed out' would be so quickly lost that it could hardly be said to come into operation. For an increase in the wages of such occupa tions would at once be counteracted by the flow of labor from other occupations. And it must be remembered that the effect of tt encouraging" any industry by taxa tion is necessarily to discourage other industries, and thus to force l~bor into thf': protected industries by driv ing it out of others.

Nor eould wages be raised if the bounty which the tariff aims to give employing producers were given directly to their workmen. If, instead of laws intended . to add to the profits of the employing producers in cer" tain industries, we were tv make laws by which so much should be added to the wages of the workmen, the increased competition which the bounty would cause would soon bring wages plus the bounty to the rate at which wages stood without the bounty. The result would be what it was in England when, during the early part of this century, it was attempted to improve the miserable condition of agricultural laborers by " grants in aid of wages" from parish rates. Just as these grants were made, so did the wages paid by the farmers sink. The car-driver was right. Nothing could raise his wages that did not lessen the compet.ition of those who stood ready to take his place for the wages he was getPROTECTION AND WAGES. 211 l\.lng. If we were to enact that every car-driver should be paid a'dollar a day additional from public funds, the result would simply be that the men who are anxious to get places as car-drivers for the wages now paid would be as anxious to get them at one dollar less. If we were to give every car-driver two dollars a day, the companies would be able to get men without paying them anything, just as where restaurant waiters are customarily fed by the patrons, they get little or no wages, and in some cases even pay a bonus for their places. ' But if it be preposterous to imagine that any effect a tariff may have to raise profits in the protected industries can raise wages in those industries~ "what shall we say of the notion' that such raising of wages in. the protected industries would raise wages in all industries? This is like saying that to dam the Hudson River would raise the level' of New York Harbor and, consequently that of the Atlantic Ocean. Wages, like water, tend to a level, and unless raised in. the lowest and widest occupations can be raised in any particular occupation only as it is walled in from competition.

The general rate of wages in every country is mani festly determined by' the rate in the occupations which require least special skill, and to which the man who has nothing but his labor can most easily resort. As they engag~ the greater body of labor these occupations con stitute the base of the industrial organization, and are to other occupations· what the ocean is to its bays. The rateo! wages in. the higher occupations. can be raised above the rate prevailing in the lower, only as the higher occnpa,tions are shut off from the inflow of labor by their greater risk or uncertainty, by their requirement of superior skill, education or natural ability, or by restric. tions such as those imposed by trad.es-unions. And to ~~cure anything like a general rise of wages, or even to ~12 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE? secure a rise of wages in any occupatIon upon ingress to which restrictions are not at the same time placed, it is necessary to raise wages in the lower and wider occupa tions. That is to say, to return to our former illustra tion, the .level of the bays and harbors that open into it cannot be raised until the level of the ocean is raised.

If it were evident in no other way, the recognition of this general principle would suffice to make it clear that duties on imports can never raise the general rate of wages. For import duties can only "protect" occupa tions in which there is not sufficient labor employed to produce the supply we need. The labor thus engaged can never be more thana fraction of the labor engaged in producing commodities of which we not only provide the home supply but have a surplus for export, and the labor engaged in work that must be done on the spot. No matter what the shape or size of an iceberg, the mass above the water must be very much less than the mass below the water. So no matter what be the condI tions of a country or what. the peculiarities of its indus try, that part of its labor engaged in occupations that can be "protected" by import duties must always be small as compared with that engaged in occupations that cannot be protected. In the United States, where pro tection has been carried to the utmost, the census returns show that not more than one-twentieth of the labor of the country is engaged in protected industries.

In the United States, as in the world at large, th& lowest and widest occupations are those in which men apply their labor directly to nature, and of these agricul ture is the most important. How quickly the rise of wages in these occupations will increase wages in all oc cupations was shown in the early days of California, as afterwards in Australia. Had anything happened in California to increase the demand for cooks or carpenters PROTECTION AND WAGES. 213 O~ painters, the rise in such wages would have been quickly met by the inflow of labor from other occupa tions, and in this way retarded and finally neutralized. But the discovery of the placer-mines, which greatly raised the· wages of unskilled labor, raised wages in all occupations. The difference of wages between the United States and European countries is itself an illustration of this prin ciple. During our colonial days, before we had any pro tective tariff, ordinary wages were higher here than in Europe. The reason is clear. Land being easy to obtain, the laborer. could readily employ himself, and wages in agriculture being thus maintained at a higher level, the general rate of wages was higher. And since up to the present time it has been easier to obtain land here than in Europe, the higher rate of wages inagricul ture has kept up a higher general rate.

To raise the general rate of wages in the United States the wages of agricultural labor must be raised~But our tariff does not and cannot raise even the price of agricul. tural produce, of which we are exporters, not importers. Yet, even had we as dense a population in proportion to our available land as Great Britain, and were we, like her, importers not exporters of agricultural productions, a protective tariff upon such productions could not increase agricultural wages, still less could it increase wages in other occupations, which would then have become _the widest. . This we may see by the effect of the corn-laws in Great Britain, which was to increase, not the wages of the agricultural laborer, nor even the profit9 of the farmer, but the rent of the agricultural landlord. And even if the differentiation between landowner, farmer and laborer had, under the conditions I speak of, not become as clear here as in Great Britain, nothing which benefited the farmer would have the sli~htest 214 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE!

tendency to raise wages, save as it benefited him, not as an owner of land or an owner of capital, but as a laborer. We thus see from theory that protection cannot raise wages. That it does not, facts show conclusively. This has been seen in Spain, in France, in Mexico, in England during protection times, and everywhere that protection has been tried. In countries where the .working-classes have little or no influence upon government it is never even pretended that protection raises wages. .It is only in countries like the United States, whe~e it is necessary to cajole the working-class, that such a preposterous plea is made. And here the failure of protection to raise wages is shown by the most evident facts. Wages in the United States are higher than in otheY" countries, not because of protection, but because we have had much vacant land to overrun. Before we had any tariff, wages were higher here than in Europe, and fa:i"

higher, relatively to the productiveness of labor, than they are now after our years of protection. In spite 01 all our prot'ection-and, for the last twenty-four years at least, protectionists have had it all their own way-the condition of the laboring-classes of the United States has been slowly but steadily sinking to that of the "pauper labor" of Europe. It does not follow that this is because of protection, but it is certain that protection has proved powerless to prevent it. To discover whether protection has or has not bene fited the working-classes of the United States it is not necessary to array tables of figures which only an expert can verify and examine. The determining facts are notorious. It is a matter of common knowledge that those to whom we have given power to tax the ~merican people "for the protection of American industry" pa:v their employees as little as they can, and make no scruple of importing the very foreign labor against whose prod.

PROTECTION AND WAGES. 215 ncts the tariff, is maintained. It is notorious that wages in the protected industries are, if anything, lower than in the unprotected industries, and that, though the pro. tected industries do not employ more than a twentieth of the working population of the United States, there occur in them more strikes, more lockouts, more attempts to reduce wages, than in all other industries. In the highly protected industries of' Massachusetts, official reports declare that th.e operative cannot get a living without the work of wife and children. In the highly protected industries of New Jersey, many of the "protected" laborers are children whose parents are driven by their necessities to find employment for them by misrepresent. ing-their age so as, to evade the State law. In the hignly protected industries of Pennsylvania, laborers, for whose sake we are told this high protection is imposed, are working for sixty-five cents a day, and half-clad women are feeding furnace fires. "Pluck-me ,:;tores,"company tenements and bqarding-houses, Pinker~ ton detectives and mercenaries, and all the forms and evidences of the oppressiQn and degradation of labor are, throughout the country, characteristic of the protected industries.

The greater degradation and unrest of labor in the protected than in the unprotected industries may in part be accounted for by the fact that the protected employers have been the largest importers of "foreign pauper labor." But, in some part at 'least, it is due to the greater fluctuations to which the protected industries are exposed. Being shut off, from foreign markets, scarcity of their produ()tionscannot be so quickly met by importation, nor surplus relieved by exportation, and so with them for much of the time it is either" a feast or a famine." These violent fluctuations tend to bring workmen into a state of depe~dence, if not of actual 216 PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE? peonage, and to depress wages below the general stand ard. But whatever be the reason, the fact is that so far is protection from raising wages in the protected industries, that the capitalists who carry them on would soon" enjoy" even lower-priced labor than now, were it not that wages in them are kept up by the rate of wages in the unprotected industrieso CHAPTER XX.