THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTION. g 



labor on the material, and sell only to ourselves. The American 

 is not naturally slow, but he can not run with the Englishman 

 while his feet are fettered. 



The protection system would obviously not stand for a year in 

 this country were it not for the belief that it results in an increase 

 of wages among our working-people. It is, therefore, especially 

 important to observe the effects of protection upon our wage- 

 earning class. First of all it is to be noted that great numbers of 

 the working-people can not, in the nature of things, be any more 

 subject to foreign competition under free trade than they are at 

 present. This applies to railroad-men, now nearly 700,000 in num- 

 ber ; men in the building trades, agricultural laborers, household 

 servants, clerks, professional men, and the like. The numbers 

 belonging to protected and non-protected industries stand about 

 as five to ninety-five, as above noted. The vast discrepancy be- 

 tween the two is not usually taken into account in tariff discus- 

 sions ; but it is instructive, as tending to show that American labor 

 is not in any danger of great displacement by any possible legisla- 

 tion or by any possible competition. 



It is a startling fact, of which the application is not obvious, 

 that, while the protected industries have produced more million- 

 aires, perhaps, than any others, the wages paid to workmen in 

 them reach a much lower level than the usual one in wages-paid 

 occupations, and in some cases a most miserably low level. This 

 circumstance is well known, and as such was stated by a num- 

 ber of iron-manufacturers who united in a letter to the late Secre- 

 tary Manning, in reply to that of the Iron and Steel Association — 

 for there are manufacturers of iron who do not believe that the 

 tariff duty should be three or four times as high as the labor cost 

 of the product:* "The figures of the census show that in the 

 year 1879-1880 the total wages of $9,538,117 paid for mining ore, 

 distributed among 31,6G8 men and boys, averaged but $301 per 

 working year each, or less than a dollar for each working day. 

 Since that time wages have been again and again reduced. It is 

 a notorious fact that men are working in the mines for eighty 

 cents a day or less." So true is this that, while the cost of living 

 is much higher in this country than in England — for the reason 

 that taxes are there not levied altogether on articles consumed in 

 daily use — the wage-workers receive in many cases about the same 

 in both countries. For example, Joseph D. Weeks, special agent 

 for the tenth census, gives (" Statistics of Wages," pp. 112 and 119) 

 a table of wages paid in the iron-making business in the Cleve- 

 land district in England, and in " an establishment in Pennsyl- 



* Letter of J. B. Sargeant and others to Hon. Daniel Manning, December 21, 

 1885. 



