CAUSES OF MANUFACTURERS' SUCCESS 289 



it has gone up 40 per cent. So the real wages of the American 

 worker are considerably lower than they were ten years ago. 

 I know that in many industries the increase of wages has been 

 10 per cent; but in striking an average it has to be borne in 

 mind that in all work not actually physical — that is, in all 

 work that is clerical, administrative, supervisory — the wage 

 has decreased. And here we get just a glimpse of a state of 

 things coming about in America that we are very familiar 

 with in Britain — a fondness of the new generation for the 

 towns rather than for the country, a distaste for labor that 

 means grimy hands and mucky clothes, and a nocking to 

 work which gives a clean collar and passable cuffs, but a wage 

 inferior to that of a mechanic. 



Wages vary in different parts of the continent, and the 

 extraordinary fact is that where the wages are largest in cash 

 they are the smallest in value, because the purchasing power 

 is less. For instance, wages are lower in Massachusetts than 

 in Illinois. But the working man, if he keeps a bank book, 

 would have a better balance to show at the end of a year were 

 he in Boston than if he lived exactly the same way in Chicago. 

 Speaking in the aggregate, however, I may say that whilst 

 the working man in America earns quite half as much again 

 as the Briton, he has to pay three times as much for rent, 

 twice as much for clothes, whilst the food, roughly speaking, 

 comes to about the same. Having gone carefully into this 

 question I find that the working man in the east is better off 

 than his British friend, whilst the working man in the west is 

 less well off, despite the fact that he receives excellent wages 

 in cash. 



The great fact to be reckoned with is that the American 

 manufacturer has to pay big wages in producing an article 

 which is going to compete with a similar article produced in 

 countries where wages are comparatively low. In the home 

 market he has largely resisted foreign competition by means 

 of excessive tariffs. His woolen goods are rather beneath 

 contempt, not because he cannot produce a much better 

 article — he did that when the tariff was lower and English 

 cloth was a thing to be considered — but because he has no 

 competition from the outside. A curious point is that, in 



Vol, 3-19 



