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About Hale's weekly. (Conyers, Ga.) 1892-1895 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 17, 1892)
PECK RIDDLED. >4 DISSECTION OP THE NEW YORK LAB OS commissioner's report on the EFFECT OP THE TARIFF ON LABOR AND WAGES. Labor Commissioner Peck, of New STork, having made an alleged investi¬ gation of “the effect of the tariff on wages, ” has issued a one-sided report in which he claims that protection is a boon and the McKinley law a blessing. Sir. J. Schoenhof, a well known writer on the tariff, thus riddles Peck’s peculiar re¬ port in the columns of the New York World: Mr. Peck’s totals show a net increase in wages for 1891 over 1890 of $6,377, 925, and a net increase in products in *$31,315,130. this State daring the same period of I will not inquire into the relevancy of the statement to the McKinley bill or any other tariff measure. If the increase does not show more than tae ordinary ratio, the report falls short of its purpose. So long as no data are furnished, as by ihe United States Census, covering all in¬ dustrial occupations, the inference is not excluded that selections are made with a view to covering a certain end in view. Many very important industries are left out. Cotton, woolens and other tex¬ tiles, iron and steel products, etc., are not mentioned at all. Did they not show a sufficient increase in wages to parade them as glorious examples of tariff benefits? Yet these are the prin¬ cipal industries which have received tariff favors. I will show, in round figures, their rates of increase, under the beneficent protective tariff, from the census of 1870 to 1880 (in thousands): PRODUCTS. IlKJ. 1870. 1880. & Deo, Hats, Cotton goods......... and $11,173 $9,703 $1,478 caps ma¬ terials.............. 10,700 7,590 3.200 Iron and steel and manufactures , 53,000 27,000 26,000 Here we have the principal industries which can be classed pre-eminently as protected industries suffering a decline within one brief decade of $33,000,000— from $89,000,000 in 1870 to $56,000, 000 in 1880. In the cruder iron and steel products and manufactures New York State, in 1870, contributed over 15 per cent, to the total product of the United States. In 1880 the percentage of the State of New York had gone down to 8 per cent, in the total of these industrial products. Under the blight¬ ing influence of the tax on the raw ma¬ terial the industries falling under these headings have become tranferred from the Democratic State to the Republican State of Pennsylvania. It is not known to the writer that a perceptible increase has taken place iu the succeeding decade, which is to be covered by the expected returns of the eleventh census. All reports have so far tended to advertise further decline in these industries in this State. If proof ■were required further than that of the generally known condition of these in¬ dustries in New York State, the omis¬ sion of Mr. Peck to inclose them in his tabulations would have furnished it. Cotton goods have not increased either, as is well known. Their manu¬ facture becomes more and more concen¬ trated in certain favored localities from natural causes, the same as in England. In all wool goods the decline is general and alone due to the tariff on raw wool. The decline in the consumption of wool in proportion to the growth of the popu¬ lation, and the corresponding increase in shoddy and wool substitutes to make up the deficiency, give full evidence of the benefits of a tariff on raw materials. The increase in shoddy goods, of course, would make up for the difference. But the silence of Sir. Peck does not seem to warrant the assumption that increased prosperity came to the working people in 1891 in excess of that enjoyed in 1890, against the general depression in woollens everywhere else, a fact so well known to everybody at all familiar with the trade. The three branches cited suffered a decline in wages paid out and xn the number of work people employed, according to the census tables, as fol¬ lows (in thousands): WAGES AND HANDS. 1370 1S80- mm Number Number of Of Cotton Wages. Hands. Wages. Hands. Hats, goods....$2,626 9,144 *2,218 9,900 Iron caps, etc... 3,630 5,870 2,155 5,213 and steel products . 9,909 1S.6S4 4,991 13,567 Totals $15,450 33,689 $8,364 28,630 These industries suffered a decline to the extent of $6,780,000 paid less in wages and 5018 fewer working people employed. But what is of further and greater significance is that the rate of wages, as shown here, has gone down to the extent shown here. The average per hand employed is as follows, Cotton goods..... 1370. issa Dec. Hats $287 $224 $63 and caps, etc 446 413 33 Iron and steel products. 525 370 155 This is indeed a showing which would give the death-knell to any high-tariff sentiment still rampant in the greatest manufacturing State of the Union were any facts wanted to prove the absurdity of the claims usually set forth. I wil 1 not draw any inferences from this nor generalize on the facts further than to show the positions of certain in dustries which ought to have steadily iu creased in product and in wages paid out under the benign influence of the tariff, but have, on the contrary, suiere I the heaviest decline. That these facts have been ignored by a Democratic official authority of the State and spurious facts substituted to bolster up the policy of the opposition party is the only thing which gives a somewhat serious tone to the absurdity of the publication. A comparison of the product, of wages and of hands employed in industries furthest removed from the influences re¬ ferred to shows on the contrary the following increases: (Thousands.) Product. Wages!! Hands, Boots and shoes....$17,813 (Thousands.) 11,409 $4,998 8;i95 Clothing............ 44,718 26,090 Women’s clothing.. 4,839 14,273 42,199 <-----1380---— Product. Wages. Hands. Boots and shoes.... (Thousands.) $18,979 (Thousands.) 13,400 Clothing.........81,133 $4,902 Women’s clothing.. 120,412 18,224 63,00 i 27,322 99,003 It has been demonstrated sufficiently by comparisons made here and abroad that labor in boots and shoes is cheaper than in Europe. In clothing a tariff is ineffective. Fashion and taste alone for¬ bid importations of ready-made clothing and give a clear field to the ho ne manu¬ facturer, though his materials, by tariff taxation, are so much higher than the foreign clothing manufacturer has to pay that the protection by the tariff on clothing is quite neutralized. In other industries where tariff protection is equally ineffective similar showings can be made. In clothing, the least pro¬ tected article, the increase is highest: 75 per cent, in product, 125 per cent, in wages and 150 per cont. in the number of hands. Womeu’s.clothing has risen, in the product from four and a half millions to over twenty millions. The new census will show a heavier increase yet. These items suffice to show the damning evidence of facts ignored by Mr. Peck. Having pointed them out I will now return to the facts adduced by him to support his theory. The increase in products is set down as $31,000,000. The increase’from 1870 to 1880 was $300,000,000. Considering the price inflations of all commodities, as compared with 1880, and the decline in such important industries noted above, the increase of 1880 over 1870 shows for New York fully $100,000,000, or Cof per cent. On the same basis of progres¬ sion the $1,080,000,000 of 1880 ought to have grown to $1,800,000,000 in 1890. The years of the end of the de¬ cade, however, must show the greatest ratio of increase, partly on account of the increase of 25 per cent, in the population of the State and partly on account of the general trade activity ruling in 1889, 1.890 and 1891 <against the great stagna¬ tion ruling and spreading in intensity from 1883 to 1887. The ratio of in¬ crease ought from these considerations to be nearer a hundred millions than seventy millions, which would be the average of the decade. If Mr. Peck is not able to show more than thirty-one millions of increase he and his theory stand con¬ demned by his own figures. Reed on “Extravagance.” Ex-Czar Reed is something of a humorist in his way and he has seldom been more humorous^thaa he is now in accusing the Democratic House of “ex¬ travagance, ” because with a Republican Senate and a Republican President against it it could not repeal the sugar act, the steamship subsidy act such like acts passed by the Reed Congress, with the deliberate intention of increasing the expenditures of the Government and making the increase permanent. The Read Congress and the Harrison administration have run the annual ex¬ pense for pensions alone up to $140, 000,000, so that with this and $10,000, 000 a year for sugar bounties we have a permanent expense of $150,000,000 a year altogether aside from what are properly the ordinary expenses of gov¬ ernment. Under the Disability Pension bill and other pension acts now in operation the annual expense for pensions will increase for some years to come. It will reach at least $150,000,000 a year, and the only ohance the country has of getting rid of it is by outliving the pensioners. The sugar bounty will be repealed a3 soon as the Democrats elect a President and a majority of the Senate. Until then it re¬ mains with the other permanent charges imposed on the country by the most scandalous Congress the country ever had. With a Democratic Senate these per¬ manent charges can be greatly reduced. When Mr. Cleveland is inaugurated he will certainly renew the practice of that strict economy which characterized his first administration and resulted in the surplus which Harrison has dissipated. In the meantime Harrison is responsi¬ ble before the country for the increased expense of his radical administration. He is costing the country a round hundred million a year more than Arthur cost it. Where is the Republican who will say that Harrison is worth this much more for the country ? It may be that we are to have another Republican as Presi¬ dent in the future. If so, let U9 get one who costs less and is worth more for the money.—St. Louis Republic. Why Wages Go Up. The protectionist says that wages go up because of the taxes he levies on labor. The truth is that wages go up because labor becomes more effective. If two men, with improved machinery, can the produce what four men did before, pay of each of the four being a dollar a day, the employer can afford to pay each of the two men $1.50. He will make a dollar a day by the opera¬ tion, and the cost of labor in his pro¬ duct will be just that much lees than it was. In a late number of the American Wool and Cotton Reporter is a capital answer to the question we have asked. To-day the help that ten years tended 120 spindles in worsted mills are tend¬ ing 160 spindles, “making the increased production, it is declared, of at least equal quality.” the place The Noble comb ha3 taken of the Lister comb and it “gives double the quantity of top, in the same time, from the same stock.” The change from the fly to the ring frame gives 4000 revolutions a minute, instead of 2600. Machine-dyeing has taken the place of hand methods, so that “in the use of acid-dyestuffs feats are accomplished in less than two hours, and in the employ¬ ment of sweet dyes in less than four hours, that by the uncertain hand pro¬ cesses would demand several dayj for their performance.” These are facts that have had a strong influence on wage3 in the worsted in¬ dustry. Wages depend upon efficiency and product as well as upon the law of supply and demand. Invention has greatly multiplied man’s power, and therefore the man receives more for his work than he did when his tools enabled him to produce less. When a protectionist says that wages depend upon a statute that he has com¬ posed he is simply slandering human genius.—New York World. Wages Not Dependent on the Tariff. “If the workiDgman pursues his in¬ quires furthur he will find that during that famous period when the United States had a low tariff, from 1846 to 1861, wages here were as much higher as those in any European country as they are now, and that during that low tariff period they were steadily rising, He will find that wages in this country have always been higher than European wages, not on account of any tariff, but on ac¬ count of the circumstances surrounding us—the large quantity of cheap, fertile and easily accessible land; the almost and no less; that labor organizations have as much influence on such things here as in England, and no more; and that the promises which the protective policy is commended to the favor of the laboring men cannot possibly be fulfilled by any tariff law, ?.nd are, therefore, a delusion and a share.—Harper’s Weekly. bib “Protection” for the Dairymau. The dairyman needs protection against the tariff on tin, which,for the protection of the tin bacons, is saddling every dairy¬ man with an indirect, tax of not less than 25 cents for each and every cow in Am¬ erica which produces milk. Tax on tin milk-pails, tin milk-strainers, tin gather¬ ing cans, tin settling cans, tin-lined cream vats, tin-iined cheese vats, tin cheese hoops, etc., etc. Tin and tax every¬ where. The dairyman needs protection against the tariff on salt, which is a direct tax on every butter-maker using English salt, to the extent of one cent per head of every butter cow, and an indirect aver¬ age tax of $2 per head on every butter cow whose butter is not salted with Eng¬ lish salt, and with cheaper salt. The estimate is based upon the average make of 200 lbs. per year for each butter cow, and the low estimate of difference in flavor and keeping quality from use of different salt than English dairy would be one cent per pound of butter, or $2 per head of cows.—Mercantile and Ex¬ change Advocate. No Good to the Farmer. The American farmer is practically 3ecure from foreign competition in his home market, and for that reason needs no protection. No nation under the sun can come here and compete to any ex¬ tent with the products of our farms. The farmer by means of the taxes on what he does not produce has been forced to pay and is to-day paying tribute to the 14,500 manufacturers, the sole beneficiaries of the tariff. Governor McKinley in all his long speech could not show where the farmers receive one dollar’s benefit from high protection, but, on the the con¬ trary, he gave reasons why they should vote against it.—Cleveland Piaindealer. CHOLERA IN NEW YORK. The first Victim of the Scourge Re¬ ported. There was a death in New York city from genuine Asiastic cholera Wednes¬ day. The victim was Charles McElroy, of 857 Tenth avenue. He was a plaster¬ er by trade and worked in the vicinity of the ocean steamship wharves the past week. It may be a case of contagion or of primary cholera. He was attended by Dr. Robert Deshon, of 334 West Fifty sixth street, and his certificate, in the hands of the health board, certifies un¬ mistakably that McElroy died of genuine Asiatic cholera. IT IS ASIATIC CHOLERA. A later dispatch says: Dr. Robinson, of 402 West Fifty-eighth street,consult¬ ing physician in the case, has just virtu¬ ally confirmed the report of McElroy’s death from Asiatic cholera. The whole city is in a state of consternation. SALES OF 1YORY. SOW EI/EPHAWTS’ TUSKS ARE DIS¬ POSED OF ABROAD. Something About the Mating of Knife- Handles, Ktc.— Where the ■World’s Supply Comes Prom. ~~T OUR times a year, in January, / April, July and October, ivory T* sales are held, and the display " of the goods in the warehouse is one of the strange sights of London, says a writer in Leisure Hours. The floor is crowded with ivory of all sorts and sizes, in tusks and sections, and odds and ends, some of it in huge teeth weighing seventy pounds each, some mere trifles of twenty pounds apiece, some mere pygmy “scrivelloes,” and crooked, cracked, hollow, decayed and broken. On every lot is a big clumsy number, and every assemblage of lots has a no¬ tice board giving the broker’s name and the first and last numbers of the lots he has to sell. The wilderness of teeth seems all in movement round the gigan¬ tic pair of traveling scales in the centre; the curving tusks are like, so many worms, all strangely scratched and scribed, and are of all colors from white, through the browns, to almost black; and an expert can tell at a glance where each came from, and can sort the lots from the pink Calcutta to the black West Coast which c.ome3 wrapped up in the raw hides bearing the mysterious name of “schroons.” What would an elephant think if he were to get a peep at this floor so crowded with his relatives’ incisors? Here would be a memento mori for him more significant than that of the mummy at an Egyptian feastl Each pair of tusks means a life, for the elephant is yet ignorant of the dentist’s forceps, although we hear of elephants driven mad with the toothache and have specimens of tusk disease in our College of Surgeons’ Museum; and the few cases of monstrosities having three, four, and even nine tusks at a time may be disre¬ garded. Mr. Stanley tells us that in the Congo basin there are 200,000 elephants, each with fifty pounds of ivory in his jaws, the total being worth half a million of money; but even that stock would soon be exhausted if the Congo alone had to fill this floor four times a year. And besides the London sales there are sales at Liverpool and Antwerp and Rotterdam. Most of the Liv erpool ivory comes from the West Coast of Africa, and a quarter of it goes to Sheffield, a quarter to London, and half to Germany, France and the United States. To the London sales the ivory comes from all parts. according There was a time when, to Polybius, the Ethiopian made his door¬ posts and fences of ivory; and when the ivory trade declined with the fall of Rome, the market became so glutted that ivory could be had for the asking. And, according to native tradition, the elephant, within a few centuries, was used as food, and his tusks were treated as bones and thrown away. But that is not the case now, and through the length and breadth of the continent he is hunted for his teeth alone—not, however, for his eye-teeth, for he has none, but tor his incisors. It is the timber problem over again. It takes as many minutes to cut down a tree as it took years to grow it, and it takes considerably more years for an elephant to grow his tusks than it takes minutes to kill him. John Ray says that Yertomannus saw in Sumatra a pair of tusks weighing 336 pounds, and there are records of single tusks weighing as much as 200 pounds. But nowadays the ordinary tusks average about three to the hundredweight, so that 15,000 elephants would have to be killed to furnish the British market, and some say 75,000 are killed a year. And as the elephant dees not begin to breed until he is thirty years old, and averages but one youngster every ten years after that until he is ninety, the rate of in¬ crease is much too slow to overtake the slaughter. But all the ivory does not come from Africa, a good deal of it comes from In¬ dia; and a very little of the Indian ivory is obtained without killing the animal, owing to its being the custom to cut a captive elephant’s tu3ks every ten years. From the Malay Peninsula and the islands thereabouts, there is a fair ivory trade direct with China, and the nests of balls, which are the highest achievement of ivory turning, are al¬ most invariably made from the island teeth. These balls are a terrible puzzle until an hoar or so’s careful manipulation re¬ veals flow they are managed. By careful shifting it will be found that all the larger holes come opposite each other, and that it is down these shafts that the work has been done. The Chinaman has made probably fourteen holes in the solid ball, diminishing as they approach the center. Down the walls of these conical shafts he has spaced out the number of layers he requires, and begin¬ ning with the smallest ball, he has cut each layer free and carved it. It has been a long job evidently, and as a matter of fact he has worked five days, on an average, at each ball, and for his three months’ work he was probably paid at the rate of five shillings a week, which is first-class pay for a Chinaman. The tusks for billiard balls fetch the highest price in the trade; as much as $550 per hundredweight has been paid for them, which is more than double the rate for the ordinary kinds. As ivory ages the water it contains evaporates, and for this reason the Tithe Commissioners length and bread* &k " ^ is It intermeSl C e a i y e in?!? tT IffieC ' &&5i 3 cannot be torn sobS iotI > a nd ? is not 1 ?^ it . splinter. It J tle lea *W to dentine, 0 ? atUl1 crookedly and the r« which much outward ? e u the consist,, of i t = jfjgtk , and make ? ? ir. material f or “r:““ 0 rn «<* c M ,u "i ° ld a* £**> qu«e fo, the time to grow his tusfo. must SELECT SlPT lNiiS. There am no telegraph J The Chinese eat po! of] the flesh Letter postage costs ft»] a year. us vii,| la Hialopea Strait in the dog days. snow may m . ? the rka Ozark “ 8a3 has Mountains. a wonderful •C| A noo° rdinar 7 day coa <* 50,000 5n pounds; Pullman web g about 75,000 „i slee f* pounds. In Silesia the about considerable thirty part degrees of the beC^sr! ° The Chinese, y ear ese, New Zealanders Japanese, Malava American Indians and tk are all beardie The tortoise is the longest fi* animals. Many have attained th 2o0 years, while one is known reached the age of 450 years. has A dictionary of Chinese-Japan just been issued in th tee pa by J. H. Gubbins, andisaverv contribution to philological liter There is a tree in Jamaici k the life tree on account 0 f ft growing even after being the plant; only by fire can it be destroyed. There are many superstition funerals. Few people like to no* in the streets, and men and woj parently sensible stand and w* them pass. msJ The curdling of milk by net has been practiced for cennj first mention of cheese is in tbl Scriptures by David, and the been! *J ture of the article has always known process. The permanent gibbet erected I San Quentin (Cal.) Prison hu aiil provision of three cords to ba| J taneously cut by three prison These cords are so arranged thu of the guards will know whose sprung the trap and “launchel eternity” the gentleman standing In Turkey, if a man fall asleep neighborhood of a poppy field, ai wiud blow from the field to wad he becomes narcotized, and would if the country people, who are we quainted with the circumstances, di bring him to a well or stream and < pitcher after pitcher of water on hi and body. A five-foot alligator escaped fi Bowery museum, in New York Citj attracted the attention it of dead, a policj stri The officer, thinking The playfully with his club. ai opened its huge jaws and seized thel The policeman, fearing it was abol “take him in” also, hurriedly Ten minutes later the museum keep! covered the animal, and restoredthfl to its owner. I Morningside Park, New Tati has in its curiosities a specie) ((«■ apparently in great native abundance and voW| on the w® grows perpendciular rock opposhl almost 1 street, clinging tenaciously to coigne of vantage offered by toe iri lari ties of the rock. rocks The at that conditions] point sented by the to admirably suited to the cactus, soil is thin and turned dry, directly and the t0 face *V j rocks being temp£R uar morning sun the “ hours is almost tropical. A Lonely Voyage. Captain F. Vehling hu Francisco, Cal., with the a Kussiloff from he hMbeen Alaska. .° JJJ ? ous voyage but also ,,bis : only as captain theHttle cook and crew of f Years ago the laLlncIl # sunk off Karluk, e* bought the boat for at early this season, ^ 4,1 and with schooner prepared nggin^^J fora ^ the Indians. One day YehUng go ashore at Kanus:. heavy wind her cable came aaddrfte a P, J s| broke the Vehling made and steered the boat - Kussiloff ^ ^ ^ dusk the nigW th ^ land, and all that Vehling stood by the sjr j ded under bare and P°‘ e8 ’ ' h ; fl * the wind changed archipelago * ^ ^ the San Juan j* saw it was impossible ’ the ^ to< and turned the bow 0 . San Francisco. -cMiaS m '] At nig sail ht bit, Captam.^ tie . dier ,# tii shorten a ^ c0C to sleep iu the cabin. meals, manned his ^ own and capWJj 1 oe^ was king KussuoffP ^ upon. The Chi'- ^ excellent sailor.— *
