Newspaper Page Text
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.— *
