Patent leather 55 Cloaks, dolo dolmans, jackets, talmas, ulsters and other outside garments for ladies and children (lb.) Gunpowder and all explosive substances used for mining, blast EXPLOSIVE SUBSTANCES. wing, etc., valued at 20c. or less per lb Valued at above 20c. per lb.. Matches (gross boxes, 100 ea.). SUNDRIES. Hats for men, women and children, composed of the fur of the rabbit, beaver or other animal. TARIFF AND WAGES. FALSITY OF THE CLAIM THAT WAGES ARE RAISED BY THE TARIFF. THE HIGH PRODUCTIVENESS OF AMERICAN LABOR. Republican Proof that the Republican Party's claim that tariffs raise wages is false and a fraud on labor. No claim is now so persistently made by the Republican Party as the claim that protection makes and maintains a high rate of wages With one of Mr. Porter's census bulletins as authority, Mr. Everett P. Wheeler shows how little protection has raised wages of woolen mill employees. Mr. Wheeler's figures have reference to the census bulletin on woolen manufactures of the United States. The value at the factory of the goods manufactured is $338,231,109. The cost of manufacturing is classified in the bulletin as follows: Mr. Porter's notes show that in miscellaneous expenses, repairs, insurances and taxes are included. The value of the product is stated as the value at the factory. This is not the selling price, and on the one hand the profit on sales does not appear, nor on the other hand is there deducted the expense of selling. The capital invested is $296,982,164, and the profits constitute 1334 per cent. upon this capital. The statement therefore, in Senator Aldrich's speech in reference to the profits of the woolen manufacture in Massachusetts, is certainly not a fair statement of the profit on the business throughout the country, according to the census returns, which are undoubtedly as favorable to the protective argument as they could be made. The amount paid for wages was divided among 221,037 employees, which amounts to a weekly payment to each of $6.66. Mr. Porter claims in one of his notes that this is not a fair way of estimating wages, because some employees are not employed throughout the year. It is undoubtedly desirable to know the actual rate of wages paid, but the fairest way of considering how the wages paid effect the workman is to consider the average payment for a year, because this is what he has to live on, and his expenses go on throughout the whole fifty-two weeks. It appears distinctly from this bulletin that the entire amount paid for wages is only 2216 per cént. of the value of the product. The rate of duty on most woolen goods amounts to very nearly 100%, and in many cases to much more than that. Nothing could better show the falsity of the pretense in the Republican platform that the principle on which the present tariff is. drawn is to compensate for the difference in wages between competing countries. This difference in wages certainly is much less than the entire amount paid for wages, but even if it were placed on that basis (which is not that of the platform) the average duty on woolen goods should be 22% per cent. instead of 100 per cent. An interesting contrast with this condition of the woolen industry is shown by the census bulletin for the manufacturing industries in St. Louis. The larger part of these are industries that are not affected by the tariff (except injuriously), and the average rate of wages per week to each person employed in them is $10.92. The value at the factory of the products of this one city was in 1890 $228,714,317; nearly two-thirds that of all the woolen mills in the whole country. The injustice and folly of the attempt to benefit the few producers of woolen goods by taxing the multitude who use them is conspicious. The following from Mr. Porter's Census Bulletin, No. 156, shows that the wage-earner to make a dollar in the New England iron and steel manufacture must now produce half as much again as he had to produce in 1880: In brief summary, the number of workmen has decreased, the total amount of wages paid has decreased, the yearly product of each workman has increased, and what he must produce to earn a dollar has been increased. The recent arbitrary reluction of wages by the Carnegie Iron Company and the terrible riots and slaughter at Homestead form convincing and bloody corroboration of the statement that protection, while enabling the manufacturer to exact tribute from the people at large, does not enable the workingman to exact or obtain higher wages than he is enabled to obtain by the law of supply and demand. Republican denials of this unchangeable law lead Protectionists into all manner of absurdities. Ex-Congressman R. G. Horr, in his tariff articles for the New York Tribune, endeavored to explain why the wage earner is benefited by a tariff system which makes his employer richer by decreasing compe |