The Taranaki Herald, (DAILY EVENING.) MONDAY, MAY 6, 1912. WAGES IN AMERICA.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143783, 6 May 1912, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald, (DAILY EVENING.) MONDAY, MAY 6, 1912. WAGES IN AMERICA.

One of tlie duties of the Empire Trade Commission, of which Sir Joseph Ward is a member, will, we presume, be to ascertain the effect of high protective duties upon wages in the protected industries. Some light is thrown upon the subject by the recent cotton mills strike at Lawrence, in Massachusetts, and the inquiry into the working of the United States Steel Corporation. As a result of the very high protective duty—ranging from 90 to 250 per cent.—Lawrence has become the largest woollen manufacturing town in New England. For most lines of woollen manufacture, indeed for all woollens bought by wage and salary earners, the high duties have closed the ports, so that American manufacturers have the market as absolutely to themselves as though the country were enclosed by a Chinese wall. For forty years the manufacturers have proclaimed that these duties are necessary to safeguard their workpeople from tlie “pauper labour” of the woollen mills of England. The Lawrence strike has, however, “given the show away” and exposed the fact that all this talk is one of the most costly and audacious frauds ever perpetrated on a country that prides itself on its common schools and its newspaper press. For the last week the strikers were at work the average rate of pay was six dollars, and the dollar has the purchasing power of not more than half a crown in Lancashire and Yorkshire, so that in purchasing value their wages were equal • to about fifteen shillings in England. Europe has been scoured for cheap labour for the cotton and woollen mills of Lawrence, for years ago most of the Americans left the mills. The Boston Transcript asks whether the industry is really worth while for the Commonwealth. Here, it says, is an industry that has enjoyed the benefit of high protection, which is apparently unable to pay wages sufficient to provide decent living conditions according to American standards. It is dependent for its labour supply on foreign immigration of the lowest grade, which brings economic, social, and political loss. The industry, to be sure, adds to the volume of manufactured products of the Commonwealth, but this apparent benefit is obtained at the cost of the degradation of the condition of labour, dilution of the quality of citizenship, menace to the peace of society, and sacrifice of all that makes for genuine economic prosperity and social progress. Now let us turn to the iron and steel industry and see what high protection has done for labour there. A report by the Washington Department of Labour, published two or three months ago, deals with the wages and working conditions of 199,689 men. Of these 173,000 were in May, 1910, at work at blast fur-

naces and at other primary stages of the industry. At that time 29 per cent, of the men customarily worked seven days a week; 20 per cent, of them worked 84 hours or more per week, which in effect means a 12-hour working day every day of the week, including Sunday. As to their wages, out of 172,000 men whose wages were reported on over eight per cent, earned less than sevenpence an hour; nearly twelve percent. earned between sevenpence and eightpence; and nearly thirty per cent, between eightpence and ninepence. In short, fifty per cent, of the whole earned under ninepence an hour in a country of high tariff prices where ninepence has a purchasing power of not more than 5Jd in England. For fifty years American iron and steel manufacturers have had only to go to .Washington and put forward the plea that their workpeople must be protected from the “pauper labour” to ensure the enactment of almost any duties that they named. These are facts worth pondering over by the electors of New Zealand. Every little while a deputation of manufacturers waits on the Ministry with a request for further protection of this or that industry. They do not, of course, for a moment contemplate grinding down labour when they have succeeded in closing the ports to foreign goods, but no more did the American manufacturers when they first began to demand higher duties. Nevertheless it is like playing with edged tools to give them what they demand, i.e., a practically prohibitive duty on imports. So surely as they shut out by this means the competition of cheap labour in other countries competitive conditions will arise here to bring the industry into a state in which labour will still be “bottom dog.” It is with pleasure, therefore, that we noted the other day that Mr. Eaurenson, in reply to a request for a higherduty on billiard tables, said he preferred to remove the duty from the slates required for local manufacture. That is a statesmanlike decision which wo hope he will apply in other cases.