| Show WORKA WAGES A TTageEearner Excoriates an Economic Dunce lie Does It Deftly To the Editor of THE HERALD Your arttcles on trade and finance are certainly cer-tainly valuable contributions at this particular time to the economic thought ot the country Your foeman is unworthy of your steel and did I not know that you were directing your subject sub-ject to tho thinking public I should feel surprised sur-prised at the continued attention you pay to the idiotic brayings of the most egregious blundering blunder-ing economic ass that ever disgraced the eternal eter-nal principles of economic science As a wageearner I was led to study economics econom-ics with a view of finding there a solution of the labor problem for what is political economy when btripped of its technicalities and scholastic scholas-tic verbiage but the peoples own science tho science of work anti ages How the greatest amount of ncalth can be produced with the least possible enort Is the only lesson deducible deduci-ble from its laws It is the workingmans the farmers own science and without a full and complete obedience to its teachings the masses must ever be the oppressed victims of the classes Life depends lpon the effort to produce pro-duce wealth Civilization depends upon tho exchange of wealth To interfere with the one or restrict the other Is a violation vio-lation of human rights and must asa as-a consequence subvert civilization itself Interference In-terference with the right to trade falsely called protection is nothing more than a defense crN cf lt ni rlla lease of an unjust social and industrial system based upon the unsound assumption that a is age fund must exist before and is necessary for the employment of labor or to use the words of Adam Smith tho wages of the laborer la-borer depend upon the amount of capital devoted voted to the wage fund and the number of laborers competing for wages Protection is based upon the first clause of this sentence a pure economic falsehood and in defiance of the last clause a sound economic truth In order to create an abnormal wage fund trade is interdicted ostensibly to rube wages but free trade in labor subjects this artificial wage fund to tto natural law of supply and demand in the great worlds labor market Wages arc always a portion of the product Tho product is created and delivered before wages are paid Wages arc always in proportion to tho amount pro duced The American workingman is the poorest poor-est paid worker on the earth tho Englishman the next then comes Frenchman while the Chinaman in China is the best paid worker measured by the true law of wagesthe just proportion of the product For information on this subject see report of Consul General Schon for to Secretary Blaine during Garfields administration ad-ministration Now let us size up the protective idol by this rule In the Worlds market he will earn most who has the readiest access to raw material and applies the most etticient labor All countries contain raw material but no country contains all hence the need of free commerce that all may exchange the product special advantages in ordir to the general enjoyment of all ad vntnges The American laborer is drugged with economic eco-nomic nostrums in the interest of the monopo listic quacks when he is made to believe that with the richest natural opportunities and the most elIecliTc labor in the world the value of his share of the producthis wagescan be increased in-creased by statute law statute law may pro hibit the Importation of the worlds goods and thus create an unnatural home market and thereby double the value of every product but every increase of goods value moans inevitably the decrease of the money alue at an inverse ratio within the range of the same market A workers product is rendered interchangeable interchange-able through the medium of money JSo wonts not for money primarily but for a share of the general product To double tho value of the product by law can only result in injury to the worker for by no means can he get double I wastes the average difference between Europe and the United States being yen third I more wages for 150 per cent more product 1 This is due to the lact ttnt manufacturers are enabled in a narrowed market by combines to demand prices greater than the foreign article i plus ihe tariff I Gratz Brown Co of the cotton bagging trust admitted their average prices were 50 percent I per-cent above imported goods plus the tariff being able by their hold of the market to accommodate ac-commodate prices to the movements America Tvard I of foreign markets To illustrate given ft community of 1000 persons whose daily product measured by the worlds values averaged to each one dollars worth of wealth Five hundred of these persons producing one dollars worth of wealth each to which the county and themselves were especially especi-ally adapted and equipped receive by means of exchange from other countries 5600 worth of wealth This is tho law of trade no trado being be-ing possible except both parties to the trade are benefited Jow the law steps in It says to onehalf of our community You shall no longer produce tho most wealth by the least effort but you shall produce less wealth by more effort To the whole community It says I will double the value of all your product by doubling the value of the foreign product Every mans dollars worth of wealth shall hereafter be marked two dollars Bad law foolish statesmen Why not save all this waste legislation valuable time customhouses custom-houses tax gathers spies informers perjured souls etc by simply enacting a law that one dollar shall v be called two ten twenty and so on It would bo far easier to placo a false value on money dont you see than upon goods Some workin men would never know the difference especially editing wormngmen Like the Irishman who cut an inch off his blanket at the foot end to sew it onto on-to the top end their natural economic obtuseness obtuse-ness would never lead them to see but that the blanket had gained an inch notwithstanding its loshytho new seam Yours etc IlupEiiT BROWS WEST JORDAN |
