Salt Lake Telegram | 1906-06-23 | Page 12 | American Wages and the Tariff

j AMERICAN WAGES AND THE TARIFF. In a speech in Congress the other day Hon. John Sharp Williams reviewed the coming of immigrants to this coun-! coun-! try, the swelling stream ever since Colonial days. He said they came to better their condition; that there was a falling off in panic years, but that the rule was a steady inflow. . He gave as one reason the higher wages paid in this coun-. coun-. try and said: x "There never was a period from the time the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock up to the adoption of the Con-' Con-' stitutlon of the United States, when wages for the blacksmith, black-smith, the carpenter, for the skilled artisan and the un-. un-. skilled laborer in the field were not about double what ; they were in Great Britain. No tariff, high tariff, low tar-i tar-i Iff all sorts of tariff It made no difference what the tariff I on our statute books were, they came." That is very reckless talk for a leader in Congress. Can Mr. Williams explain why there was always a falling off in Immigration when free trade was the rule in our country? i Without elaborating or going back beyond, the mem-, mem-, ories of middle-aged men, it is enough to say that in 1892, 1894 and 1845 skilled laborers' wages fell 40 per cent; ! common laborers" wages fell SO per cent and thousands j and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of la- ; borers, skilled and unskilled, were unable to find employ-j employ-j ment on any terms. This may not have applied to Missls-; Missls-; sippi, but it did apply to the entire Northeast North and West. ' It is Just as .plain that if the tariff were struck down to-! to-! day, a million of skilled laborers would be without work in I a month and in two months immigration would be cut f down 60 per cenrt