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Show to those who assert that very low wages are compensated by very low living costs in Europe. Of course most of the comforts known in Detroit homes are not met with in workers' homes in Europe. "Bathrooms are not met with," says the Geneva report. Rooms are fewer and smaller. Motor cars are practically practical-ly unknown in such homes, nor are radios, electrical equipment and similar sim-ilar articles, common in the homes of American workingmen. We hear much talk of economic disarmament. dis-armament. This is interpreted by its advocates as meaning the removal of defenses in this country against the free competition of our wages and living liv-ing standards with those described in 1 Europe. Why not ask Europe, as a condition for the free and unlimited entry of her goods thus made cheap, in our markets, that she disarms herself her-self of the deadly weapon of cheapness cheap-ness in competition secured by cheapening cheap-ening people and destroying their consuming power? Then Americans could afford to talk about getting rid of a tariff now intended to equalize home and foreign labor costs. Until that time comes talk against a protective pro-tective tariff sufficient to equalize these costs, which our present tariff rates by no means do, is merely an argument in favor of degrading the masses and so limiting their consuming consum-ing power that a destructive glut of goods is the result of mass and machine ma-chine production. SOME SIGNIFICANT LABOR FACTS. The international labor office at Geneva two years ago began an inquiry in-quiry to discover what wage workers in each of the Ford European factories factor-ies would have to get to permit them to live on a standard equal to that of a $7-a-day man in Detroit. When this question was raised before this league agency, reply was made that it did not have the money to make the inquiry. in-quiry. When this information was published in a New York newspaper, Edward Filene of Boston contributed $25,000 to make the work possible. A Geneva dispatch to the New York Times states that the inquiry was not extendel to show what wages are actually ac-tually paid workers in these cities because of the "opposition of its governing gov-erning body, whose European employer employ-er members were so afraid of such wage comparisons that they sought to prevent the inquiry being made and succeeded in greatly circumscribing circumscrib-ing it." An inquiry made by the U. S. department de-partment of labor, however, gives this information. It shows that wages paid labor in Liverpool are less than half those paid in Philadelphia, and that in other European countries the purchasing power of wages is much lower: in Belgium less than one-thiri those paid in the United States. This figure holds approximately for Germany. Ger-many. In central Europe wages are still lower. In Russia and Japan still less. The interesting fact brought out in the Geneva inquiry just completed is that living costs are not materially lower in Europe than in Detroit, des- j pite the fact that money wages are only a fraction of the wages paid in the United States. In Helsingfors a worker would, it is true, require $1,-274 $1,-274 to purchase what a Detroit worker work-er must pay $1,550 for, but what the Helsingfors worker actually gets ;s ; S4S1. Using the figure 100 for what 81,720 will buy in Detroit for the worker's needs,, the cost in Stockholm Stock-holm would be about the same, while in Frankfort, Copenhagen, Berlin, Cork, Manchester, Paris and Mar-! se.illes, the comparative figure would run from 70 to 93 per cent of the Detroit De-troit cost. This is an official answer |