PROTECTION FOR THE WAGE EARNER
Commons, John R.
PROTECTION FOR THE WAGE EARNER Our Problem is to Diffuse the Benefits of the Protective Tariff---Give the American Laborer His Share By JOHN R. COMMONS TWO arguments have ever been effective in...
...But this should be required under any kind of tariff revision...
...Matthew Carey, who did more than any other American to establish the tariff on a protective basis in the interests of labor, was prominent in the labor agitation of the 'thirties...
...In some cases, like pig-iron, labor cost is probably less than in England, but in England the blast furnace workers are on the eight-hour day, while here their day is twelve hours, seven days a week...
...The principal leaders and advocates who framed this argument and who won its acceptance by the country, did not believe that the tariff alone would bring about a high standard of life...
...the work of the next generation would be to diffuse its benefits...
...Both the tax and its administrative machinery have been held constitutional by the United States Supreme Court...
...We need scarcely stop to maintain the futility of state legislation protecting labor in the tariff-protected industries...
...Congress is also supreme in the matter of internal revenue taxes...
...These were establishments where the manufacturer could prove that the "conditions as to the remuneration of labor" were fair and reasonable, as determined by certain government tribunals...
...PROTECTION FOR THE WAGE EARNER Our Problem is to Diffuse the Benefits of the Protective Tariff---Give the American Laborer His Share By JOHN R. COMMONS TWO arguments have ever been effective in sustaining the protective tariff in this country: the home market for farmers and a high standard of living for wage earners...
...Florence Kelley, that the work of his generation must be to establish American industry...
...The oleomargarine tax imposes a tax of ten cents on artificially colored and less than one cent on uncolored oleomargarine...
...All the machinery for such a discriminating tax is already in existence...
...The constitutional question arises, is there as much difference between an establishment, paying an American standard of wages and one paying less than that standard, as there is between uncolored and colored oleomargarine...
...This bureau would receive general instructions from Congress as to what, from the standpoint of a reasonable American standard of life, should be the condition of labor...
...He did for the people what Carey has done for the politicians...
...If, therefore, a tariff commission investigates the comparative cost of labor in this and competing countries, it should inquire whether the wages and hours are actually reasonable, and what would be the cost if they were made reasonable...
...Thus the employees might actually receive the benefits intended by the protective tariff...
...In Greeley and Kelley's time the iron and steel industry seemed to be firmly established on a system of joint trade agreements of capital and labor...
...If their standards of living are to improve under the protective shield of the tariff, the improvement must come through the aid of legislation...
...These instructions might provide for all workers at least fifty-two full days of rest each year...
...It is among the industries and laborers not directly protected by the tariff, like the building trades, the railroads, the longshoremen of the lakes, that unionism has its principal strength...
...If the industry is "trustified" the trust can shut down its factories in an advanced state and throw its orders to its factories in a backward state like Pennsylvania...
...The tactics that defeat unionism are those that defeat state legislation...
...They might provide the eight hour day in certain non-continuous operations for women workers and possibly for men...
...Night work and Sunday work have been extended wherever possible...
...The tariff prevents the competition of foreign low-standard labor and draws a charmed circle within which American labor may gradually work out its own higher standards...
...Other provisions such as minimum rate of pay might be more general, and left to the bureau to ascertain what is reasonable under the conditions...
...The people of this country gladly support a tariff high enough to pay not merely existing wages, but better and even ideal wages and hours...
...In Australia the Employee Benefits WHEN we turn to federal legislation to improve standards of living, serious questions arise as to constitutionality and interference with state prerogatives...
...In other protected industries unionism is making a retreating fight, and I do not see how it is possible in those which have reached the stage of a trust for unionism to recover its ground...
...It needed to be supplemented by positive efforts, by voluntary organizations, by legislation, within this country...
...In the textile industries, child and woman labor, long hours, and interstate competition have defied the loudest agitation and have kept the wages and conditions at a point actually inferior in places to those of its free-trade competitor, England...
...The glass industry, too, is marked by the decline of unionism in certain branches, and even with unionism, it is notorious for the exploitation of child labor...
...Yet there was no man of national fame in his day who did as much effective work for trade-unionism and other reforms as Horace Greeley...
...They might provide that all continuous operations should be divided into three shifts of eight hours, instead of two shifts of twelve hours...
...He converted them to protection by the home-market and standard-of-living arguments...
...He presided over congresses to which delegates came from the labor unions, the land reformers, the Fourierite and other socialistic societies...
...After the war, the most able and persistent champion of protection was Congressman Kelley of Pennsylvania, who came to be known to the nation as "pig-iron Kelley...
...Congress may impose a tariff for protection as well as revenue...
...He often asserted, as I have been told by his daughter, Mrs...
...The standard of living is the really enduring justification of the protective tariff...
...If upon investigation and inspection the bureau finds that a manufacturer is granting his employees these reasonable conditions a certificate to that effect would be the warrant of the internal revenue commissioner to remit the internal revenue tax...
...In fact the tariff was to them simply the means by which these domestic efforts could be guaranteed a free field for successful experiment and adoption...
...They looked upon the tariff merely as defensive...
...In all industries its influence is partial, and the great majority of the workers are outside its ranks...
...A protective tariff was imposed on imported goods and an internal tax of half that rate was placed on the same goods if manufactured at home...
...They are really two parts of one argument, for the home market is not much better than the foreign market if the purchasing power of American labor is not greater than that of foreign labor...
...Although an employer, he supported the labor organizations, defended their strikes, and brought down upon himself the blows of the free-trade organs, which rightly identified his protectionism with his trade-unionism...
...It is assumed that revision will be made on the basis of existing long hours, low wages, and child and woman labor of many protected industries...
...Twenty-four consecutive hours of work on alternate Sundays in order to change the night and day shifts has become necessary for many employees, while speeding up to the limit of endurance and cutting piece rates with increase of speed have been reduced to a science...
...A policy of this kind requires administrative machinery and scientific investigation...
...With this unquestioned control of the taxing power, the tariff might be made to pass over a share of its benefits to the wage earners for whom it is intended...
...The actual cost of labor in this country is lower in these cases than it would be if the hours, wages, and conditions were fair and reasonable...
...A feasible method has been suggested by the new commonwealth of Australia, in the taxation of agricultural machinery...
...This should include, first of all, the comparative cost of labor...
...Surely the tariff should not be revised or reduced except on the basis of cost of production in this country and foreign countries...
...Labor cannot concentrate as capital does...
...The hours of labor have been increased almost uniformly to twelve per day...
...But it was provided that in certain cases, the excise duty, (internal tax) should not apply...
...It may impose such taxes for regulation as well as revenue...
...If the industry is competitive, the more advanced states like Massachusetts cannot afford to handicap too greatly their own manufacturers...
...The trade-unionism of Carey and Greeley has been proved ineffective in the very industries where the tariff is most protective...
...The method is merely a question of technical drafting of the law, and is not any innovation on the principles of legislation or infringement on constitutional boundaries...
...Following Carey, came Horace Greeley...
...In the field of taxation, however, questions of constitutionality have already been settled...
...It may select the industries and articles to be taxed and determine the import duty...
...But there is a menace imminent even in such an investigation at the present time...
...These have come to the front in the discussion of the Beveridge child labor bill...
...Diffuse the Benefits of the Tariff IT is this hope of Congressman Kelley which I believe points toward the duty of the present day in the revision of the tariff...
...Permanent Commission to Administer Law SUCH a tariff commission would necessarily be a permanent one, and naturally it would be a bureau of the Department of Commerce and Labor...
...They might set the minimum age of child labor at fourteen...
...but since the Homestead strike, the once powerful union of that industry has dwindled to a remnant...
Vol. 1 • February 1909 • No. 7
