Fallacy E: that the costs of Wages to employers and of Materials to manufacturers somehow justify Protectionism. The harmful confusion is constantly made here between Rates of Wages and Costs of Labor—two very diverse matters. Rates of Wages depend on a very different set of circumstances from Costs of Labor. Failure to draw this distinction, and a desperate desire to clutch even at a straw with which to bolster up absurd Restrictions, have made a hotch-potch and a caricature of attempted argument at this point. Rates of Wages have always been relatively high in this country as compared with the countries of Europe for two general reasons: (1) the country is new, with enormous natural advantages of every sort, with comparatively few laborers competing steadily with each other for work, large numbers of persons passing constantly out of the employed into the employing classes; and (2) there has almost always been from the first, and there is likely to be again in the immediate future even if there be not at the present moment, a Money in this country depreciated below the gold standards of Europe, in which the rates of current wages are always reckoned, and which makes them seem to be higher than they actually are in purchasing-power. On the other hand, Costs of Labor have always been, and are now, low in this country as compared with Europe, for two general reasons also: (1) all classes of laborers are more efficient and skilled in this country than in Europe, working with more energy more hours in the week, under less cost of superintendence, being as a rule more temperate and healthful and educated persons, so that employers get more for what they give than do employers abroad; and (2) the cost of that to the employers in which the laborers are paid, whether money or other valuables, is always less here than abroad, because the money usually is depreciated money which costs less in commodities, and even if it be not, the current prices of general commodities are higher here than there, so that the cost of wages paid directly or indirectly in commodities is less here to employers.

A second and distinct and wholly convincing proof, that the Cost of Labor to employers has been less here than abroad during the first century of our national existence, has been the unquestioned fact, that the Rate of Profits has been higher. A constant stream of foreign Capital has come hither for investment, drawn solely by the higher rates of Profit. But if the rates of Profit have proven to be higher, the costs of Labor must have been lower, because laborers and capitalists divide the whole returns between them. Nobody else has any claim upon the conjoint proceeds. Profits are the Leavings of the Costs of Labor. If, therefore, these Leavings are larger in one country than another, then of necessity the Costs of Labor are lower in the first country.

Now, Protectionists have had the effrontery (largely the result of ignorance) to contend, that they are at a disadvantage as employers of laborers on account of the rates of Wages they are obliged to pay to them! Exactly the reverse is the truth. Instead of being at any disadvantage at this point, it is a matter of absolute demonstration, that American employers pay the smallest costs of Labor in the world! Employers as such have no interest in the rates of Wages as such, but only in the costs of Labor to themselves as capitalists. High rates of Wages not only usually accompany low costs of Labor, but also are a proof of them! The patient (not to say stupid) American People have consented for thirty years past to be abominably taxed for the exclusive benefit of a set of brazen mendicants, on the ostensible ground, that the said public beggars were unfortunately placed in comparison with European competitors, when the simple truth has been, that they had a constant advantage in the best, and cheapest (in cost to themselves), and steadiest and most intelligent (on the whole), laborers in the world.

What is the truth about raw materials in this country? Especially raw materials in those branches of industry, which have been most steadily protectionized from the first, like iron and copper, and cottons and woollens? Can any reason be found for legislatively excluding foreign products of these classes on the ground of any disadvantage of our producers on the score of raw materials? Look at iron ore, for example, now protectionized to the extent of 75 cents per ton. No country in the world possesses such deposits in quantity and quality and accessibility of iron ore as the United States of America. Vast beds of the best ore in the world, especially in wide regions along the whole course of the Tennessee River, lie directly upon the surface of the ground; and the so-called "Iron Mountain" in Missouri is said to have ore enough above the general surface of the country round to supply the wants of the entire United States for two centuries! Yet every ton of this ore is artificially lifted in price to the very People to whom God gave it in exceeding abundance. The average cost of mining, washing, screening, and loading upon steam freight-cars for transportation to market, of brown-hematite ore at one of the Mines in Tennessee during the summer and autumn of 1890, was 33 cents per ton, with a constant downward tendency in cost as machinery was multiplied and methods improved. This included the rent paid to the owners of the land holding the ore-beds, and every other item of cost carefully computed by the owner of the capital and manager at the mines. This statement is made on the authority of the said owner and manager over his own sign manual, with his consent given that it be printed as at present in the interest at once of Science and Righteousness.

It has often been publicly stated by experts, that there is more coal in deposit in the United States than in all the rest of the world put together. Nevertheless, bituminous coal has been protectionized since 1874 to the extent of 75 cents per ton, and slack or culm (another form of coal) 40 and 30 cents per ton. The bounty of God to the people of this country has been so far forth thwarted by the greed of mine-owners acting on the subservience of members of Congress to the few rich combined for that purpose to the impoverishment of the unorganized masses. Especially has every interest of New England both popular and manufacturing been sacrificed to the short-sighted selfishness of the mine-owners, because the British Provinces, just to the northward, are full of bituminous coal waiting for a market against New England goods.

Limestone is a second indispensable requisite for the reduction of iron ores. God has put the ore and the coal and the lime in unfailing quantities in close proximity with each other throughout the entire valley of the Tennessee. So small is the natural cost of making iron in that favored region, that it has been transported this summer to Savannah by rail (freights heightened by tariff-taxes on steel rails and lumber), and then exported 3000 miles to Liverpool with good profits to the makers by their own confession.

Steel rails are protectionized at present to the extent of $17 per ton, formerly $28 per ton. Fortunately, we have at present a competent National Labor-Commissioner, heretofore in the service of Massachusetts in the same capacity, Carroll D. Wright, who has just made a Report to Congress on the comparative cost of producing steel rails here and abroad. The following table is national and official and indisputable. It shows the Element of Cost in one ton of steel rails in Eleven distinct establishments, the first Two being located in the United States, the next Seven in countries on the Continent of Europe, and the last Two in Great Britain. The first column gives the Cost of the Material in the several districts, the second the Cost of Labor, and the third the total cost of the rails.

Distinct Establishments.Materials.Labor.Total Cost.
1$21.10$1.54$24.79
225.111.3827.68
317.671.0419.57
418.062.5122.18
518.064.6425.65
618.232.5823.12
718.102.6823.19
818.662.9723.74
923.422.0127.02
1018.052.5421.90
1116.391.3618.58

The reader who knows how to read between the lines will observe the strong confirmation of this table to the point already made in these pages, namely, that the "pauper labor of Europe" costs much more at a given point than the more highly paid labor of England and the United States. Thus: the average Cost of Labor in a ton of rails in the two latter countries is $1.70; the average in the seven Continental countries is $2.63. The average total cost per ton in the nine foreign countries is $22.77; the average in the two establishments here is $26.23. It must be remembered, that the cost of the material and of all the processes of manufacture here is greatly enhanced by the device of the tariff-taxes: still the difference in cost is even then only $3.46 per ton greater than the foreigners' cost: considering that these foreign rails must be carried 3000 miles over sea, how comes it that a tariff-tax of $28 or $17 per ton is needful in order to foster rail-making in this country? Take off all the tariff-taxes the rail-makers and transporters have to pay out, and could they not well forego the additional taxes they now impose on their fellow-citizens? Is there anything anywhere in the natural costs of Materials and Labor here to put American manufacturers at any disadvantage in their natural lines of business as compared with foreigners in their natural lines of industry?

Fallacy F: that artificial tariff-burdens placed at one point may become a compensation for other such burdens placed at another point of the same general line. This fallacy has been luridly illustrated in this country since 1867, when in the Wool and Woollens Tariff of that year additional protectionism was accorded to Woollens ostensibly to compensate the manufacturers for protectionism then first accorded to raw wools. For a number of years the woollen manufacturers had succeeded in persuading the wool-growers not to demand of Congress tariff-taxes on raw wools, thus publicly confessing that such taxes raise the prices of materials to the manufacturers thereof. But the wool-raisers argued naturally, if protectionism be good for woollens, it must also be good for wools; the truth was, it was equally baneful to both, and to every other beneficiary of it in the long run; but the wool-workers had no answer to the simple logic of the wool-growers,—they gave their case away when they alleged that they could not live without government aid,—and so they were obliged to surrender to their already angered brethren of the fleeces in 1867, and higher tariff-taxes were put on the woollens in order to compensate the manufacturers for the anticipated rise in the price of wools. Of course it was supposed that the patient people would bear the now doubled burdens put upon them by two privileged sets of their fellow-citizens. If protectionist taxes made the manufacturers rich, why should they not also enrich the rural herdsmen? In short, why may not such taxes make everybody rich?