During the late Fair Trade agitation its advocates were never tired of telling the English working-classes that under Protection their brethren in America were prospering in a remarkable degree, but in the speech to which I have referred Mr. Shearman shows that the average wages in protected trades are actually less than in 1860, the last year of comparative Free Trade, and that while in the ten years previous, wages were constantly increasing, during the succeeding twenty years (1860–1880) there was no appreciable advance, while during the past three years they have been steadily declining; so that here we have one of the staple trades of the country requiring longer hours of labour from the operatives, at considerably lower wages than for the same class in England, while the cost of living is much higher than in this country, and the climate much more trying from the extremes of heat and cold.
Nor is this all, for the American operatives have very much less relaxation than the same class in England, their holidays being very much fewer. Last year my workpeople, in addition to fifty-two Saturday afternoons, had nineteen whole days, although there was abundance of work for them, and the necessities of the business only required six days closing of the works. The English artisan loves to have a deal of liberty, and his earnings enable him to indulge his desire in that respect.
As may be supposed, the ranks of the operatives in the cotton mills of America receive no accession from England, but only from Germany and Scandinavia, where wages are low, and the oppressive military systems drive people from their native countries.
During the last seven years of depression in trade in England it is well known that, taken as a whole, the working classes have suffered comparatively little, the loss falling mainly upon manufacturers, whose profits have been greatly lessened. But how would the working-classes have fared if, in addition to the loss of home trade involved in the failure of the crops for so many years, the same causes were in operation which make it impossible for America to have a great foreign trade?
It is manifest that so long as Protection exists in the United States exports must necessarily be confined almost entirely to such commodities as other countries cannot produce. Until recently the home demand has kept the manufacturers in the States well employed; but competition has now become exceedingly fierce, and they are beginning to tread upon each other’s heels. It is this state of things which is destined to exert the most potent influence upon the fate of Protection. The very class which has hitherto been loudest in demanding prohibitory duties upon imports, will soon, from sheer necessity, be found demanding their removal.
It is worthy of note, too, that while under Protection the earnings of the producing class have been steadily declining, colossal fortunes, amounting in one case to twenty or thirty millions sterling, have been built up by individual monopolists. On the other hand, during the same period and under Free Trade, there has been a wider distribution of material comfort in England, and, as shown by the official returns, a decided decrease in the number of millionaires.
In passing through America on my return from Australia in 1876, I expressed the opinion that Free Trade there would be by no means an unmixed blessing for English manufacturers, for whereas at the present time a vessel going to Australia from the United States with a cargo of goods has to come back in ballast, doubling the cost of freight, under Free Trade it would take back a cargo of wool, and the Americans would consequently become our competitors both in buying and selling.
With the single exception of having higher wages—and this advantage is more than balanced by the extra cost of living—I have failed to find that American artisans are in any way better off than the English, while, as I have already shown, their hours of labour are longer and the effect of the climate much more exhausting.
A very striking feature to be met with in most American cities and towns is the large number of tolerably respectable-looking men loafing about and doing nothing. In England such men, only in shabbier dress, would be called “cadgers.” I am told there are large numbers who prefer any shifty mode of obtaining a living so long as they can wear a black coat and avoid honest labour. In the villages along the banks of the Hudson I saw more children without shoes and stockings than are to be met with in any part of England in a similar area. They go to school shoeless, and a woman told me that when shoes were put on their feet on Sundays they complained loudly. A land of freedom for tongue and foot!
During the Southern rebellion fears were expressed that the result of emancipation would be to flood the markets of the North with negro labour, but this does not appear to have been the case. As long as slavery existed the North was attractive to the negro as the land of freedom, but when freedom was proclaimed throughout the States the negro naturally elected to remain where he had always been—the climate and surroundings being well suited to him. The head waiter at our hotel at West Point was a slave in Richmond until the middle of the war, when he escaped to Washington. I asked him how he got there. “Oh, by the underground railway,” said he. It took him a week to travel the hundred miles, and he had many narrow escapes, but was fortunate enough to come out all right and to get a situation to wait upon one of Abraham Lincoln’s sons. He told me his owner, a lady, taught him to read and write in face of the certainty of being sent to jail in case of being discovered. His father was sold away down south sixteen years before, but since that day they had again met at Richmond. “Well,” I said, “neither Jeff. Davis nor any of his crew will ever play you such pranks again.” “No Sir,” said he.