Speech #500039606

President. that high wages earned in the intelligent operation of machinery produce much cheaper goods and bring greatly larger returns to capital invested than low wages in handmade goods or goods made with inferior machinery is one of the propositions demonstrated to be true by the facts I have just read and stated. The fact of payment of high wages is of itself conclusive evidence that the profits of capital are correspondingly high. not that they are made so by a protective tariff. for England has no protective tariff. 6n the contrary. free trade. England gathers the raw material for her factories from the four quarters of the earth. and buys bread and meat for her operatives from foreign countries. her home supplies being utterly inadequate. and standing in the midst of and surrounded by the pauper labor of Europe. pays wages from double to ten times as great as those paid by her competitors. and maintains in the markets of the world a magnificeut supremacy for her manufactured products. while our manufacturers. with the cheapest food in the world at their doors. with raw material of every kind and description lying in marvelous profusion around their factories and furnaces. with machinery admitted to be the most perfect in the world. and laborers the most active. intelligent. and skillful to be found in any country. who accomplish from one and a half to twice as much as European laborers. with their home markets at the doors of their workshops and the protection of 3.000 miles of ocean between them and European labor and competition. cry aloud for protection for American labor against competition with the pauper labor of Europe. A balder. barer. more transparent pretext than this was never invented to cover up a scheme of plunder and spoliation. The power of concentrated capital and machinery. and the influence of these factors over wages and competition. is illustrated in the difference in wages in the several States of our Union. as in Europe.