President. as I have said. an examination of this schedule will show that the duties on 27 items in it are over 100 per cent. I said awhile ago. and I repeat it. the woolen industry. protected for 40 years by duties averaging something like90 per cent. one of the most prosperous industries. if not the most prosperous industry in this country. operating as a trust in violation of the law. arbitrarily fixing the price of its product by reason of high protective duties. under the shelter of protection and monopoly. is paying the lowest wages to its employees of any industry in this coultry except only one. That would seem a startling stltement. and yet I will showtthat the wages paid in this industry. certainly in one section of the country. where imported foreign pauper labor has displaced American labor. are not upon the average. as high as is paid in the cornfields and the wheat fields of the Middle West. and when we consider tile fact that his house is furnished to him free. that his garden and potato patch are furnished to him free. not much higher. if any higher. than the negros wages in the cotton fields of the South. The average weekly wage in the woolen and worsted goods industry is only $9.96. This industry. paying the lowest wages of any industry except one in this country. employing to the displacement of American labor the pauper labor of the backward countries of Europe. whenever a suggestion of the reduction of tariff rates is made. comes to Congress and demands. in the name of protection for American labor. a continuance of these excessive and monopolistic rates. and threatens. if they are not continued. to close down their factories or reduce the wages of their aggregation of Iuns and Magyars. Poles and Italians. I have here some extracts from the report of the United States Commissioner of Labor of his investigation of the recent strike at Lawrence.
Keywords matched
foreign pauper pauper labor