Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/464

448 they have kept the prices of most important materials, which are necessary in the processes of domestic industry, far above those of our competitors, promoting their prosperity and retarding our own progress.

Yet our enormous advantages in most of the conditions which are conducive to human welfare are such that we thrive. Our bad methods of taxation are like a pebble in the shoe of a runner, keeping him painfully in the second place, when, if relieved, he could lead the field without an effort.

It is due to these favorable conditions that the paradoxical form of statement represents an absolute truth—viz., that our high rates of wages are due to our very low cost of general production.

This leads us directly to the consideration of the conditions of production, especially in the manufacturing arts, from which our ample profits or high wages are or may be derived, if our moderate taxes are rightly adjusted to our conditions. We possess so great an advantage in our position and in our control of the production of metals, of fibers, and of food products, that there can, of course, be no equalization of wages in this country with those of others, because we could only equalize by reducing our own. The tendency of all the forces in action, when not artificially obstructed, is to raise the rate of wages, to diminish the margin of profits, and to equalize the conditions of working people to their great advantage. If we must wait for the equalization of wages to those of other countries, as is so often urged, before undertaking tariff reform, we may wait forever. It is our very advantage in high rates of wages and low cost of production which might enable us to proceed earnestly, safely, and surely to absolute free trade within less than a generation, and to adopt that policy for the very purpose, not of equalizing, but of maintaining our huge advantage over every other nation.

One may sometimes feel humiliated when one sees men of skill, capital, and ability trembling before the competition of what they call pauper labor. Every man of affairs, every manufacturer, every employer of labor, avoids low-priced or pauper labor in his own work as much as possible; he knows that it is costly; he knows that, when he can command skilled labor at the highest price which is warranted by the market for the product, he will do his work with that kind of labor at the least cost. When it becomes necessary to run works on short time and to discharge a part of the workmen, who are the ones discharged? Not the high-priced men; they can not be spared; it is the high-priced men whose work is not affected by hard times. Every man makes his own rate of wages by his skill, aptitude, and industry; and those who do the work in the best manner get constant employment. The incapable are sometimes subject to compulsory