1893 - State Library Information Center

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND FUNCTIONS OF BUREAUS. 65parently the problem is no nearer a solution now than at thebeginning. On one side of the controversy it is contended that,owing to the fact that wages paid to labor are higher in thiscountry than in Europe, without the protection given by dutieson imports, wages and the general conditions of the workmen inthis country would decline to the level of foreign countries.On the other side, the opponents of a tarifl argue that the effectsof a tarift are to restrict the employment of labor, and consequentlyis injurious. On one side it is said that the higher wagesand better social conditions prevailing here tend to enhance thecost of production, while on the other side it is asserted, withequal vehemence, that the higher wages paid here have a directlyopposite effect—that the stimulus of high wages is to increasethe efficiency of labor in an ever-increasing ratio. For more thana hundred years this talk has been going on. Our representativesin Congress have spent months of their time yearly debatingthis question at the expense of the people. Great politicalparties have taken sides in the controversy; campaign orators,writers and newspapers have filled the country with literature onthe subject; at times when changes in the rates were threatened,industry has been paralyzed, and hundreds of thousands of workmenthrown out of employment, on the pretext that the intendedlegislation would be ruinous; while apparently during all theseyoars of controversy it has never occurred to our statesmen thatthu poiutH at issue between them were susceptible of demonstrationi>y moans of statistics. But, except the meagre data obtainedby the Aldrieh Committee, in 1890, through the medium of theNational liuroau of Labor, no attempt has been made to officiallyascertain the relative cost of production by reason of the differingmim of wages. The same observation applies with equalforce to the recurrence of panics, the unemployed, the centralizationof wealth, the growth and power of monopolies; all theseare matters of vital interest to the whole people, yet, the causesthat produce them have not been made a matter of concerted investigation.In evory-day business tho same confusion exists;wo hoar of supply and demand, of over-production, of underconsumption,the extravagance of the poor, fluctuations in theprices of emnmoditiefc and in wages. Any oue of these pretendodcauses may be assumed by those interested in accounting5