Editorials from the Hearst NewspapersBrisbane, Arthur
Philosophy
Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
Brisbane, Arthur
Editorials; Essays
He will never see a walking delegate; he will never be bothered
by the dark cloud of unionism.
He will find a perfect heaven in the way of low wages.
BUT HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL GOODS.
His department store will dwindle into a store for selling rice,
and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will
get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty
cents in a year.
In the land where men are not well paid THEY CAN'T SPEND MONEY.
The best friend of the American merchant, builder, lawyer,
doctor, property owner, banker and general business man is the
individual or the newspaper that helps the people to get high
wages, AND THUS GIVES THEM MONEY TO SPEND.
WHAT ABOUT THE CHINESE, KIND SIR?
A prosperous and old New York merchant assures a conference of
workingmen that England's great strikes have caused that country
to lose its leadership in exports of machinery.
If England's wonderful system of trades unionism has hurt its
exports of machinery, if abundance of very cheap slave labor
means great industrial superiority, we beg to ask this question:
WHY IS NOT CHINA THE GREAT EXPORTING COUNTRY OF THE WORLD?
There are scores of millions of men in China glad to work for a
few pennies per day.
There are no labor unions in China, and in some districts the
employer can have his workmen beheaded for demanding an increase
of pay. If the venerable old New York merchant is right, China
ought to be certainly a marvellously successful country
industrially.
As a matter of fact, China is dead, and there is no better proof
of her complete deadness than the fact that among all her
millions of coolies there is not enough spirit for the formation
of a labor union.
The energy of the British workman established England's
industrial greatness and fought for and won the great
trades-union system which the workmen of this country are
developing so ably. ----
Suppose it were true that trades unionism, with its higher wages
and shorter hours, decreases exports--what of it?
Is it not more important to have ten million workmen well paid,
with reasonable leisure and decent lives, than to have a handful
of iron masters and coal-mine owners piling up millions of pounds
and producing sons like the famous "Jubilee Juggins"?
Wouldn't it be better for China if her several hundred millions
of citizens were well paid, well fed and well educated, even
though Li Hung Chang and the other prosperous viceroys should all
be paid a little less money, and own fewer square miles of rice
fields and tea plants? ----
In Huxley's admirable biography, written by his son, you may read
of a 'longshoreman who, thanks to reasonably short hours of work
and a little leisure, took up the study of scientific subjects.
He was aided by Huxley, who lent him a microscope, and ultimately
this common 'longshoreman's researches were of real value to the
scientific world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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