Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
By the last census it is made to appear that of the 17,392,099 of our
population engaged in all kinds of industries 7,670,493 are employed in
agriculture, 4,074,238 in professional and personal service (2,934,876 of
whom are domestic servants and laborers), while 1,810,256 are employed in
trade and transportation and 3,837,112 are classed as employed in
manufacturing and mining.
For present purposes, however, the last number given should be considerably
reduced. Without attempting to enumerate all, it will be conceded that
there should be deducted from those which it includes 375,143 carpenters
and joiners, 285,401 milliners, dressmakers, and seamstresses, 172,726
blacksmiths, 133,756 tailors and tailoresses, 102,473 masons, 76,241
butchers, 41,309 bakers, 22,083 plasterers, and 4,891 engaged in
manufacturing agricultural implements, amounting in the aggregate to
1,214,023, leaving 2,623,089 persons employed in such manufacturing
industries as are claimed to be benefited by a high tariff.
To these the appeal is made to save their employment and maintain their
wages by resisting a change. There should be no disposition to answer such
suggestions by the allegation that they are in a minority among those who
labor, and therefore should forego an advantage in the interest of low
prices for the majority. Their compensation, as it may be affected by the
operation of tariff laws, should at all times be scrupulously kept in view;
and yet with slight reflection they will not overlook the fact that they
are consumers with the rest; that they too have their own wants and those
of their families to supply from their earnings, and that the price of the
necessaries of life, as well as the amount of their wages, will regulate
the measure of their welfare and comfort.
But the reduction of taxation demanded should be so measured as not to
necessitate or justify either the loss of employment by the workingman or
the lessening of his wages; and the profits still remaining to the
manufacturer after a necessary readjustment should furnish no excuse for
the sacrifice of the interests of his employees, either in their
opportunity to work or in the diminution of their compensation. Nor can the
worker in manufactures fail to understand that while a high tariff is
claimed to be necessary to allow the payment of remunerative wages, it
certainly results in a very large increase in the price of nearly all sorts
of manufactures, which, in almost countless forms, he needs for the use of
himself and his family. He receives at the desk of his employer his wages,
and perhaps before he reaches his home is obliged, in a purchase for family
use of an article which embraces his own labor, to return in the payment of
the increase in price which the tariff permits the hard-earned compensation
of many days of toil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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