PAGE TWELVE
CIVILIZATION AND SHOP GIRLS.
(Continued from Page Nine.)
Without any tariff at all, the wage earn
er would have to be paid the same as now,
for the simple reason that he cannot live
on less.
Therefore, the tariff has nothing what
ever to do with the fixing of wages. High
duties are imposed, foreign competition
shut out, a law-made monopoly created,
in order that the Capitalist may rob his
laborer with one hand and the American
consumer with the other.
Even when wages are increased the ad
vance in the price of goods deprives the
workman of the benefit of the higher
wage.
Yet, on the Tariff question, as upon the
Public Utilities question, the politicians
who do the dirty work for the Corpora
tions have got the Labor Unions hoo
dooed.
They see nothing strange or wrong
about a system which in Pittsburg, pro
duces Carnegie, Frick, Schwab, and Co
rey, at one end of the line, and 3-dollar
per-week girls, at the other.
Corey can discard a stale wife and buy
a fresh one, no matter how high she
comes.
But his laborers? Their daughters
work in the department store, at $3 per
week in the day time—and at night they
are in the Tenderloin, on their way to
degradation and a grave in the Potter’s
Field.
® ® ®
Governor Smith 9 s Decision.
In the announcement of Governor Hoke
Smith that he will not be a candidate for
the U. S. Senate, the ingenuous Atlanta
Journal discovers an act of sublime self
denial. Properly handled by the able and
resourceful Journal, the announcement
becomes a Great Renunciation. One
would suppose that Hoke had but to say,
‘Barkis is willin’,” and the senatorial
Peggotty would have been his.
