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 The California Manufacturer and 
 Eastern Competition 
 
 ""he natural evolution of the State from an agricultural into a manufacturing 
 :ommunity shown to be held in abeyance by artificial wage rates and conditions 
 imposed upon employers by unions. Helplessness of the California manufacturer 
 in the field of competition through these influences, and the inevitable passing 
 of the important manufacturing industries of the State unless the employer 
 shall assert control of his establishment and place his labor on a basis of 
 free industry. Artificially high wages shown to be of no benefit to the 
 laborer receiving them, while the consequent narrowing of the indus- 
 trial field suppresses business and produces ever increasing numbers 
 of idle workmen. The remedy and proper line of operation pre- 
 sented, and the vast opportunity at the hands of the manu- 
 facturer in supplying the local and over-sea trade, considered. 
 
 norance, neglect, or contempt of human rights, are the sole causes of public 
 misfortunes, and corruptions of government. — First National Assembly of 
 France. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO BAR 
 
 Issued by 
 BUSINESS MEN'S ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION 
 
 7 /
 
 WRITINGS OF JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 PAMPHLETS 
 
 Our National Tendency and its Goal 
 
 Being a discussion of the Political and Industrial direction of the United States 
 under the influence of prevailing economic forces, and statement of the causes 
 thereof, and the means to avert the conclusion to which those forces are pro- 
 ceeding. 
 
 Together with an Address before the Chinese 
 Students Association of America at its Con- 
 vention held in San Francisco in January, 1914, 
 upon 
 
 THE STUDENT IN ORIENTAL IMMIGRATION 
 
 Considering the effect upon China and Japan of the Policy of the United States in 
 shutting off migration of the Orient with the West, the real cause that moves 
 industrial migration, and the condition that confronts Oriental Students seek- 
 ing education in the United States, by reason of these influences. 
 
 32 pp. 
 
 "JAPAN'S MESSAGE TO AMERICA" 
 
 (A REPLY) 
 
 Considering the impelling cause which moves the Japanese nation to desire the 
 good will of the American people; the necessity to Japan of free intercourse with 
 the civilization of the West, now shut off by immigration exclusion; the calam- 
 ity which inevitably must befall that nation through a continuance of the 
 isolation thrust upon her by this policy. The doctrine of exclusion shown 
 to rest upon a mistaken belief regarding the effect of labor immigration 
 upon wages of intra-country workmen; the popular opinion being that 
 such immigration lowers wages, whereas, in truth, it raises 
 wages and increases general prosperity. 
 33 pp. 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Noting the rise and forms of human government The movement for expimging 
 the Constitution of the United States, with the cause and processes of that 
 movement. The passing of the American Commonwealth and the evolution 
 of the centralized State in its stead; vnth observation of the several forces 
 responsible therefor. Remarking the various expedients for relief of the 
 working classes, among which, the California eight-hour labor initiatives, 
 and sundry others. The basic errors of such proposals, and the hope- 
 lessness of benefit to the working people through pursuit of their 
 direction. Together with consideration of the true cause of pre- 
 vailing wrong conditions within the nation, and the disaster in 
 which these must culminate unless they be intelligently 
 and courageously corrected. 
 70 pp.
 
 The California Manufacturer and 
 Eastern Competition 
 
 The natural evolution of the State from an agricultural into a manufacturing 
 community shown to be held in abeyance by artificial wage rates and conditions 
 imposed upon employers by unions. Helplessness of the California manufacturer 
 in the field of competition through these influences, and the inevitable passing 
 of the important manufacturing industries of the State unless the employer 
 shall assert control of his establishment and place his labor on a basis of 
 free industry. Artificially high wages shown to be of no benefit to the 
 laborer receiving them, while the consequent narrowing of the indus- 
 trial field suppresses business and produces ever increasing numbers 
 of idle workmen. The remedy and proper line of operation pre- 
 sented, and the vast opportunity at the hands of the manu- 
 facturer in supplying the local and over-sea trade, considered. 
 
 Ignorance, neglect, or contempt of human rights, are the sole causes of public 
 misfortunes, and corruptions of government. — First National Assembly of 
 France. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO BAR 
 
 Issued by 
 BUSINESS MEN'S ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
 
 Copies of the within pamphlets or booklets may be had 
 by addressing 
 
 BTTSIXESS MEN'S ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION, 
 
 1310 Humboldt Bank Building, 
 
 San Francisco, Cal.
 
 
 THE CALIFORNIA MANUFACTURER 
 AND EASTERN COMPETITION 
 
 By JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 The A company of Los Angeles was in the market for the purchase 
 of a quantity of machinery and received from the X company of San 
 Francisco ofTers to furnish the same. The price proposed was $8,450. 
 While the matter was pending, and before final arrangements, the Y 
 company of Chicago made an offer to furnish the same apparatus for 
 $200 less than the San Francisco house. Although the latter company 
 had figured exceedingly low, yet it fell in price to meet the ofifer of 
 its competitor. Whereupon the Eastern agent wired his house and 
 received the authorization to cut the price to the extent of $800. As 
 this sum would have been $500 less than the San Francisco company 
 could have put the goods on the car for, it was compelled to withdraw 
 and its Eastern competitor got the business. 
 
 Shortly following this incident the Z mining company, operating 
 
 in IMexico but having its offices in San Francisco, an enterprise moved 
 
 through California capital, was in need of machinery upon which the X 
 
 company made an ofifer. The price made was $4,150. The proposal seemed 
 
 satisfactory and was about to be accepted when the H company of 
 
 Wisconsin, hearing of the matter, made an ofifer to furnish the equip- 
 
 J ment for $1,000 less than the California concern, and give $1,000 worth 
 
 ^ of extras on one year dating, and got the order. This occurred notwith- 
 
 ^ standing the X company had previously furnished to the mining company 
 
 S three mills, of which the new purchases were counterparts, and which 
 
 ^ prior mills had given entire satisfaction. 
 
 The X company, finding their concern bested in their own field by 
 
 v^ two competitors with works located many miles from California, began 
 
 ^^ to investigate the condition of manufacturing in the State to ascertain, 
 
 i if possible, how far other businesses than theirs were afifected in supply- 
 
 ■^ ing the trade of this locality by Eastern competition. It was found 
 
 V that many lines were complaining of similar experiences. These em- 
 
 . j braced the entire iron maimfacturing industry, the lines of many fabrics, 
 
 N^ and numerous articles and substances of building material. In short. 
 
 ,s2_there was scarcely a field of manufacturing which Californians had 
 
 ^"entered that had not either l)een sup])lante(l and extinguished, or was 
 
 menaced by the manufacturer's agent. 
 
 In conference with the re])resentatives of various establishments 
 the narrative of the X ci>m])any's experiences was paralleled and dis- 
 
 |3 
 
 401495
 
 coiintoil by stories of eitisodes of the most tlas^rant cliaraotcr. It was 
 the concurrent opinion of this conference that unless the manufacturer 
 of Cahfornia could stand at the door of the purchaser on an ecjual 
 footing", as regards cost of product with his I^astern competit(»r, the 
 day of fabricating" in this State of any kind of output that it would be 
 worth the while of an Eastern concern in a similar line to put a bid 
 upon, was at an end. 
 
 That there were differences between the bidders in their respective 
 costs of production w'as manifest ; and the question arose how to equal 
 these. It was conceived that the California factory w'as subject to the 
 payment of various State taxes and other charges from which the 
 Eastern concern, not producing here, w"as free. Such taxation was an 
 overhead increasing cost of the product. Accordingly it was proposed 
 to see if there could not be devised a protective tariff in favor of the 
 local manufacturer and against the Easterner in the form of a license 
 tax upon the foreign agent, or that the product wdiich he shipped into 
 the State might be in some way subjected to a tax equal at least :n 
 amount to the differential in cost of producing such product. 
 
 The Business ]\Ien's Economic Association was appealed to by the 
 manufacturers to give an opinion upon this matter and show what was 
 possible of being done in the premises for the saving of their enter- 
 prises and others of the State similarly situated. 
 
 The inquiry is an exceedingly important one. The pressure of 
 interstate competition has long been felt in California, at no place quite 
 so great as in San Francisco and by those factories about the bay. 
 Many factories heretofore in existence amongst us have succumbed to 
 this antagonism. The condition is not favorable to the starting of new- 
 factories in this State. Some of those now existing have formed a 
 Home Industry League, and are trying by working on public sentiment 
 to move purchasers to favor home production rather than buy from 
 outside concerns.* This influence, however, is favorable onlv to a 
 limited extent ; to what extent is, indeed, very doubtful. In the t\vo 
 cases complained of by the X company the Los Angeles buyer was a 
 college friend of the X salesman and wanted to throw him the business. 
 but could not bring himself to feel like making him a gift of $800 in 
 order to favor him w^ith a transaction. In the San Francisco case the 
 buyer was purchasing for one of the most noted and thorough-going 
 of Californians : Colonel Dan Burns, a man who thinks as much of 
 California as anyone in it, and w^ho would do as much for advancing 
 its industries as any of its public-spirited citizens. It is probable that 
 
 *The Labor Council delegated its executive officers to act in conjunction with the Home Industry 
 League and Boilermakers' Union No. 25 in urging Mayor Rolph and the Supervisors to take action to 
 compel the Board of Works to reconsder its decision to award to an Eastern firm a contract for boilers 
 at the Relief Home. C'ommunicati'^ns fr'^m the Home Industry League and the boilermakers' organiza- 
 tion protested against the policy of the Works Board and advocated the fostering of home industries. 
 It was stated that no provisions had been inserted in the specificatons of the contracts for an eight- 
 hour day for the employees who construct the boilers and that this is a violation of the charter. The 
 local firm bidding on the 'nh w^s ?1 000 higher than the Eastern concern, but in view of the fact 
 that the job is to cost $12,000, this difference is not considered serious enough to discriminate against 
 home industry. — San Francisco Examiner, April 13, 1913.
 
 l)oth he and liis Los Ang-eles compatriot would be willing to join the 
 Home Industry League, predicated as it is upon the principle of pro- 
 moting the California manufacturer. But when it comes to the concrete 
 transaction it is found that business is not sentiment, but rests upon 
 solid rock bottom of economics. Men will push the line of cheapest 
 and best as far as it will go, for to pay higher for goods of a like 
 quality because we love the seller is love and not business, and business 
 based on love soon goes to pieces. This law works as it ought to 
 work, for the welfare of the entire of society. The fault is not with 
 the law. We must bring our business into a condition that we can 
 conform to it. 
 
 There is no way under the laws of the United States by which 
 any impost can be laid by the State or any of its subordinate bodies 
 upon anything shipped from any State or territory of the United States 
 into California. This could not be done either by a direct tariff upon 
 the goods, or indirectly through licensing an agent or his business. It 
 is useless to cite authorities upon these propositions in this thes'S. 
 The cases can be found collated by those who wish to pursue this 
 branch of the inquiry in 2 Digest U. S. Supreme Court Reports, title 
 Commerce, page 1417. Such expedients have, by various statutory 
 contrivances as the ingenuity of legislators have devised, been many 
 times attempted, and always by the Supreme Court of the United States 
 have been swept aside as in contravention of the constitution of the 
 United States providing free trade between the States. This can never 
 be changed as long as the constitution exists, for it is a basic incident 
 and quality of the very political theory upon which the structure of 
 that constitution is built, namely, the principle of human liberty. \Ye. 
 now hear loud calls for the abolition of the constitution, and the asser- 
 tion that it is a document interfering with the protection by the State 
 of the citizen ; that it was formulated to fit conditions in other times 
 than these, and that its plan is not suited to the order of things created 
 l)v the larger development of industry as obtains at present.* 
 
 There is no incident with which the economic history of the world 
 is more filled than the great question of protection or free trade. What 
 is now demanded in California against Chicago and Wisconsin was 
 common all over ancient Rome, and is today existent throughout most 
 of Europe. There are countries in which one may not carry eggs or 
 cabbages from the truck farms without the walls through the gates of 
 the city without paying tariff thereon; where almost every hilltop as 
 y(ni pass through the country is surmounted with the kiosk of the toll 
 taker. During the middle ages of Europe it was the province of owners 
 of estates, or signiors, to exact "octroi" upon all goods passing 
 tlieir domains. l"he clog that these impedimentia have administered 
 to business, to the industrial rise of the people, has been one of the 
 
 *See my pamphlet, "The Iiulustiial Unrest."
 
 larj^e rease^ns t\^r the l)cnii;litccl coiulilion of the lower chisses of such 
 countries as IVance. Italy, Spain, Portugal and some parts of Austria, 
 while the countries pervaded by even a semblance of English enlighten- 
 ment and liberty have abolished it. The remedy for our troubles is 
 not to be found in proposals for law^s that make it a crime for men 
 living on opposite sides of a political boundary line to exchange the 
 products of their labors. For the admitted evils that attend us we 
 must look in other directions than this for remedy. 
 
 It would be proper that the out-of-state concern be placed upon 
 an equal footing as regards taxes and assessments with the factory 
 doing business w-ithin the State. For a while there was a variance 
 between the two producing corporations in respect to the corporation 
 license tax; but the legislature has now wisely repealed this pin-prick 
 to business and that question is out of the way. For the rest, while 
 the State may not charge a tariff upon commerce entering the State, 
 it could lawfully relieve all factories within the State from taxation of 
 all kinds, and instead levy a tax upon new material after it had been 
 delivered to and become the property of the purchaser. This would 
 be a tax upon the output of the factory sold within the State, and it 
 would in like manner bear upon products of the foreign manufacturer 
 placed within the State. It would not be a tax upon commerce, for 
 the goods would be no longer in transit, but would have become a 
 part of the common bulk of the property of the State, hence subject to 
 State taxation, and the State has the power to say from what kind of 
 property and in what way it will draw its taxation. If, under these 
 circumstances the California manufacturer did not make the sale, he 
 at least w^ould not have to pay taxes in so far as that particular con- 
 signment of goods was concerned. If taxes were great enough to 
 exercise a controlling influence in the situation, this suggestion might 
 be effective ; but they are not. All the California manufacturer could 
 possibly benefit by the arrangement would be to the extent of remission 
 of his taxes. If he sold no goods in California he would pay no taxes ; 
 the foreigner selling all the goods of the local man's kind in the State, 
 would pay all the taxes which otherwise would be paid by the local 
 man ; but where the foreigner can pay the amount of the State ad 
 valorem upon the goods and then undersell the local manufacturer, the 
 shifting of the tax scheme w^ould not avail to protect him from his 
 out-of-state competitor, and this would be precisely the case. Still 
 following the X company as an illustration, this concern sells in Cali- 
 fornia $150,000 of manufactured articles annually. It pays in taxes 
 of all kinds to State and county governments $.5,000 per year, or 3>4 
 per cent upon its California output. We have seen that the Eastern 
 concerns paid the freight on the goods to this State and sold them at 
 16 per cent cheaper than the X company was able to sell like goods. 
 They could pay the tax and still beat the California concern by 12 
 per cent. 
 
 6
 
 Afanifcstl}' we can get iki relief in the sitnation by nieditatino; 
 schemes of taxation either to advantage the home man or to repress 
 the foreig'ncr. We mnst tnrn our thought to our own coiuHtion and 
 consider why il is that he can sell cheaper than we can make. There 
 are three elements which enter into production, viz: land, capital and 
 labor. Land comprises the site of factory and ofifices and its charge 
 is represented by rent ; capital covers all other elements except labor 
 and is represented by interest, and labor is paid for in wages. The 
 rent of the factory site can be g"otten as cheaply in California as in the 
 East ; interest is no higher here than there, and the capital account 
 required to conduct business is smaller ; buildings do not have to be 
 as substantially constructed here as there by reason of more favorable 
 climate, and fuel oil and hydro-electricity is a cheaper fuel, light and 
 power than most factories possess. The freight on raw material shipped 
 into the State is not as great as the freight on the finished product so 
 shipped in, and when the matter is examined it is found that the real 
 trouble with the California manufacturer arises out of his third element, 
 his labor. Wages are from 15 to 35 per cent higher in the California 
 factories than is the case in Eastern States. This is expressed in not 
 only actual coin paid, but in shorter working hours, in limitation of 
 output, in loading industry with supernumerary employees brought about 
 by highly artificial subdivisions of labor on the job or in the shop, and 
 by^ many regulations imposed by the employee upon the employer, 
 which gives him very little to say about his labor except to pay it. 
 The force through which all this is effected is the labor union, in the 
 hands of which California industry is tied tighter, it is believed, than 
 is the case in any other industrial region in the country. 
 
 The question arises, how can this condition be changed, and can 
 it be modified without injury to the laborer? Very certainly if we can 
 bring about a state of things in which industry is active, business brisk, 
 everyone having all they can do and all making money, in which there 
 are more jobs than men and none are unwillingly idle, notwithstanding- 
 new laborers are constantly arriving in the State in large numbers; in 
 which the harbor is full of ships, the warehouses full of goods, the 
 banks full of money which they freely lend, where every line of enter- 
 prise is vital and bouyant, the development of the State going forward 
 by leaps and bounds — if there can be in the gift of Heaven such a 
 condition as this possible to California, then it would seem but a matter 
 of common sense to study and get familiar with the ways and means 
 of bringing it about. 
 
 My reader, I assert to you with all the emphasis which my voice 
 can bear or my pen impress, that this condition is not only i)ossible, 
 but that it can at any time be called into existence, called almost at 
 once ; and that if it be not brought about through change of the direction 
 in which the trend of affairs is now moving, times will not only i^et
 
 harder as tbo nu~tntlis or years _l;"o on. but lliey will I'liid their fruitiun 
 in tiiat relief wiiieh Nature always provides to stop the eonrse oi the 
 passing' of civilization and in its defense, namely, war.'' 
 
 Let us then explore the held of the innuences with which industry 
 in California is environed and see if we can ;ic(iuire an understanding' 
 of its complexities. And let it be remarked that in considering any 
 economic or sociological phenomenon or postulate, such is never proven 
 beyond controversy. Ever}^ such doctrine or statement is polemical. 
 Nothing, however clearly reasoned or abundantly shown, is beyond 
 denial by a considerable class as to the correctness of its conclusions. 
 There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world today, many of 
 them in the United States, who will tell you with elaboration that 
 human slavery as an institution is proper and for the highest benefit 
 of both the enslaved and society. There is not the slightest doubt that 
 did not the law forbid, large numbers of native born citizens of the 
 United States would gladly sell themselves into slavery at the present 
 time for the sake of the money payment and of being relieved of the 
 responsibility of caring for themselves. Dueling, though denounced by 
 the law% has thousands of advocates who stoutly assert that such 
 matters of honor are private affairs between gentlemen, and society 
 has of right nothing to do with it, hence all law^s passed for its suppres- 
 sion are wholly vicious and infringements upon the liberties of the 
 citizen. The years have not run far into the hundreds since the taking 
 of interest for a loan of money w^as regarded as most immoral, a thing 
 which no Christian could be permitted to do, an abomination tolerated 
 only in the Jews, whose characteristic badge of degradation was that 
 they w^ere usurers. AVhen through such practices they accumulated 
 means they were ruthlessly robbed by the petty potentate to w^hom they 
 were subject, who felt no qualms in stripping his victim of wealth 
 acquired in such a manner. And today the great Socialist party move- 
 ment, rampant the world over, has as one of its pillars of support con- 
 demnation of the principle of taking interest. "Rent, interest and profit," 
 the trident of iniquities -upon which, to their concept, the whole of 
 industrial society is spitted over the fire for the feast of the "capitalists," 
 the only remedy for wdiich is to supplant liberty with the State, to 
 substitute for individual initiative, initiative moved by the political head. 
 It is not surprising then in this day to find fevered disputation upon 
 every economic proposition which has not yet passed into practical 
 application through the medium of law% and even as to many wdiich have 
 so passed. I tell in the "Industrial Unrest" of a distinguished convoca- 
 tion in San Francisco, presided over by the Governor of the State, which 
 devoted an evening to assertion and approval of the plerophory that 
 the constitution of the United States was out of date and wholh^ uri- 
 suited to perform the functions of such a document in the civilized 
 
 *See my "War and Business."
 
 development of the last two decades. What is there about economics 
 that should make its decrees subject to doubt? Does not the human 
 mind move in its processes upon principles of law? If two and two 
 make four tcxlay will they tomorrow make six? Is it not true that 
 if there be a premise and another premise the deduction from them, 
 when the mind turns toward them, will be always the same, whether 
 the time when it is applied be a thousand years ago or now? "Plants 
 are without locomotion; a tree is a plant; hence, a tree is without 
 locomotion." Can this syllogism ever work out other than as stated? 
 And yet political economy is just that thing. Take your hand glass of 
 logic and crawl over the map of human affairs in their public aspect, 
 and wherever you focus it you will get an answer with just the certainty 
 that you reach the conclusion from the major and minor premise. There 
 is no difficulty or doubt about correct results in the politico economic 
 region if you do valid thinking, if your reasoning be accurate, and if 
 your field of facts be sufficiently broad to take in all the proper compo- 
 nents of your problem. Those people who arrive at protection, at 
 progressivism, at socialism and there stop, have simply not pushed 
 the reasoning process to embrace all the facts within the true scope of 
 the field. They are blind guides, better indeed, than no guides at all, 
 for the merit of such pilotage is at least MOTION, and we shall not 
 stagnate upon a painted sea and rot in stillness. Let our Socialists be 
 up and doing; the gauntlet they throw to the ground must be taken up; 
 for by clash can the light come forth, the illumination which is to show 
 us clearly and fully our true destiny. It is God's scheme that the 
 tenets of political economy shall always be opposed. Such enhances 
 concern and insures their application, for it is the law that truth when 
 seen will prevail. Those tenets will be applied when the leaders of 
 thought, having the confidence of a majority of the citizens, realize 
 their truth. There will always be a minority who deny their several 
 asservations. It is to be hence expected that in such a question as 
 protection or free trade, there should persistently be protectionists, 
 notwithstanding the very life of the nation, as in England, depends upon 
 the enforcement of free trade, and this fact be recognized by every two 
 out of three of the people. 
 
 When settlement first enters a new territory the earliest industries 
 are those which can be gathered from the soil with least effort. This 
 embraces wild life, both vegetable and animal, and those minerals or 
 metals which have value to society immediately they are brought above 
 ;^round. Hence animals of the chase, fish from the streams and such 
 p^irsuits as gold mining will engage the activities of the earliest settlers. 
 Almost simultaneous with this arises agriculture. Seed is sown, trees 
 are planted and towns come into existence as centers for exchange of 
 the surpluses of such products for products not produced at farms or 
 mines, but needed nevertheless bv the workers. As these early indus-
 
 tries iiKMcaso in oxtont ;iiul variety, an excess arises, j:;reater than can 
 be ciMismnetl within the coninuinity ; this seeks a market in reLii<'n> 
 l>eyon(l the hnnndary nl' the hunie territDi-y: lienee shipping; transpires. 
 This priwhtet may he >«>1<1 in the l".>ieij;n market t'l ^r nmnex ; hnt il i- 
 very ohvions that what the enmnuinily wants Irmn the lOri-i^iu-r i> nul 
 nu^iiey. hnt prothuts: and the sliipper himself has n«> nse iCr the nuiiu) 
 except to cxchanjL^e it U>v the eonuno(hties or service wliicii he hiniseU 
 desires. Consetpiently imports necessarily follow ex])orts. and if ini- 
 / ports did not ensue, exports woidd not exist. 
 
 .\s the prodncls from the soil or earth increase, shippinii^ grows and 
 l)opidatitm accnmnlates. the character of the industry of the community 
 chang^es. l-^ictories arise, and more and more the population takes on 
 a manufacturing character. As manufactures multiply and expand in 
 size, agriculture also changes its type. Instead of growing wheat close 
 about the towns, the towns having become cities, wheat growing is 
 pushed to the back lands, and gardening occupies the erstwhile sites 
 of grain; fruits and viticulture come forth, and presently there is no 
 room any more for wheat growing, but wheat is brought from the 
 regions of the world where population is sparse, and conditions favor- 
 able for its culture. Thus the great plains of South America and Canada 
 become tributary to the factory towns. The men in those towns occupy 
 ^ their labors in a higher form of industry than growing wheat, and the} 
 exchange the products of their labors for those of the farmer in Argen- 
 tine. There can hence be no such thing as a State becoming over- 
 crowded, if economic forces be permitted to have their free course ; for 
 as population increases so that it would become overcrowded if its 
 consumption were limited to its own area, the nature of its industry 
 changes, and the widened domain of the world appears ready to respond. 
 in return for the services of the multiplied people expressed in other 
 forms. 
 
 This idea of goods coming in being paid for with goods going out, 
 and if you stop imports you have no exports, and vice versa, simple as 
 it seems, is very perplexing to many. It is precisely at variance with 
 the idea of the protectionists, who think that foreign trade consists of 
 sending out goods and getting back gold; and that just in degree as 
 foreign trade takes on this character is it beneficial or harmful to a 
 country. We hear from them much talk about the "balance of trade" 
 being against us or in our favor; that is, if we get in more goods than 
 we send out this, singular as the perversion may in fact seem, is bv 
 them assumed to be a harm to the country ; for it then appears to them 
 that we have been buying goods abroad and not at home, and in so 
 buying we have been guilty of the vice of "sending our gold out of 
 the country," and this, it is further assumed, is "the unkindest cut.of all," 
 for if we send all the gold out of the country, then, if this reasoning be 
 correct, it must follow that business would cease, all industry would 
 
 10
 
 subside and no one could do any order of work that entailed service 
 upon his fellow, whereupon society would at once disband. A mere 
 statement of these apprehended disasters is sufficient to show the error 
 of their assertion. Work would not stop if all the gold were sent out 
 of the country, and indeed, little inconvenience would be felt; the reason 
 therefor is that what things are bought with is not gold, but goods. 
 The only use for gold, aside from its few commodity applications, is to 
 exchange it for products or services. A man who has $100 of gold has, 
 therefore, $100 of credit against society ; society will balance that credit 
 with goods or services. A ledger, were it big enough to keep the 
 accounts of all society, would do the same thing, and money would not 
 be needed. There was once a bank in Venice where the accounts of 
 the whole community were kept. Gold was used only in foreign affairs. 
 Internally checks solely were used, and business was carried on by the 
 bank balancing accounts ; goods and services were exchanging every- 
 where and the bank was the bookkeeper of the republic. To a very 
 considerable extent this is common in business with us. It is stated 
 upon authority that but 3 per cent of the business of the nation moves 
 with money, and these are mainly the minor matters, the retail cash 
 affairs ; the balance proceed through commercial paper or book account? 
 in which merely the symbol of money is used. What passes in these 
 transactions is goods, services or their tokens and this comprises trade. 
 Gold, in its aspect of money, is therefore a portable bookkeeper, each 
 man carrying his credit account with society in his purse, the debit 
 side being in the shops and hands of the people. 
 
 Hence, when California sends forth goods to the outer world she 
 wants goods in return. She does not want gold. W^e have had that 
 fact sufficiently impressed upon us within the last six months. When 
 the imports from Europe were shut off through her population being 
 turned to war, there were those who were delighted that we should 
 now have the opportunity of doing for ourselves what millions of help- 
 ful hands in Europe had theretofore been doing for us, and it was 
 assumed that a season of great prosperity would come upon us because 
 of that fact. We would be sending out g'oods and getting only gold. 
 We noticed, however, that as the goods went out and the gold came 
 in the gold declined in its purchasing power and there came upon us 
 an era of high prices, which meant simply that gold was relatively more 
 plentiful than goods. Let us continue to send out goods and get in gold, 
 and we shall soon find that gold will lose practically altogether its ability 
 to buy through its mere abundance in the country, the commodity cpiality 
 of the metal not being able to hcjld its value u]); and yet, strangely 
 enough, as ])lentirul as it may be in the country, we may see very little 
 of it around, because of the dearth of activities to bring it out — a sub- 
 sidence which always attends high prices. Under such circumstances 
 
 11
 
 this one-sided trade would soon snufF itself out, and we should then 
 have a clear vision oi the mud bottom of the protectionist theory* 
 
 Seeing", then, that trade issuini; from this California town, call it 
 San Francisco or San Jose or what you will, and .Cooing abroad, whether 
 it be across the ocean or across the bay, is sent thither for the purpose 
 of bringing goods into the town, it then concerns us to have just as 
 few clogs to, and restrictions upon, that transaction as possible; in other 
 words, that exchange should be made as free of costs as we are able to 
 make it. If we were going to ship to San Diego, for instance, no one 
 would think of shipping via Honolulu by water, or by way of Reno, 
 Nevada, by land, for the purpose of increasing the cost of the freight 
 before it should be delivered to the San Diego purchaser. Nor if we 
 were importing from Hawaii would it occur to us that it were best that 
 the ship should not come to the wharf, but that it should be hove to ofT 
 the heads and lighter in its cargo, so that the expenses of landing might 
 be increased. The natural course of business is to efifect its ends by the 
 most economical and expeditious means; to acquire our desires, in short, 
 by the least possible expenditure of effort ; and if when some of us who 
 were engaged in shipping wished to move the State to construct wharves 
 and dredge the harbor so ships might come in and lay alongside and 
 discharge directly into the warehouses, we fovmd ourselves opposed by 
 the amalgamated or other aggregate of lightermen who put up an argu- 
 ment that if wharves were built and dredging done their industry would 
 be ruined, that such industry now employed two thousand men, all native 
 born citizens of the State, who had depending upon them 10,000 people, 
 the same being all residents, that the industry yielded $10,000 per day. 
 in a year $3,000,000, all of which money found its way into the tills of 
 merchants in this State ; that there was invested in properties of the 
 industry^ over one million dollars, practically all of which would be lost 
 if the threatened changes were made ; that the efifect of such changes 
 w'ould be to benefit no one but the foreigner, since by reducing the cost 
 of his laying his goods down in San Francisco he would simply be so 
 much more in pocket, and by lowering the cost of his getting his goods 
 out of San Francisco he would only be saving thus much on his pur- 
 chases here ; in either event the San Franciscan would suffer. It is 
 easy to understand how^ these arguments, made to men in a given stage 
 of their mental development, Avould prevail, and we should be treated to 
 the spectacle of continuing to do business in the most costly way 
 because of our fear of harming ourselves if w^e should do it in a manne; 
 manifestly better, more speedy and cheaper. 
 
 *It may readily be seen how the operation of this law may stop the war in Europe, if the process 
 goes on long enough. Europe sends all her gold to the United States and the West to buy goods. 
 Exhausting herself of gold she employs her credit and buys back again the gold with bonds. Presently 
 she exhausts her credit, so that the $100 bond buys little gold. This latter she is spending in a con- 
 stantly rising market, so that it comes to pass that the gold buys little food and else. War in conse- 
 quence comes to a standstill through sheer failure of the purchasing power of gold. We suffer in this 
 condition also, for our prices are raised not only to Europe hut to us. How long this phenomenon 
 would require to work itself out I do not coniec*ure: but the direction is now on the hieh road toward 
 whatever goal it is proceeding, and the war needs only to keep under way to demonstrate to the world 
 the foolishness of the theory that a country is well off when it is sending out goods and getting in gold. 
 
 12
 
 Yet San Francisco has been consistently advised l:)y its ne\vs[)ai)er 
 and other press to conduct its foreign trade in just that way, and it has 
 most uniformly voted that political ticket which stood for a national 
 policy of dredging a harbor and constructing wharves to facilitate and 
 cheapen the delivery of cargoes, then levying a tariff upon them for 
 the purpose of discouraging their importation through making their 
 landing expensive. And this tariff has been levied upon the assumption 
 that if goods were made costly to get into the country, and their 
 importation were hence lessened, thereby we would benefit, because 
 then the opportunity to make those goods, which came into the country 
 to supply a demand, would be reserved to our own people ; we at home 
 would have more work, and we would keep our gold in the country. 
 It has never occurred to these Socialists that the coming in of goods 
 was for no other reason that that goods went out, or were going out 
 to pay for them, and that to prevent the goods from coming in was to 
 prevent the goods from going out. That all that Hawaii had with which 
 to buy the thousand things which she needed from the United States 
 was what her people in the existing stage of their civilized development 
 were able by their labors to bring forth, at present chiefly sugar and 
 pineapples, and that Japan's situation is precisely the same, her genius, 
 in so far as it has progressed, expressing itself chiefly in tea and raw 
 silk, and if we did not take these things, or some other country did not 
 take them and. give her money, she could not buy machinery and else 
 from us. That this state of things never changes ; for even when those 
 countries rise to produce many of the fabrications which we ourselves 
 bring forth, the result will simply be that her demand upon us will 
 increase, for her needs will have become greater, and the light of knowl- 
 edge will have enabled her to send to us creations of higher value than 
 she sends now. If the civilization of Japan were equal to or greater than 
 our own, and she produced all the things that we produced, then there 
 would simply be a larger and ever vaster trade between us. Our great- 
 est trade is with the nations who are highest civilized, who are developed 
 like ourselves. In nothing does England more excel than in the manu- 
 facture of textiles ; of these she sends us enormous quantities ; and yet 
 we send her textiles of our own manufacture in great quantities; the 
 reason why we thus send her is due to variation in kinds and qualities ; 
 and it is upon such variations that trade is built. These considerations, 
 it seems, do not occur to the protectionist, who is repeatedly bringing 
 forward the statement that if we (Id not keep foreign goods out of the 
 country, such commodities will enter, and by conii)eting with our own 
 manufactures drive them out of business through underselling them 
 in this, our market. The means l)y which the foreigner can do this, it 
 is asserted, is through i)aying his labor less than we do ours, whereby 
 he can produce at less cost than we can. 
 
 13
 
 There is some tnitli in this, though not to tlio extent that is 
 ciMUinonly supposed. It is the cpiaHty of civilization that those possess- 
 ing it have a pcnvcr o\er nature which the less deveh^perl do not have. 
 Tliis expresses itself in the ability to force nature to till our desires by 
 less expenditure of etTort. Although the Oriental in his own country 
 may work for a few cents a da}', we here work chca])cr than docs he. 
 This is manilest. for we can lay down sawed lumber on the dock at 
 Sing^apore at a less price than can the two coolies ripping' the log with 
 a double-end saw turn out boards at a wage of 10 cents per day ; and 
 yet in doing this we can pay our laborers three or four dollars per day, 
 and in earning it they do not have to work half so hard as do the 
 r\lalays in their occupation. The reason the ^Malays cannot earn more 
 wages is because their product does not yield it. How could their 
 employer pay them three dollars a day when in a whole day they do 
 not turn out two dollars" worth of lumber? The Californian or the 
 \\'ashingtonian gets three dollars because the power of his hand has 
 been potentialized by a machine, to wit: the saw mill and all the rotaries, 
 reciprocating and other engines, systems and managements that go with 
 it, which produces in a day with fifty men more saw^ed lumber than the 
 Singapore operatives could turn out with a force two thousand strong. 
 The work is less laborious and far more interesting than the Singapore 
 work, and if it were proposed to a man on a saw' in the mill to take him 
 off that work and set him at the back and forth movement Alalay fashion 
 at the log, even at the same w'ages he is now getting, he would feel 
 outraged and indignant, and w-ell he might ; and yet this same labor- 
 saving machine w'as fought upon its coming into existence by prede- 
 cessors of these same laborers, with the same vigor and onslaught with 
 which they are now fighting the entire of industry through the union. The 
 history of labor w-ars, in its multifarious episodes, contains no more 
 bloody page than that of the frame-breaking riots of England, when 
 the shuttle weaving machine was put to use in the first of the modern 
 textile mills, and the laborer was thereby released from his hand loom 
 with his foot treadle in his dirt floor and grass-roofed cottage, where 
 he sat sixteen hours a day in the task of weaving a coarse fabric which 
 comprised the product of the time, while he himself wore wooden shoes 
 and a jerkin, bifurcated to provide a breeches. Had the laborers had 
 their way they would have held the weaving industry and all industry 
 forever to the level of the man at the loom. And today, in all directions 
 you find hundreds of thousands of people, laborers and so-called non- 
 laborers, who will tell you that the cause of all of this out of work 
 condition is labor-saving machinery; that if such w'ere done away with 
 and the w'ork given to men to do by hand, that everybody- would be 
 employed, for the work could Ijc made to "go around," just as the 
 recent eight-h(nir proposal was devised to make work "go round" by 
 increasing the number of men necessary to perform a given job of work 
 
 14
 
 in a given time; that is to say, to do the things in snch a way as would 
 increase their cost, to ship to San Diego l^y the way of Honolulu, to 
 land carg'oes by the use of lighters. 
 
 While it .can he seen from the foregoing that tlicre is nothing to 
 fear from the so-called cheap labor of the Orient, or of Em-ope, for the 
 reason that their cheap labor produces little, and as soon as it begins to 
 increase its productions either in quality or grade, by the use of skill 
 or machines, its wages rise, as has been shown to be the case in the 
 cotton and other mills of China and Japan, the laborers g-etting at all 
 times what the product can afiford to pay them, yet it is nevertheless a 
 fact that where wages are artificially high, as where they are fixed by 
 unions without regard to economic law, goods from abroad, produced 
 with wages at a lower cost, will undersell the goods of the home manu- 
 facturer. In this statement the protectionist is correct. The protection- 
 ist principle, therefore, goes along with wages artificially high. The 
 union and the protectionist stand together, while the individualist and 
 free trader are the same ; and one of the most singular anomalies that 
 we find in the controversial forum is the circumstance of the Socialist, 
 who is properly a protectionist, being under his platform a free trader. 
 The phenomenon of artificially high wages will, if they be held to, 
 wreck the proprietor in the presence of competition from a region where 
 wages are low. We have observed this in the case of the Eastern 
 competitor to the California manufacturer. The latter instinctively 
 turns against the man from Illinois just in the way that Congress turns 
 against the man from France, that is, to place tariffs at the border. It 
 can be seen, if prevailing conditions are maintained, how this influence 
 must exert itself. The pressure of the people as a State, as population 
 increases, to change from an agricultural to a manufacturing State, is very 
 great ; and they cannot do so in the presence of outside competition if wages 
 within be artificially high. Hence they demand tariffs. The only reliefs 
 are, first: for the unions to place all industries of the nation on exactly the 
 same wage paying basis. The pressure would then be uniform over the 
 nation, operating under a protective tariff keeping out the goods of the 
 foreigner from^ competing. As the rise of wages occurred, invariably inci- 
 dental to wages artificially fixed, the idle slough of labor thrown off of 
 industry by the unions would fall against the land, where they might go to 
 work, unless the high price of land kept them off. The problem would 
 become acute as a land problem. If the price of land were held down by 
 some force of law, few ill effects of the system would be felt in such a 
 country as the United States for many years, whereas in a country like one 
 of the Central American states, the condition would (|uickly become unbear- 
 able. In the United States the phenomenon would express itself in a slug- 
 gish but highly aristocratic manufacturing field, and a huge agricultural 
 population, a state of things somewhat analogous to the condition of China ; 
 the manufactures being, however, much more highly (levelo])ed. Second : for 
 
 15
 
 ihc several employers to rid tlieiiiselves of the union as a \va,L;e interference. 
 and respectively exercise full control of their businesses, permitting' natural 
 law to take its course therein or. third: the states must break apart and the 
 federal body be abolished, unless the constitution can be changed to admit 
 of protective tariffs b\- the Slates, and when that is effected the States shall 
 have broken ajiart and will be separate, indei)entlent sovereignties with their 
 several petty kings, whether the "indissoluble union" be formally dissolved 
 or not. 
 
 The Eastern manufacturer is not better off tban the California factory 
 except in the matter of labor and those incidents which a])pertain to labor. 
 Given equality as to this the Californian can not alone best his Eastern com- 
 petitor, but he can open the great markets of the Orient whicli are now shut 
 to him with a clam-like tightness and rigidity. It is to the labor question 
 that the Californian must address himself if he wishes to survive, if he 
 wishes to put California on the plane of growth, to permit it to develop in 
 its natural course toward a manufacturing state as its population increases, 
 instead of being held back in an agricultural condition, and her thousands 
 of laborers whose energies might be fruitful in the creation of wealth, held 
 in idleness and permitted to become factors of public disturbance and decay. 
 With this change, however, effected, California would rapidly rise to 
 her full industrial strength. The restoration of natural wages as against 
 artificial wages would not solve all the economic problems with which the 
 State is afflicted, which hold down production and create gross injustice in 
 distribution, but it would solve the chief problem without which solution 
 there is little use to attempt work on the others, and which when solved 
 will clarify and intensify the other evils so they may be turned to with vigor 
 snd quickly gotten out of the way. For the present let us settle the labor 
 question; and in doing this we shall do no harm, but only benefit to the 
 laborer, not alone the out-of-work man, to whom will be given employment, 
 but to the highly paid union laborer who thinks he is getting high wages, 
 but who in truth is getting low wages, when he is receiving six or seven 
 dollars per day. 
 
 There is no proper or justifiable reason for the payment by the California 
 manufacturer of a higher wage than prevails elsewhere, even in the lowest 
 paying wage State in the Union. Living in California ought to be the cheap- 
 est and best that exists anywhere in the world. In scarcely any country will 
 you find more fertile soil ; at no place is the climate more favorable to pro- 
 duction of crops. Where can the laborer live where he has less expense for 
 doctors' bills, or where less time is lost from work on account of weather? 
 He requires less housing, less clothing in California than in other places of 
 vigorous climate. Nature has lavished her gifts upon California. Why 
 must wages be higher in this State than elsewhere in order for a man to 
 live as well as men live elsewhere, and who pretends that the laborer lives' 
 better here, in a like grade of employment, than he lives in Wisconsin or in 
 Ohio where a lesser wage is paid ! Let such be the case, and the difference 
 
 16
 
 vvoukl be very sli^^lit when California would draw the labor of the East, and 
 no advertisement "Keep Away from California," or "Don't Come to San 
 l^>ancisco, Ten Thousand Men out of Work" which the labor unions might 
 spread throughout the East, and no power they could bring to bear in this 
 State, could hold back that migration, moved by a desire to reach, with the 
 expenditure of their wonted eifort, a higher plane of enjoyment of life. 
 
 Wages have always been higher in California than in the East. They so 
 started with the settlement of the State and they have so continued. During 
 the days of Chinese immigration, when we were commonly told, and it was 
 popularly believed, that wag'es had been lowered through rivalry of the 
 Chinese to a point where an American could live only on the scale of a 
 Chinaman, wages were in fact averaging thirty-two per cent higher, and the 
 cost of living was much cheaper, than in Eastern cities. Below is presented 
 a summary of statistics appearing in a bulletin of the United States Bureau 
 of Labor, taken from the actual pay rolls of twelve cities of the United 
 States, including San Erancisco, embracing nineteen trades and covering the 
 period from 1870-1890. It is excerpted from "Chinese Immigration," by 
 Mary Roberts Coolidge, p. 354: 
 
 COMPARISON OF MAXIMUM AND MINIMUM DAILY WAGES 
 
 OF 19 TRADES IN SAN FRANCISCO AND IN 
 
 11 OTHER CITIES, 1870-1890. 
 
 TRADE 
 
 SO 
 
 
 C 
 Pi 
 
 
 
 to a 
 
 Amt. by which 
 
 Mm. of S. F. 
 
 exceeds max. 
 
 of 11 Cities 
 
 Blacksmiths 
 
 2.70 
 1.59 
 2.69 
 4.13 
 2.60 
 2.82 
 4.02 
 2.03 
 2.20 
 2.79 
 1.63 
 1.57 
 2.98 
 2.52 
 3.15 
 3.62 
 3.64 
 2.66 
 1.95 
 
 2.43 
 1.41 
 2.41 
 3.00 
 2.28 
 2.64 
 3.49 
 1.75 
 1.58 
 2.36 
 1.45 
 1.40 
 2.68 
 2.22 
 2.79 
 2.81 
 2.66 
 2.16 
 1.71 
 
 .27 
 .18 
 .28 
 1.13 
 .32 
 .18 
 .53 
 .28 
 .62 
 .43 
 .18 
 .17 
 .30 
 .30 
 .36 
 .81 
 .98 
 .50 
 .24 
 
 3.80 
 2.34 
 3.46 
 5.00 
 3,85 
 3.54 
 4.79 
 3.06 
 3.00 
 3.71 
 2.50 
 2.00 
 3.89 
 3.36 
 3.69 
 5.00 
 4.11 
 3.72 
 2.67 
 
 3.33 
 2.09 
 3.15 
 4.00 
 3.09 
 3.27 
 4.53 
 2.54 
 2.35 
 3.40 
 2.00 
 1,97 
 3.15 
 2.95 
 3.55 
 4,83 
 3 , 66 
 3 , 00 
 2,62 
 
 .47 
 .25 
 .31 
 1,00 
 .76 
 .27 
 ,26 
 .52 
 .65 
 .31 
 .50 
 .03 
 .74 
 .41 
 .14 
 .17 
 .45 
 .72 
 .05 
 
 63 
 
 Blacksmiths' Helpers.. 
 Boilermakers. . . . 
 
 .50 
 46 
 
 Bricklayers . . ^ 
 
 13 
 
 Carpenters 
 
 49 
 
 Compositors . . . 
 
 45 
 
 Engineers (R.R.) 
 
 Firemen (R.R.) 
 
 Hod Carriers. 
 
 Iron Moulders 
 
 Laborers (Street) 
 
 Laborers (General) . . . 
 
 Pattern Makers 
 
 Machinists 
 
 Plumbers 
 
 Masons (Stone) 
 
 Stone Cutters 
 
 Painters 
 
 Teamsters 
 
 .51 
 .51 
 .15 
 .61 
 .37 
 .40 
 .17 
 .43 
 .40 
 .21 
 .02 
 .34 
 .67 
 
 Averages . ... 
 
 2.69 
 
 2.27 
 
 .42 
 
 3.55 
 
 3.13 
 
 .89 
 
 93 
 
 
 
 The same phenomena obtained, however, in manufactures. In the boot 
 and shoe industry the average wage was 22 ])er cent higher in California 
 than were the wages in the industry in Maryland, and 46 ])er cent higher 
 than in Ohio, the State paying the lowest wages in that line. In the woolen 
 
 17
 
 inanufacturiiii; iiulustr\-, waives of the various operatives ran from 35 cents 
 per (.lay loss for the ccnnnion hihorer to $i.4() i)er clay more for the shearer. 
 and $2.30 more for the loom fixer and boss carder than was the case in ei^t^ht 
 northern States. In many of these occnpations ihc' ( hinese received hii;her 
 v.'ages than were paid to white emplnyees in the h-ast.'' C'omparinj;- the table 
 appeariiii^' on previons pai;e with a similar table vi wages of twelve cities 
 inchuling- San I'Vancisco. as shown by bulletins of the U. S. Labor Bureau 
 for the year 1913. we have the following (see p. 19) : 
 
 It will be observed by this later table that in the decades which have 
 followed those of the first table, wages have greatly increased. This phe- 
 nomenon is not alone in California, hut it obtains all over the United States. t 
 The increase will be fastest where wages are highest, and their upward trend 
 will accordingly be accelerated here in this State. The reason for this ascend- 
 ing movement is solely the fact of wages being fixed, or their standard set, by 
 labor unions without any regard to economic law. The rational operation 
 of wages can no more be tampered with without untoward results than can 
 any other expression of natural law. The result has been a general rise in 
 prices w-hich in turn has called for higher raises of wages, and so the process 
 has gone on. As the cost of living rises, so must demands for higher wages 
 occur; and, as stated, the higher wages become, and correspondingly the 
 higher the cost of living, the shorter become the intervals when demands 
 for higher wages become necessary. This operation is greatly accelerated 
 by the concomitant movement of the unions in shortening the hours of labor, 
 v.'hich is another way of raising wagesy — the turning out of a less product 
 for a given sum of wages, while the low^ering of the degree of efficiency of 
 the laborer through feeling himself no longer subject to discipline of the 
 employer through the power of discharge, but that he is held in place by the 
 strength of the union, together with provisions among the workers for limita- 
 tion of output, are all contributing causes to increase cost of production and 
 amount to raises of wages, though not taking the forms of money payments. 
 Add to this the attitude of the unions toward the labor immigrant in holding 
 the latter out of the country, whereby the prices of products of the farms 
 keep rising through lack of efficient labor to produce them, and there is com- 
 prised a general condition of rising prices of commodities which ever 
 presses the laborer wdio consumes these commodities to demand continuously 
 higher and higher wage in order to hold to his prevailing standard of living. 
 The effect of this, as I have explained in my prior w-ritings, is to contract the 
 territory of shipment of the product, and where this arbitrary power of the 
 unions is exerted with various effect at different parts of the country, w^e 
 have a condition in which an industry cannot hold its own against competi- 
 
 *See Coolidge, "Chinese Immigration," pages 361, 373. 
 
 ±See table, p. 28. 
 
 tRaises of wages by shortening of hours occur, even where wages are paid on an hour basis and 
 there is no increase per hour; which is seldom the case, as where demands are made for reduced hours,, 
 corresponding reduction of the day's wage is never conceded. The laborer first wants the pay; second, 
 less working hours for the pay; he would rather work the full hours than that his pay be reduced. 
 But even if there were an equalized reduction in pav with the shorter day, still the emnloyer would 
 suffer, because the product turned out in a day is less and the overhead goes on. This, of course, 
 would not occur where the twenty-four hours are filled with shifts who work at an equal per hour 
 wage, if any such case can be found. 
 
 18
 
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 19
 
 tors even within the hmitcd raihus of its dwn fact(»ry ^itt.' ; m> that thruu^li 
 the pressure of these several inthieiiees the iii(histr\- must inevitahlv sucounih. 
 
 The prechcanieiit of tlic Cahfornia manufacturer is indicated by the fol- 
 lowing table. coui])ile(l from the I'. S. (\"nsus of 1*)10, which shi>ws tlie per- 
 centage of the total value of the iinuluct in thirteen California industries 
 which is paid in wages, as compared with such percentage paid in the same 
 mdustries in nineteen of the United States (or such of them as are 
 reported), these being the States of Indiana, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, 
 Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, IMaryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Michi- 
 gan, Missouri. Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and 
 Wisconsin. These figures, of course, have nothing to do with prices of the 
 output. They show that whatever the prices may be, the percentage of that 
 sum which goes to labor as wages is, except in the two lines noted, from 
 1/10 of 1% to 11 1/10 per cent greater in California than is paid on the 
 average in such trades in nineteen States. It of course follows, that the 
 prices of the products in California must be correspondingly higher to offset 
 the added cost. It will be remarked that the only lines reported in which 
 California wages are such as to allow export on a basis equal with the rest 
 of the country are the industries related to agriculture, of canning or preserv- 
 ing dairy products and fruits and vegetables. These manufactories are least 
 under the influence of the unions, and labor in them is mostly paid accord- 
 ing to the output. Their development has, therefore, been rapid and they 
 have arisen respectively to large export trade. The canned milk industry 
 nearly doubled between the years 1909-10, reaching in the latter year 
 8,300,000 pounds, while fruit and vegetable canning amounted to 6,259,294 
 cases, the vegetable output nearly doubling between 1908-10, and that of 
 fruit almost doubling since 1907, with 4,008,549 cases of fruit in 1910. Upon 
 the other hand such industries as lumbering, in which the union or its in- 
 fluence is largely exerted, seem to have declined between the years men- 
 tioned (such being the latest figures available). In 1907 the California lumber 
 cut was valued at $23,640,966. In 1910 it had fallen to $18,050,000. 
 
 Percentage of total value of product paid in wages in thirteen industries 
 
 in California, compared with such percentage paid in same industries in 
 
 nineteen States of the United States. U. S. Census 1910, Vol. IX. 
 
 Excess of 
 \9 States percentage paid 
 
 (average) California. in California. 
 
 Bread and other bakery products 15.2 20 4.8 
 
 Copper, tin and sheet iron products 20.1 27.6 6.5 
 
 Men's clothing, including shirts 21.2 22.8 1.6 
 
 Flour mill and grist mill products 2.7 3.1 .4 
 
 Foundry and machine shop products 29.3* 29.9 .6 
 
 *The percentages in this trade display great diversity, running from 25.1 in Indiana and 25.4 
 in Kansas, to 36.6 in Massachusetts and 37.5 in Connecticut. The variance may be accounted for 
 by the superior character of the manufactured output of the industry in the northeastern States as 
 compared with that of the agricultural States noted, which are more nearly similar to the industry in 
 California. In the Atlantic States mentioned there are produced in the shops many mechanisms 
 in which the value of tlie labor equals or exceeds the cost of the material, such as typewriters and 
 various highly wrought instruments, whereas in California such order of output is not produced. 
 W'here the character of the product is about the same in California as elsewhere, as in bakery 
 products and beer, the California laborer receives from 25% to 33% more than the wage share of 
 the product of his compeers elsewhere. 
 
 20
 
 
 
 Excess of 
 
 
 
 percentage paid 
 
 Ca 
 
 lilornia 
 
 in California. 
 
 
 11.2 
 
 1.2 
 
 
 4.1 
 
 .1 
 
 
 48.8 
 
 6.9 
 
 
 3.8 
 
 .5t 
 
 
 38.5 
 
 11.1 
 
 
 18.3 
 
 4.5 
 
 
 11.1 
 
 3.0t 
 
 
 30.6 
 
 8.4 
 
 19 States 
 (average) 
 
 Leather, tanned, curried and finished 10.0 
 
 Slaughtering and meat packing 4.0 
 
 Cars and general shop construction by steam 
 
 R. R. companies 41.9 
 
 Butter, cheese and condensed milk 4.3 
 
 Lumber and timber products 27.4 
 
 Liquors (malt) 13.8 
 
 Canning and preserving 14. 1 
 
 Printing and publishing 22.2 
 
 This law of advancing prices with rising wages I have heretofore re- 
 peatedly explained. It is an incident of the law of economic wage. That is, 
 the wage which the product, sold in a market of free competition, can afford 
 to pay, and which the proprietor is forced to pay to get or hold his labor. 
 This latter is determined by the call for labor into other industry ; but for 
 this call the proprietor would press wages to the line of the laborer's bare 
 subsistence. This was for a long time believed by economists to be the true 
 law. It comprises the "iron law of wages" of Lassalle, and is the principle 
 upon which the labor union exists today. It is commonly believed that but 
 lor the union, wages would fall to the limit of bare subsistence of the laborer. 
 It is indeed, only upon this hypothesis that the public tolerates the union at 
 all. If this were widely recognized as untrue, public opinion would sup- 
 press the union. But it is in fact wholly untrue, and in the light of this 
 knowledge, the union with its great repressive and compulsive machine is a 
 positive harm to the workman, as it is wholly inefficient to procure for him 
 more than economic wage; this would be freely paid if no union existed. 
 The factor which Lassalle, Ricardo and other economists overlooked was 
 what I call the door of opportunity. Just as opportunity to labor abounds or 
 not will wages be good or poor. The door of opportunity is new business, 
 extensions of old business, enterprise, all of which depend upon the free 
 existence in the nation of that quality called initiative. It is the opportunity 
 that exists among the people for industry and their disposition to "do things." 
 It has relation to a general state of free conditions, and to complete liberty 
 of the citizen — not untrammeled license, but that order of right which we 
 cA\ hu-man freedom, and which I have gone into in my prior writings. This 
 open door of opportunity may be expressed in one word, business; this is a 
 phrase commonly understood. If there be plenty of business there will be 
 plenty of work ; in other words, the call for labor will be active and heavy, 
 and it is this call that insures to the laborer that he will get from the prop- 
 rietor all wages that the product, sold in a free competing market, can afford 
 to pay. It is therefore to the highest concern of the laborer, as well as to 
 the business man, to bring about a condition of permanent great activity in 
 business. Here is the line on which the laborer and the employer stand 
 together, and it is from this line that the measures of reform in legislative 
 and industrial conditions should move. When I say, therefore, that the in- 
 
 tLess percentage paid in California. 
 
 21
 
 tcrcsts of the employer ami tlic laborer are luu' and the same, and that if the 
 laborer were shown his trne interest, he would stand ])eside the emi)lover in 
 a joint jMirpose of iM-in^ini;- ahont conditions which produce normal business 
 activity. 1 base mv assertions on this fact, viz.: that the laborer, union or no 
 imion. can never i^et hit^iier than economic \\ai;e, and that he can best i;"et 
 this in a state of i;-reat business activity, which the employer desires, and 
 which can never be had so long as the union exists as an institution interfer- 
 ing with the operations of the law of wages. 
 
 And the reason is this: that just as soon as the laborer is paid higher 
 than economic wage, that is, wages larger than the share of the product that 
 goes to labor, that belongs to labor, the added cost is at once charged over 
 upon the product and is collected from the consumer. Not only is it col- 
 lected, but it is collected plus all the expenses which the added cost entails, 
 viz. : increased cost of cai)ital wherewith to pay the added wage ; increase in 
 cost of material ; increase in cost of selling the product at higher prices, and 
 so on, this entire process tending to lessen sales, hence lessen products, hence 
 lessen the number employed, hence increase the numbers of the idle army, 
 Vvho again react against product by becoming consumers solely and not pro- 
 ducers, and so on and so on. From this single stepping aside from economic 
 law in the realm of wages, there is at once set up a series of changes through- 
 out the whole body of society, much like the waves of vibrations passing 
 through the air when you strike a bell, or the ripples in a pond when you 
 drop a stone, save that these as they recede grow weaker while they get 
 larger, whereas in the social sphere with distance from the foci of disturb- 
 ance, the waves get larger and stronger to do injury. 
 
 Let us see now for a moment, how this law of wage works : Jones is a 
 baker selling a one pound loaf for five cents. Out of that one cent goes to 
 labor, three cents to material, and one cent to overhead and profit. Smith, 
 a journeyman baker working for Jones, is not content with a cent for his 
 labor, he wants more and through raise in wages, shortening hours, and 
 "better W'Orking conditions" he brings about a state of things that puts the 
 labor cost of the loaf up to a cent and three-quarters. Instead of getting $3 
 per day for making three hundred loaves, he now gets $4.50 in cash, to which 
 is added shorter hours, and "better working conditions." The price of bread 
 in consequence has gone up to 5^4 cents per loaf, being JA cent for increased 
 labor, and 34 cent for increased overhead by reason of the increase in wages. 
 Bread has therefore gone up 16-2/3%. Smith has been spending 10% of his 
 wages in bread, this amounting to thirty cents per day ; but thirty cents will 
 now no longer buy the necessary bread for the family ; it takes one-sixth 
 more money wherewith to buy the family bread, hence it costs five cents 
 more, a total of thirty-five cents. But Smith has one dollar and fifty cents 
 more money with which to pay the extra five cents, so he stands one dollar 
 and forty-five cents to the good, and besides has an easier time at his job, and 
 Smith is very happy. That is the way the union looks at it. 
 
 22
 
 But Stiles, working- at tailoring- also at $3 per day for twenty-six days in 
 the month, or $78 per month, and also spending 10% of his wages in bread, 
 finds that the cost of his bread has gone up five cents per day, in a month 
 $1.50, the result of which is that his wages by the operation of vSmith, have 
 been afifected by what is tantamount to a reduction to $76.50. Stiles does 
 not relish this: he cannot afiford to pay $1.50 per month toward Smith's in- 
 crease in wages, so he goes to his employer and demands a raise of fifteen 
 cents per day, or enough to bring his wages up to $80 per month. The 
 employer pays it and charges this increase to his labor on his manufactured 
 product, to wit : clothes ; the journeyman butcher does the same thing and up 
 goes the price of meat ; the grocerymen do likewise and away go groceries ; 
 i:o with the shoemaker, the fuel man, the furniture man, the lumber and 
 building material man, whose products go into the cost of building, the in- 
 crease of which increases the price of rent, and so on, all the way along the 
 line. Now, since Smith at the bakery spends his entire wages in these things, 
 he finds in a very little while that he is paying higher prices for not only 
 his bread, but for everything else; and that all the way through his costs of 
 living have increased so that he can no longer hold on to the standard of 
 living he had set for himself with his wages at $4.50 per day, and he must 
 reduce that cost or call upon his employer for more pay. He cannot of course 
 think of cutting down his "American standard of living," so he and his union 
 demand of Jones a still higher wage. Jones pays it, and again bread goes up 
 in price ; again also prices rise all along the line and Smith finds himself pay- 
 ing in turn still more for everything he consumes. One day Jones tells Smith 
 he does not need him any more ; he has got to cut down help ; bread is not 
 selling like it used to sell ; people say it is too high ; they are eating more 
 corn, oats and other foods, and economizing on wheat bread. So away Smith 
 goes to start the nucleus of the idle army, soon to be joined by Stiles, and 
 the butcher man, pressed out of employment for like reason of contracting 
 market, and providing a spectacle for the union to concern itself over, for 
 the Socialist to cry out against the capitalist Jones about ; while poor Jones, 
 oppressed by all phases of difficulties in trying to carry on business, his 
 domestic as well as business costs increased along all lines, presses his nose 
 ever tighter upon the grindstone, and works faster the treadle. Presently 
 along comes to Jones a man like myself who says to him.: "Jones, the 
 trouble with you is that you let things get away from you when you allowed 
 Smith and his union to force you to raise wages three-fourths of a cent a 
 loaf. In that day you had a good business and it was increasing; you were 
 taking on men, not letting men off. Stoaks up the street at the delicatessen 
 was buying from you 500 loaves a day to stuff dressed ])oultry with ; now he 
 roasts his fowl without stuffing. Noaks at the candy shoj) was taking 200 
 loaves to CI invert into toasts and confections, lie doesn't do that an\- more, 
 liread is too high. \(>u have lost _\-our sliip])ing trade to rniii])ville, where 
 the women are now buying Hour and making their own bread to save ex- 
 pense; the same is the case with your erstwhile trade at the llollows. and at 
 
 23
 
 Tessiips Crossing, there the stores are hriui^iiiL;' in bread fr(»m Nevada, an 
 open sliop eountry, aiul arc ^ettin;;" it laid down for half a cent less a loaf 
 t'.ian you demand ; all this business is i^onc ; you don't l)uy half the flour yon 
 used to anil the mill has cut off half its shift; the barrel factory is shut down 
 for three months; over at Frank's clothino- factory they let out iifty hands 
 last week, people are not wearing the clothes tiiey used to ; meat has become 
 a delicacy, anil Snyder is doing- his butchering himself. What you have got 
 to ilo is to get rid of the union and take the control of yom- business again 
 into your own hands. \Miat you are dealing with. Jones, is a public matter; 
 the whole of societv is being held back in its development and its civilized 
 progress bv this condition. Everyone is affected by it. The jjuI^Hc will not 
 sustain the union in this sort of thing when they understand it. Every 
 employer will get courage when he knows what is the real trouble and will 
 join hands with us to bring public ojMuion and the force of law to our aid 
 with whatever legislation we may need in the premises. Take this pamphlet. 
 Jones, and read it : you will find the whole process of how you got into your 
 predicament traced carefully out. so you will fully understand it and see the 
 remedy. Come, let us go to Frank. Snyder and the rest, and get them to 
 join our Economic Association which we have organized to spread enlighten- 
 n'ent and correct this condition. It will cost you fifteen cents a year." 
 "Don't talk to me,'' cries Jones, lifting his hands and bringing them down 
 beside his head smartly on the grindstone, "Fm too busy. I don't have time 
 to read. We've got too many associations now. Your idea is nebulous ; these 
 things work around some way and adjust themselves. Fm expecting this 
 town any minute to shde right into the bay. W'hat Fm going to do is to get 
 out of business, and to hell with it. Fve got enough for the rest of my life 
 to keep me and Fm not going to stay in the game any longer.* That's my 
 answer: come again, Fll think it over." 
 
 ^Manifestly Smith, to have acquired any advantage from his raise in 
 wages, would had to have stipulated that the price of bread should not be 
 raised ; and had he done that, there would have been no raise of wages, for 
 his demands for raise would simply have been a demand against the 
 employer's profits, which if granted would have driven the employer out of 
 business, for the latter would not have continued to conduct business in 
 which there was no profit to himself, merely for the sake of employing Smith 
 and his fellow unionists. 
 
 The prime fact before the California manufacturer is that he must rid 
 his works of the union, and if necessary to enable him to compete, he must 
 reduce wages. Nor need he feel any compunction about so doing. Reduced 
 wages as I have shown will reduce prices of commodities and this will reduce 
 cost of living, in so far as many articles go, and will tend to such reduction in 
 all directions. It will immediatclv give us larger markets and tliis will call 
 
 *Mr. G. X. Wciiilling of San Francisco states that tliere are a luindred men within the realm 
 of his knowledge and acquaintance in the United States, the heads of industries, who have withdrawn 
 from business and become idlers because "business has become a thing which a man would rather get 
 out of than to get into"; the energies of these men have, therefore, been withdrawn from affairs by the 
 plight that has involved industry. 
 
 24
 
 forth amongst us business activities in many avenues; large numbers of 
 men who are now unemployed will be called into service, and the immi- 
 gration which will follow will further reduce living cost through providing 
 abundance of agricultural products, which in turn will stimulate business. 
 
 Why do business men stand here in San Francisco with their hands tied 
 and their tongues silent, and observe the great opportunities for production 
 that exist about them, and for trade across our ocean circumvented or passing 
 into the hands of others elsewhere, or worse yet, not developed at all ! Con- 
 sider that enormous field for trafific, the Orient, that lies yonder facing us, 
 to which we are almost as strange as though it were upon another planet. 
 Contemplate what immeasurable business we would have here in San Fran- 
 cisco and throughout California if the natural course of demand and supply 
 were permitted to have sway. But it is kept away from us by two popular 
 mistakes, viz. : the idea that the higher the wages in the realm of industry 
 the more the recipient receives for his labor ; and the idea that a man coming 
 into the country to work takes the job away from the workman here, and 
 lowers wages generally. The immigrant does not and cannot lower wages, 
 he raises wages ; he does not take the job away from the workman here, he 
 creates new jobs for the unemployed workmen. This occvirs through the 
 immigrant entering production and creating a surplus above his own con- 
 sumption. This surplus enters industry as material, calling upon other labor 
 to work it up into various forms or to transport it for ultimate consumption. 
 The immigrant in industry operates precisely as an increase in domestic 
 population would act under free conditions, that is, the more people there are 
 in co-operative effort, the easier it is for each and all. If this were not the 
 law, if it were an injury to one man for another to come into existence, 
 society would have come to an end long since. Under labor unionism such 
 is a fact, as see the rule against apprentices, the closing of registry books 
 against men entering the city from abroad, and similar operations. A man 
 in Oakland may not come to San Francisco and get a job even though he be 
 a union man and have a card, if there be any union man in San Francisco 
 out of a job, which of course means that the Oaklander may not come at all, 
 while the outlander, the man in the East, is kept away by all sorts of warn- 
 ings and threats. The point is exemplified in my pamphlets, "Japan's Mes- 
 sage to America" and "Our National Tendency and Its Goal." If the law 
 which these writings present were understood by public opinion, there would 
 be an end of immigration restriction and exclusion. As for the idea that 
 high wages in coin means high wages in fact, I have shown the error of that 
 hypothesis. The wages one receives is not the coin but what he can buy 
 with the coin ; wages put at a rate so high that the price of the product must 
 be increased to pay it, only harm the laborer who receives them. The era 
 of high wages which began more than a decade ago, has its corollary in the 
 out-of-work army. It has become a great standing army in winter, besetting- 
 all cities, and in summer it is a ragged, tramping horde, filling the highways 
 with stragglers. These are pcf)plc who arc completely out of jobs ; they are 
 
 25
 
 the helpless element who must needs work under ca])t;iins of induslrv it tlK-y 
 work at all. who must have work jirovided for them hv the industrial opera- 
 tions of society, who have not the initiative to create jobs for themselves. lUit 
 there is another class who do not camp behind board fences in winter, or 
 sleep under trees in summer, who are nevertheless, members of the idle 
 army. They comprise thousands ui)on thousands of us who experience 
 need in varying- ways, from actual want to "not havinp^ as much as T would 
 like to have." and who can tind in their occupations very little to do u]:» to the 
 stag^e of being- '"not as busy as I should like to be." In other words, the 
 three-quarters idle, the half idle, the quarter idle. I think aside from the 
 handful who are rich or in safe, comfortable, salaried positions, this latter 
 class embraces about all of us. Tt certainly includes every man who is in 
 business on his own account, the large majority of whom are struggling to 
 make ends meet. Will anyone say that these are days of general prosperity 
 and abundance in California, wdien wealth is largely and widely diffused, or 
 that there have been any such days in this State for years past! and if wealth 
 be not abundantly and w'idely distributed, is it possible that there are some 
 capitalists or monopolists who are getting it all, or flagrantly undue pro- 
 ]X)rtions? Where are the great fortunes that are building up in the State 
 today? Who is "making money" anywhere? Several years ago a small 
 group of men made fortunes in the oil fields, but the latest ruling of the 
 Public Utilities Commission in the "oil pipe cases." will about successfully 
 eliminate all repetitions of this sort of thing in the future. So much for the 
 days of high wages. 
 
 Let us now turn to the era of low wages in California and take a com- 
 parative view of that. This is the decade from 1850 to 1880, or the time of 
 Chinese immigration in California. Who is there living today who can cast 
 liis mind over that period and not experience the feeling that those were the 
 days when California was a land flowing with milk and honey ; when oppor- 
 tunity abounded, when abundance existed upon every hand, when almost 
 everything was cheap, and when wages, though low compared with the 
 present, were from the standpoint of living costs genuinely high, far higher 
 than at present. These were the days when anyone in business in this State 
 could make money. They were the days of the fortunes of the Crockers, 
 Iluntingtons and Stanford, made in railroading; of Phelan in merchandis- 
 ing; of Haggin-Tevis in general business; of Spreckels in sugar; of Flood 
 and Mackay in mining. These and others were great fortunes, wdiile thou- 
 sands made moderate fortunes and tens of thousands acquired competencies. 
 It was the day of great industries in the State which are now practically 
 extinct ; of a boot and shoe industry with twenty-six hundred employees and 
 $.3,000,000 of annual product ; of a cigar manufacturing industry employing 
 thirtv-flve hundred hands, and shii)])ing cigars East by car-load lots; (jf a 
 woolen industry, producing Ijlankets. shawls, flannels and cloakings, with 
 four mills in San Francisco, eight elsewhere in the State, and an invested 
 capital of four millions of dollars. It was the thin edge of that vast woolen 
 
 26
 
 manufacturing- business that was in store for San Francisco and California 
 liatl we been permitted to have gone forward in our course at that time and 
 Oriental immi_o-ration been left undisturbed, when we would have taken in 
 through the (iolden ("late the wools of South America and Australia and 
 sliipped our product to .\sia. and to our own Eastern markets and over the 
 world. Mrs. Coolidge, writing in 1909, says: 
 
 "Before the Kearny period the State was fast becoming the 
 chief supply depot for the Western and Southwestern States, for 
 British Columbia and the Hawaiian Islands. The incessant 
 strikes and labor agitations from 1876 onward demoralized the 
 trade and caused a partial transfer to Eastern manufacturers. 
 Some authorities say this was the chief cause of the decline of 
 the trade, from which it has never recovered. Certainly the fact 
 is indisputable that whereas boots and shoes ranked fourth 
 among the manufactures of the State in 1870, today the industry 
 has not even a place among the sixteen leading industries." 
 
 With business in all lines of the State ra])idly increasing, with white 
 immigration into the State accelerating in great strides, -j- with our trade with 
 China rising at the rate of six millions per year,* and trade with every 
 other country going forward in proportion, we were moving toward a con- 
 dition that had it been permitted to have continued would by this time 
 have made San Francisco a city as great as New York, and California a 
 State as great as half the States of the Eastern seaboard. The crime which 
 the foolish disturbers against the incoming of the Asiatic peoples have visit- 
 ing upon the people of this State in loss and sufTerin-g, in deprivation of that 
 Vi^hich but for this wrongful restriction would have ensued can never he 
 calculated, and this injury continues today ; and unless public opinion can be 
 changed by diilusing the light of truth which will cure the evil of immigra- 
 tion restriction, it will in the not distant future bear its fruits in the way 
 which inevitably attends all persistent violation of natural laws. The activ- 
 ity and prosperity of the Chinese immigration period compared with the 
 stress of the present, was due to the single fact that wages then approxi- 
 mated natural as distinguished from the artificial wages now existing. There 
 
 t The white population of the State increased in the jiresence of Chinese inimigraf ion from 
 323,177 in 1860, to 767,181 in 1880; about the same period the Chinese increased from 34,933 to 
 75,218. The negroes, an unskilled working class, increased during the same period from 4,086 to 
 6,018. 
 
 *Trade between the United States and China, nearly all of which transpired through San Fran- 
 cisco, started in 1850, and by 1860 the imports and exports totaled $119,000,000. The decade between 
 1860-70 closed with $142,000,000, an increase of $23,000,000 or an advance of 20 per cent. The decade 
 between 1870-80 closed with $199,000,000 an advance of $57,000,000 and an increase of 40 per cent. 
 Then came the exclusion laws, enacted in 1883. The decade between 1880-90 showed $213,000,000, an 
 increase of but $14,000,000 and an advance of only 7 per cent. The decade from 1890-1900 closed 
 with $169,000,000, a loss of $44,000,000 and a decline of over 20 per cent. The trade was seemingly 
 dying out, when the Japanese-Russian war occurred and started a new impetus upon the traffic. The 
 significance of the vast percentages of increase in the China trade occurring at a period as far back as 
 the seventies, may be realized when it is noted that in 1897 the total sea traffic of San Francisco, being 
 imports and exports, domestic and foreign, was $85,126,791. In 1909 it had increased to $108,690,619, 
 an excess of $23,563,928. In twelve years the trade had gone forward at a rate of less than 2 per cent 
 per year. The Oriental trade which had in it the meaning and promise of great business iti the future, 
 toward which it was yearly progressing, grew out of the presence of free migration to this country 
 of the Oriental peoples. It was choked off by the laws of exclusion. San Francisco then ceased to be 
 the Oriental entrepot, destined to control the trade of the entire Orient, not only with this country 
 but with the world. Since that day the trade, after severe declines following both Chinese and Japanese 
 exclusion, has come forward to some extent; but the increase of trade of the countries of the Orient 
 with the United States has not equaled in ratio their increase with the other foreign nations of the 
 world; whereas, but for exclusion, our trade with them would have shown increases far in excess of 
 their increases with other nations. 
 
 27
 
 was relatively hut little ditYerence in washes between here and the luist then 
 and now. San Francisco wages were as much as 35 per cent higher than in 
 the East at that time, and they reach about tiie same percentage higher 
 today. But in that jieriod wages in both parts of the country were lower 
 than they arc now, in many instances a hundred per cent lower. It is the 
 artificial high wage which has caused the trouble, and which if unchecked 
 must proceed to its ultimate goal of driving the nation into the Socialized 
 State ; for these wages will continuously increase, ever narrowing the field of 
 industry as they arise, producing all the phenomena of decadence in the 
 out of work mass continuously multiplying in numbers, and extending its 
 proportion to the total of population, thus eating as a canker into the very 
 heart of civilization, while the general strain of hard times threads all 
 society. The process of raising wages and shortening hours is moving over 
 the nation with amazing rapidity. Bulletin No. 143 of the United States 
 I^epartment of Labor gives the figures in percentages for a few trades 
 covering a period of seven years, from 1907 to 1913, from which the follow- 
 ing table is compiled : 
 
 T\BLE FOR THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES SHOWING IN PER- 
 CENTAGES THE REDUCTIONS IN NUMBER OF THE WORK- 
 ING HOURS PER WEEK AND INCREASE RATE OF WAGES 
 PER HOUR SINCE 1907 UPON THE BASIS OF WAGES AND 
 HOURS ON MAY 15, 1913, THE LATTER YEAR REPRESENT- 
 ING 100% OF BOTH HOURS AND WAGES IN 25 DIFERENT 
 TRADES. 
 
 TRADE 
 
 Hrs. per wk. Wages per hr. 
 
 in 1907 on in 1907 on 
 
 basis of I basis of 
 
 100% in 1913 100% in 1913 
 
 Per cent 
 
 decrease in No. 
 
 of working hrs. 
 
 per wk. 
 
 1907-1913 
 
 Per cent 
 
 increase in 
 
 wages per hr. 
 
 i from 1907 to 
 
 1913 
 
 Bakers (first hands) .... 
 
 " (second hands) . . 
 
 " (third hands) . . . 
 
 Building Laborers 
 
 Carpenters 
 
 Cement Workers 
 
 Hod Carriers 
 
 Painters 
 
 Plumbers 
 
 Steam Fitters 
 
 Stone Masons 
 
 Structural Iron Workers 
 
 Granite Cutters 
 
 Blacksmiths 
 
 Boiler Makers 
 
 Iron Moulders 
 
 Machinists 
 
 Core Makers 
 
 Pattern Makers 
 
 Bookbinders 
 
 Compositors (Book) .... 
 
 Electrotypers 
 
 Press Feeders 
 
 Pressmen (Cylinder) .... 
 Sheet Metal Workers . . . 
 
 % 
 123.0 
 108.5 
 112.6 
 102. 
 101 
 102 
 103. 
 102. 
 101 
 102. 
 101.8 
 103.2 
 103.3 
 102.9 
 101.8 
 101.8 
 102.8 
 103.0 
 103.4 
 112.5 
 100.0 
 104.6 
 110.9 
 106.4 
 101.9 
 
 78.09 
 
 75.06 
 
 66.08 
 
 90.07 
 
 88.04 
 
 92.00 
 
 93.02 
 
 84.07 
 
 88.00 
 
 84.9 
 
 91.3 
 
 87.4 
 
 90.2 
 
 87.9 
 
 85.6 
 
 88.0 
 
 89.8 
 
 82.3 
 
 88.7 
 
 83.4 
 
 88.6 
 
 82.1 
 
 79.4 
 
 81.6 
 
 84.5 
 
 % 
 
 23.0 
 
 8.5 
 
 12.6 
 
 2.6 
 1.3 
 2.8 
 3.1 
 2.6 
 1.4 
 2.4 
 1.8 
 3.2 
 3.2 
 2.9 
 1.8 
 1.8 
 2.8 
 3 
 3 
 12 
 
 
 4 
 5 
 0.0 
 4.6 
 10.9 
 6.4 
 1.9 
 
 % 
 21.01 
 24.01 
 33.02 
 
 9.03 
 11.06 
 
 8.00 
 
 6.08 
 15.93 
 12.00 
 15.10 
 
 8.70 
 12.60 
 
 9.80 
 12.10 
 14.40 
 12.00 
 10.20 
 17.70 
 11.70 
 16.60 
 11.40 
 17.90 
 20.60 
 18.40 
 15.50 
 
 28
 
 Tlicsc fio-urcs, while tlicy stretch between two periods, arc not the result 
 of sudden rises ; the changes show a graduated though rapid movement, 
 not an avulsion. The wages go higher and higher, step by step, year after 
 year, throughout the whole recorded period. Take the sheet metal workers, 
 for instance: treating 1913 as the basis the figures run higher, as follows: 
 1912, 3.8%; 1911, 4.6%; 1910, 7.9%; 1909, 11.2%; 1908, 13.4% 1907, 
 15.1%; and presumably if the figures were carried further back they 
 would show relatively the same phenomenon. Consider what this will mean 
 for the nation should it continue for fifty years ; and what is fifty years in 
 the life of the nation? Is it not apparent that this operation will draw a 
 crisis? We can compute its approach. Ascertain the number of the per- 
 ennially idle and casually employed multitude in proportion to the total 
 population of the country, and watch this number extend its proportion year 
 by year ; parallel this with the concomitant growth and extension of the 
 functions of the State to absorb industry in order to give people work, and 
 you will get a fajr idea of how long it will take to evolve the socialist 
 state, and to blot out civil liberty with centralized despotism. In 1907 the 
 casually employed of London, the people who get from one hour to two 
 or three days work out of seven days, totaled 7 per cent of the population. 
 The whole of England, clutched in the iron grasp of unionism, contained 
 over a million registered paupers — people who did not know from where 
 they would get another meal ; and this gangrene was pushing rapidly for- 
 ward into the whole bulk of the people. One would not have to be very 
 wise or knowing to estimate the distance in time when God in His mercies 
 would send them war to kill ofif some millions of them and destroy their 
 properties, so that in the business of reconstructing there would be some- 
 thing amongst them to do that would enable the enlightenment that they 
 possessed to keep each other from starving, and to rescue their civilization 
 from its retrograde movement into the beast. 
 
 While the figures of the above table show astonishing rises of wages, 
 and serious, if not alarming shortening of hours yet their real force cannot 
 be realized without reference to other figures which are wholly absent from 
 the Department of Labor reports, that is, tables of the relative outputs per 
 man corresponding to the respective rates of wages and hours. To some 
 of this rise in wages, and even possibly in some instances to shortening of 
 hours, the laborer is legitimately entitled ; this is where labor-saving machin- 
 ery has entered the industry and brought to the laborers ability to perform 
 a vastly greater service with the same or a less degree of efifort. Take, for 
 instance, the introduction of the pneumatic riveting machine. Prior to the 
 use of this mechanism bolts were driven by hand, a riveters' gang compris- 
 ing two drivers and a boy as heater. The men were paid by the rivet. The 
 air driver did away with one man and doubled the number of bolts thereto- 
 fore driven by the two men. The men were still paid by the bolt, but a man 
 with a machine could make more than by hand, though he was ]):iid less 
 per bolt. Mere the man was exhausted at evening with his ten hours of 
 
 29
 
 ariluous toil ; the machine canio aloiifj^ ami g;ave him more money with lesi^ 
 tffort in a shorter day and with a vastly larger out])ut. The true test of 
 nhat wages the riveters working at the machine would he entitled to receive 
 would have hrcn wliat the riveter could have heen gotten for in a free 
 condition of industry without the interference of (he union. The machine 
 has often lowered wages, or would have lUmc so hut for the union estah- 
 lishing an artificial price. Take a performance requiring particular skill 
 at which the laborer has arrived through long servitude ; a machine comes 
 into existence which performs that feat by moving a lever. A boy may 
 do this; yet under the rules of the union the expensive man. otherwise 
 displaced by the machine, would have to be put at the lever at his full, and 
 possibly at increased pay. Natural and free industrial conditions would put 
 the boy at the handle and turn the man to some employment equal to the 
 powers of his mind, not stunt the latter in its further development by en- 
 slaving him at a trivial thing. With calls for labor everywhere, such as 
 free conditions would create, this man could find ready and remunerative 
 work, so that he would sufter no hardship through being displaced by the 
 machine, the efifect of which on industry is to create greater abundance of 
 v, ealth, hence a larger field of employment. 
 
 Under natural conditions wages would gradually rise while prices 
 lowered, and hours of labor would also fall to some reasonable fixed num- 
 ber. It might be ten, or nine, or may even be eight ; for assuredly there 
 is no requirement, under the development which industry has attained 
 through its mechanisms and methods, for men working from sunrise to 
 sunset, as was the case in the earlier eras of the country.* But the iniions 
 fix no number of hours as a declaration of the ultimate day's work. In my 
 "Industrial Unrest" I note the Socialist orator who advises us that it has 
 been authoritatively computed that if every one turned to, with the exist- 
 ing equipment of mills and systems, and worked daily for twenty-five 
 minutes, there would thereby be sufficiently produced for all the needs of 
 society. They wish less working hours, always less, with no definition of 
 where the stop shall be this side of zero. Long before the processes of 
 the union shall have reached whatever ideal of hours may be their goal, 
 the direction shall have been broken by war. The aim of the union is not 
 a settling down to rational hours. as would attend the natural and free 
 course of industry, but it is thrust to the farthest extent for the very purpose 
 of lessening output, upon the false as.sumption that scarcity of product is 
 necessary to maintain demand for reproduction, for replenishment of supply ; 
 for, to the concept of the union, it is through this that demand for labor, 
 hence opportunity for employment, arises. It is the business of the union 
 to keep things scarce in order that there shall always be an active call for 
 new supplies. I have explained the mistake of this quite fully in my prior 
 vvTitings, and shall not enter upon it here. It instances one of the many 
 errors into which industry and business is led by the false economic doctrines 
 
 *See McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," \'ol. \', page 85. 
 
 30
 
 of the union. Upon the whole, however, it may be said concerning the 
 figures of the above table, that they show wages pushed and hours de- 
 pressed far beyond the natural line to which they would rise and fall under 
 free industry, and display a condition only possible through the union 
 which, as I have stated, if not checked through an intelligent comprehension 
 by the business world of the forces it has set in motion, will change the 
 character of industry in the direction and with the consequences I have 
 shown. 
 
 It is not to be asserted that during the period of Chinese immigration 
 no people were out of work in California. Seasonal unemployment has 
 always existed. In the East this is due to cessation of building operations 
 in winter; during bad weather bricklayers cannot lay brick; when the 
 ground is deep with snow, foundations are not dug ; on the Great Lakes 
 shipping has ceased in winter, for the lakes are frozen. In California as 
 elsewhere there is a period when ranch work subsides and throws large 
 numbers of men out of employment. Under society governed by true 
 economic laws, such as our Association is endeavoring to bring about, 
 where the demand for labor is always greater than the supply, winter would 
 be the period of most activity in the factories, for then plenty of men could 
 be had ; while during the balance of the year the country would call them 
 forth. The laborer would work during the winter in the city and during 
 the spring, summer and until after harvest, on the farms throughout the 
 State. Unemployment, seasonal or other, is a proper subject for consider- 
 ation of the State, and the proposals now in Congress to move the post- 
 ofihce system to bear on bringing men needing jobs and jobs needing men 
 together, is a proper State function. Diffusion of information is always 
 the rightful province of the State, and falls under the head of public safety ; 
 whether such information be the education of the child, the papers of the 
 Agricultural Department on "How to Stack Hay," the consular reports on 
 where to sell goods, or the Department of Labor or postofifice advices on 
 where to get a job — all fall within the true scope of government, and are 
 in no sense an incursion upon the rights of the individual, as always is the 
 case when government enters upon the performance of utilitarian business, 
 or tries to curb the profits of the operators ensuing therefrom. 
 
 There was, however, from time to time loud assertion in San Fran- 
 cisco during the Chinese immigration period of men in large numbers 
 out of work,* when in fact no such condition existed. That any one was 
 out of work was always charged to the fact that Chinese were employed. 
 
 *The San Francisco Bulletin stated in 1878 that Chinese cigarmakers were receiving $6.00-$6.50 
 per 1,000 as against $4.00 per 1,000 paid in the East. In 1885 the wages of Eastern male cigarmakers 
 ranged between $1.50 in West Virginia an<l $2.25 in ConnecticvU ; of female cigarmakers between $1.00 
 and $1.50. In California tlie wages of white men nveraged $2.00 per day and of Chinese in factories 
 from $1.00-$1.50 per day. During this year the White Labor League of California asked the cigar 
 manufacturers to replace Cliinese makers with white men in order to give work to the unemployed. 
 Twenty-one firms agreed to do so provided the whites were competent men and agreed to pay the 
 union prices of New York City. It was at once discovered tliat there were very few unemployed 
 cigarmakers in California and the unions sent East for men. I'our lunulred came out on tliis agree- 
 ment to worl< for one year, and 109 came on their own account. Two hundred and forty returned 
 ICast shortly; the manufacturers said because they were incompetent, tlie unions said because the 
 manufacturers violated the agreement. Shortly afterward the remainder of the imported men de- 
 manded an increase in wages; the manufacturers thereupon reduced tlie number of white employees 
 and re-employed Chinese. — Coolidge, page 367. 
 
 31
 
 If a Chinaman liad a job ami a wliiti' man had none, it was assnmcd that 
 but for this Chinaman the white wouKl have that job; and the Chinese 
 were looked upon as the prime causes of any labor idleness that existed. 
 This, it can be seen, was not true. The Chinese have disa]>peared and tlie 
 idle army has increased, not lessened. 
 
 W'e can see, therefore, that what is necessary for the California manu- 
 facturer to do to bring himself equal to his Eastern competitor is to 
 eliminate the union from his establishment and \n\t his business on a 
 scientific basis, paying according to labor jierformed and adjusting wages 
 to meet his competition, so he can manufacture and compete, not only 
 here but in whatever market it should be fitting for him to enter. If he 
 cannot get the labor at the wage he offers, that is, if labor otherwise desir- 
 ing to be employed is not willfully held from him by the unions, he then 
 knows that he ought not conduct the I)usiness in the field he is trying to 
 occupy. Such would mean, simply, that labor can get more wages in other 
 occupations, and that his competitor has some advantage in bringing for- 
 ward the product that he does not possess. Natural advantages should 
 properly bestow upon a producer a benefit in the face of competition. 
 Factories should be located at sites where they can, under free conditions, 
 produce cheapest and best. 
 
 In this matter of eliminating the union as an interference and readjust- 
 ing wages, the manufacturer need have no apprehensions of the union. He 
 has the ability to bring to his aid a force, the most cogent in existence, 
 whose power neither the union nor any other influence can successfully 
 oppose. This is the force of public opinion. The manufacturers, coordi- 
 nating with employers generally throughout the State, as could readily be 
 done through the instrumentality of the several employers' organizations 
 now existing, could by simply declaring their purposes and presenting their 
 employees with their conditions, bring about a regime which would at once 
 free industry. A clear and distinct statement of the condition which the 
 factories have to meet and the necessities for their act published in the 
 newspapers would move public opinion to the side of the employer. The 
 people of California will not tolerate a condition wdiich shuts this State out 
 of the field of manufacturing and holds it dowai to agriculture and the 
 fabrication of quick-perishing products merely because employees de- 
 mand a wage rate which the industries cannot pay. And they will 
 be prompt to rebuke in all the ways that popular disapprobation is evoked 
 those who make such demands when they have knowledge that forced high 
 wages mean simply high prices and do not benefit the laborer, while they 
 contract the industry, keep thousands out of eniiployment and hold down 
 business in all directions through lessening the product. The method of 
 calling upon public opinion in labor disputes, of adopting the public who 
 must suft'er the effects of a labor disturbance as a third party to the 
 contest, is by no means a suggestion originating with me. It is the basis 
 of the laws of Canada of which Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King is the autlior, 
 
 32
 
 and their a])plication to practice has been productive of most satisfactory 
 results, both the employer and employee so demeaning themselves before 
 a forum where conscience, fairness, public interest and common sense are 
 the criterions, that the grounds of disagreement between them disappear 
 and settlements are made before publication of the conclusions of the 
 investigators becomes necessary. 
 
 It can, therefore, be seen that the rise of our California manufacturing, 
 of our shipping and all that flows from these industries, is really a simple 
 matter. It recjuires merely a unification of the employers of the State, now 
 already organized in their several associations and federations, their resolve 
 to put into efifect elimination of the union in so far as the industries are 
 concerned, and to places wages at rates that are necessary to enable their 
 goods to enter the markets which are properly tributary to this State ; and 
 in this operation to make a clear, fair, terse statement to the public of the 
 necessities which require this act. The undertaking should be proceeded 
 by a period of education of the public along the economic lines as regards 
 wages and as regards trade, such as is now being conducted by the Business 
 Men's Economic Association, and to this endeavor, in support and facilita- 
 tion all employers should vmite. for the active interest and effort of all is 
 necessary. This is the only possible way that the great problem which is 
 overcoming our manufacturers can be solved, and if it be not solved the 
 forces now in full play will go on, not only to the suppression of the larger 
 manufacturers of our State, but to the wreck of all business through the 
 turning of nearly all utilitarian affairs into the hands of government along 
 lines of Socialism, and the practical suppression of liberty as we have been 
 wont to enjoy it, as I have shown in the "Industrial Unrest."* 
 
 Our attitude toward the laborers and their unions in this movement 
 must not be taken as antagonistic. We do not wish to "fight the union," 
 to get out with chips on our shoulders and combat them by main force. 
 The employers will assert in the field of their operations that order of knowl- 
 edge and action thereupon, which belongs to their positions as proprietors 
 and employers. The very fact that they are the heads of businesses im- 
 ports a higher order of knowledge, of executive ability, than is possessed 
 by the men whom they employ. It is not expected of the help that they 
 shall have the administrative talent, the wise and experienced view of things 
 as exists with the heads. Hence, in these great questions we are considering 
 the laborers do not know, and are not to be expected to know, what is for 
 their benefit. Were they so imbued with wisdom they would not be laborers, 
 but would be severally occupying stations of a higher grade in society. 
 The lowering of wages, and at the same time lowering the prices of the 
 nianufactvn^ed commodity (for the two must g(j together) in orck-r that the 
 
 *Note on page 18 of Tlie Industrial Unrest, the circumstance of the business men of England 
 laising $250,000,000 to defend themselves against the mass strike being shaped up to take effect in 
 1915, and which undoubtedly would Iiave been "pulled oflf" had it not been for the war. In a small 
 and highly industrial country like England the operation and effects of Ihe trades union principle may 
 be observed with more clearness than in a large nation like the United States. It is shown that when 
 the unions attain a certain development they coalesce and become highly syndicalistic, t. e. anarchistic, 
 and so, in a solidified mass, enter upon battle with the whole of society. 
 
 401495
 
 manufacturer may hold and extend his markets, iherehy i^ivint;- employ- 
 ment to more men. would he an operation not hannim;', hut benefiting the 
 laborer; and. as I say. would be supjx)rted by public opinion, for such 
 would mean lower prices, less cost of living, and great business activity. 
 It is hence a part of the fund of knowledge with which the employer must 
 necessarily be equipped in order to successfully operate his business, that 
 he shall be advised upon the economic matters we have discussed herein. 
 Understanding of these matters, while in the highest degree needful to be 
 applied to the separate business of the individual proprietor, is at the same 
 time commonly needful to all employers, and so unites the entire body into 
 a close knitted community of interest and accord. For any emplo3^er, being 
 ignorant of these economic laws, to reject their knowledge when proflFered, 
 as is typified herein by the figure Jones, is not only absurd, but it is 
 execrable ; it at once destroys his dignity and scope as an employer, and 
 degrades him to a nameless level — an indififerent. irresponsible Sans-genc, 
 far below the status of his employees, for they in their unions are in very 
 truth guided by a body of economic principles, albeit they are false 
 economics — that phase of economics which presents the appearance and 
 not the truth, which latter can be reached and seen only through deduction. 
 Accordingly the unions are pushing their positions conformably to their 
 lights and to their concepts of their interests. They have done this, have 
 evolved into this, solely because the employers have neglected to do their 
 part, which was to study these questions, find out the correct course to 
 pursue and set the directions upon that course for the guidance of all. 
 The employees, hence, cannot be blamed for their attitude notwithstanding 
 thev are wrong. It rests with the superior wisdom and abilities of the 
 employers, who are in law and in truth their masters, to show and assert 
 the right, the way that is for the common benefit of both employer and 
 employee and for all society ; and when the employer proves derelict to this 
 position, willfully refusing to assume and perform this duty, and stupidly 
 rejects the profifered information as to these laws, not only is he unworthy 
 of any consideration in the presence of the destructive forces that are 
 moving upon him, but as a social entity and agent he is in every respect 
 reprehensible. 
 
 Here, then, it may be remarked, my conclusions are in opposition to 
 any legislation of any kind against the Easterner aiming at keeping his 
 goods out of the State, or any line of movement trying to develop a differ- 
 ential taste for our home-made goods at higher cost on the score of senti- 
 ment. I recommend the abolition of protective tarififs. the repeal of immi- 
 gration restriction, and the elimination of the union from industry, com- 
 pelling it to confine its activities to benevolent objects among its own 
 members, and to creating amongst them by a spirit of emulation, superior 
 workmen wdio will be willingly paid higher w'ages than others, but because 
 they perform more and better work. When the union attains this status 
 in the field of industry, its members standing upon their own rights and 
 
 34
 
 respecting the rights of others, basing its title to respect upon its merit and 
 not upon force, it will then possess a dignity and be paid a deference which 
 is withheld it now. Its members will be the true aristocrats of labor, enjoy- 
 ing the highest wages, which will then be real high wages for they will 
 buy in a constantly lowering market, instead of as now in a constantly 
 rising one ; while their wages, being based on economic law, will never 
 decline, but will from thence on slowly rise. 
 
 Could any proposals than these I make be more unpopular in San 
 Francisco today? They are in the very teeth of all the education that 
 San Francisco has ever had upon these public questions. But manifestly 
 our city and State is deranged and sick, and this Business Men's Economic 
 Association was organized to show what is the matter. It cannot do so by 
 pandering to ignorance, to bias and to folly ; it must pursue the line of 
 natural law, of economic truth, wherever it may lead, and trust to the 
 common sense of the people to give effect to the way when shown. In 
 dealing with economic law, we can no more swerve to the right or the left, 
 than can a just judge in ruling upon municipal law. To do so is false 
 and craven. 
 
 And it must be noted that the several measures opposed are all 
 restrictive, whereas their opposites for which we contend are in behalf of 
 liberty. Free trade, free intercourse or migration, free industry. Our trouble 
 is that human freedom has been circumscribed and denied. We have been 
 loading ourselves with shackles, tying our hands in all directions upon the 
 assumption that to deny ourselves liberty was for our benefit. A century 
 ago men were held in chains by privileged governing classes, who conceived 
 that they severally were advanced by enslaving the people. Our fathers 
 fought themselves loose from this bondage and founded this republic upon 
 principles of individual liberty and human freedom, shaping an organic 
 law which they deemed would secure to their posterity the blessings of 
 those rights for which they had shed their blood. We here, possessed of 
 this heritage, have permitted ourselves to become bound in lashes, not by 
 a privileged governing class, but by our own ignorance, our stupid indiffer- 
 ence to the phenomena going on about us. This can no longer be permitted 
 to continue without disaster, not only to business and property, but to 
 society and to the nation. The forces now at work have only to be let 
 alone to drive the nation and its several States into that same order of 
 autocracy and despotism from which our ancestors emerged through revolt 
 and the expenditure of countless lives. It is altogether a (|uestion as to 
 Vi'hether we have the intelligence and energy to see and correct these 
 wrongs and put California on a safe basis. If we have not there is a 
 provision in nature which will attend to things for us later on, in that 
 summary and stern way with which slic always deals with derelictions and 
 their doers, and which may be undcrstDod through my forthcoming pamphlet 
 "IVar and Business." 
 
 35
 
 WRITINGS OF JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 BOOKLETS 
 
 The following are short articles published in a form to be easily carried by the 
 ordinary business envelope, together with a letter, under a two-cent stamp. 
 
 What Will Become of Business? 
 
 Being an abridgment of the pamphlet, THE INDUSTRIAL UNREST, and 
 designed for use as either an introduction to the reading of that paper, or ad 
 a synopsis of it for the requirements of the busy man. 
 
 The End of Business 
 
 A short essay upon the passing of the employer's right to discharge an employee, 
 hence to maintain control over his business; the incident vesting in the em- 
 ployee of a property right in the employer's establishment by virtue of the 
 induction of the employee therein, and the attitude of the government of the 
 United States through its Department of Labor in reference to this demand. 
 The effect such principle must have upon business and statement of the needful 
 changes in the industrial and political world to restore freedom and bring 
 prosperity to industry. 
 
 An Erroneous View -point 
 
 Showing errors of the popular ideas of remedies for the industrial unrest, in which 
 erroneous views many heads of large businesses are, through ignorjmce of the 
 principles of correct solution, now concurring. A discussion of the relation of 
 idle industrial armies of America to the active military armies of Europe, and 
 of the prevailing indisposition to regard industrialism as a structure workable 
 on lines of natural law. 
 
 The Next Pamphlet 
 
 The forthcoming pamphlet is entitled War and Business. It will be a discus- 
 sion presenting a solution of the vexed question of further armament on part of 
 the United States, which now threatens not only to convert many thousands of 
 our youth into soldiers, burden business with increased taxes to support the waste 
 of munitions, but is preparing the soil for the blood of our children if not of many 
 of ourselves and of those who are now our friends, clients and customers, whose 
 duty it will then be, through no fault of theirs or ours, to shoot us, and we them. 
 Incidentally this paper will present what is confidently asserted as the rational 
 policy and determination of the whole world's peace question, which has occa- 
 sioned so much controversy, without the result of stopping war, throughout the 
 world.
 
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 BUSINESS MEN'S ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION 
 
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