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Workingmen! Which Do You Want? American or European Wages!

[U.S.,] June 1888. Broadside, 19” x 12.5”.

A scarce statistical broadside touting ‘higher’ U.S. wages for unskilled and skilled labor in seven major industries, comparing these wages to those received in Europe for the same forms of labor, apparently published to placate organized labor.

Presented here are the comparative wages for numerous forms of labor, ranging from glass-blowing and pottery to coal-mining and blacksmithing, as practiced in both America and Europe in seven different industries: Window Glass, Pottery, Blast Furnaces, Coal Miners and Coke Makers, Flint Glass Workers, Rolling Mill, and Bessemer Steel Works. Wages are given per diem, week, and ton; and in many cases the U.S. wages are nearly double that of Europe’s. U.S. wages were sourced from factories in West Virginia, Ohio Valley, “West of Allegheny Mountains,” Trenton, New Jersey, and U.S. national wage averages. European wages are drawn from Belgium, Great Britain, Cumberland, England, and English national wage averages. It is underscored that “the hours of work in Europe are longer than in America for the same amount of work.” In the case of Blast Furnaces, it is noted that “The wages of Blast Furnaces here denominated as Ohio Valley wages are the smallest west of the Allengheny Mountains. Those paid in Joliet, Ill., and even in Pittsburgh, are higher than those given here.”

Individual jobs and ‘occupations’ listed in these industries include: Potteries (saucer makers, wash bowl makers, kilnmen, saggur makers, turners); Window Glass (blowers, gatherers, flatners); Coal Miners and Coke Makers, working “ten hours per day” (coal cleaners, mine boss, engineers); Blast Furnaces (bottom fillers, cindermen, keepers, helpers); Rolling Mill (cotton tie rolling and heating, muck rolling, puddling); Bessemer Steel Works (converter men, steel works ladle men, rail rollers); Flint Glass Workers (punch tumbler blowers, first-class castor place workmen, glass blowers, pressers, and finishers).

1888 saw the Burlington Railroad Strike and the passage of the first federal labor relations law. This broadside appears to have been published in order to mute broader labor unrest.

No copies recorded in OCLC. Google searches yield one copy held at the National Museum of American History.

CONDITION: Small loss to bottom-left corner, old horizontal fold, some soiling.

Item #6128

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