John R. Commons

American Shoemakers, 1648–1895 A Sketch of Industrial Evolution

Industrial stages illustrated by the shoemakers, 39. — I. The Company of Shoomakers, 1648 (Boston). Itinerant cobbler and craft gild, 40. — II. The Society of Master Cordwainers, 1789, and the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers, 1794 (Philadelphia). Retailshop and wholesale-order stages, 45. — III. The United Beneficial Society of Journeymen Cordwainers, 1835 (Philadelphia). Wholesale-speculative stage, 59. Economic causes of class organization; the bargain, 65; the period of investment, 67; the level of the competitive menace, 68; protective organizations, 69. — IV. Knights of St. Crispin, 1868, 72. The factory system, 73. — V. Industrial Evolution in Europe and America. Organization and legislation for protection, 76.

Tariff Revision and Protection for American Labor

For nearly seventy years the effective arguments that have sustained the protective tariff have been the home market for farmers and a high standard of living for wage earners. The first depends on the second, for without a purchasing power of American labor greater than that of foreign labor the home market is not much better than the foreign market. The standard of living is the really enduring justification of the protective tariff. The tariff prevents the competition of foreign low-standard labor and draws a charmed circle within which American labor may gradually work out its own higher standards. Now, it is an important fact that the principal leaders and advocates who framed the pauper labor argument two or three

Reviews : The Economics of Distribution. By JOHN A. HOBSON. Pp. 361. Price,

has become necessary to appoint a commission to regulate all the great businesses of modern times, the present economic order has become bankrupt.&dquo; The real remedies urged are some degree of publicity, as in trusts, and the responsibility of directors for all statements to stockholders, and above all, the destruction of all those special privileges which are connected with railroad discriminations, the cornering of anthracite coal and mineral lands, and the abuses of protection. In line with all his previous views, and with those which are