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To The Merchants
by
When this newspaper adds to the payroll of a great corporation, it adds to the happiness of a great many families; and therein lie its pride and its excuse for being. And at the same time this increase in the payroll of the Trust or the monopolizer of public privileges means an increase in the income, the prosperity, the legitimate reward of the enterprising merchant, builder and general business man.
We do not lack criticism from well-meaning friends who conduct great stores or other business enterprises. We appreciate all criticisms and suggestions. We offer a suggestion in return:
Let the builder who dislikes unions GO TO CHINA and build his apartment houses. He will find patient workmen at ten cents a day. He will find laws that suppress the unions, and laws that suppress the newspaper which takes the side of the poor.
He will find a non-union Utopia.
But he will not find tenants for his buildings, because in a land where men don’t get high wages they can’t pay high rents, and when the few Li Hung Changs have built their palaces the building boom is over.
Let the great merchant who deplores unions start a DEPARTMENT STORE IN CHINA.
He will never see a walking delegate; he will never be bothered by the dark cloud of unionism.
He will find a perfect heaven in the way of low wages.
BUT HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL GOODS.
His department store will dwindle into a store for selling rice, and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will get very sick of a hundred million women who don’t spend forty cents in a year.
In the land where men are not well paid THEY CAN’T SPEND MONEY.
The best friend of the American merchant, builder, lawyer, doctor, property owner, banker and general business man is the individual or the newspaper that helps the people to get high wages, AND THUS GIVES THEM MONEY TO SPEND.