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THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF AMERICAN

THE

WORKINGMEN.

HE eminent French economist, Emile Levasseur, has recently made a careful study of the wages received by workingmen in the United States and of the cost of living. The summarized results of this investigation are published by M. Levasseur in the Yale Review. These are his principal conclusions:

"1. Real wages are equal to nominal wages multiplied by the coefficient of the commercial power of money.

"2. Food, light and heat being cheaper in the United States than in France, ordinary stuffs and ready made clothes being probably not more dear, the rent being in many cases more expensive only because the lodging is larger, it follows that the articles of ordinary consumption-the quantity and quality being assumed to be equal-cost rather less than more, and certainly do not cost more for the workingman's family in the cities of the United States than in those of France, and that consequently the real wages are, like the nominal wages, much higher in the United States than in France.

"3. This high rate of nominal wages and real wages has created for the American workingman a standard of living and type of existence above that of the French, and even that of the English workingman. The life of the workingman is broader in America than in Europe. His well-being shows itself in the expenditure of a larger sum under almost all the heads of his budget,—by a dietary, which if not more varied, is at least more abundant and substantial; by the luxury of his dress, by the comforts of his dwelling, by the amount expended on trade associations and savings, on travel, on moral needs and amusements; on the other hand, by the proportional amount charged to each of these heads, food absorbing hardly one-half of his income, while it absorbs three-fifths in other countries. If he occasionally wastes, this is a fault which comes from a lack of education; but to carry the amount of his consumption to the level of his earnings, is his right, and if in one way or another he saves, he cannnot be charged with prodigality.

"4. It is true that the cost of living of the American workingman is dear. Indeed, the social power of money is less for him than for the European; that means that he has more needs to satisfy in order to live like his peers and to maintain the social position in which he is placed. His wants being more numerous, he requires more money. If an accident, such as a reduction of wages or lack of work, temporarily obliges him to retrench, he suffers from the privation, as people suffer in all classes of society from a diminution of their comfort, and he thinks himself miserable. With 5 francs a day a French workingman is in ease; with $1 the American is pinched.

"5. Below the average rate of wages there are in America, as in Europe, a considerable mass of work

ingmen who cannot reach this standard of living, because, being without technical education, they have nothing but their arms to offer, and who live in discomfort because they cannot live like their comrades.

"6. Below this mass there is also in America, as in Europe, a class of people who are unable to live on their earnings, and one may see in the large cities of America heartrending misery.

"7. Since 1830 the nominal wages of the American workingman have almost always been rising, this increase having been interrupted only apparently when the depreciated paper money took the place of the good money.

"8. From 1830 to 1860 the price of commodities increased, but in a proportion which seemed only one-fourth as great as the increase of wages. From 1860 to 1891, disregarding the exaggeration produced by paper money, it has diminished 9 per cent.; the result is that from 1830 to 1860 real wages had increased a little less than nominal wages, but from 1860 to 1891 they increased more.'

HOW TO SPEND MILLIONS.

E. L. GODKIN has in the October Scribner's a

plain-spoken and sensible essay on "The Expenditure of Rich Men." He describes the splendor which was considered the appropriate result of riches in the middle ages, and tells how all this is now changed in Europe. With the subtraction of real power from the upper classes display has ceased. "To be quiet and unobserved is the mark of distinction. Women of Madame de Sevigné's rank travel in dark-colored little broughams. Peers in England are indistinguishable, when they move about in public, from any one else. Distinction is sought in manners, in speech, in general simplicity of demeanor, rather than in show of any kind. An attempt to produce on anybody, high or low, any impression but one of envy, by sumptuousness of living or equipage, would prove a total failure. It may be said, without exaggeration, that the quietness of every description is now the 'note' of the higher class in all countries in Europe-quietness of manner, of voice, of dress, of equipages, of, in short, nearly everything which brings them in contact with their fellow-men. Comfort is the quest of the 'old nobility' generally. Ostentation is left to the newly enriched, but there can hardly be a doubt that this is largely due to loss of power. Wealth now means nothing but wealth. The European noble was, in fact, everywhere but in Venice, a great ter ritorial lord. It was incumbent on him as a mark of his position, as soon as he came out of his mediæval 'keep,' to live in a great house, if only for pur poses of entertainment. His retinue required large accommodation; his guests required more, and more still was added for the needs of the popular imagination.

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Mr. Godkin calls our attention to the fact that in

America there is no "world" or "monde," in which there is a stock of common traditional manners and topics and interest which men and women have derived from their parents, and a common mode of behavior which has assumed an air of sanctity. The existence of such a world in Europe has made the path of every rich man perfectly plain. If he was of good family he would do what his fathers had done before him without thinking of an alternative; if a nouveau riche, he would simply imitate the manners of those who are well born. But in America the suddenly rich-and there are a great many more of them and very much richer than in Europe-have not so easy a path toward the goal of learning how to spend their riches. They must find out for themselves by devious studies and travel, or by acquiescence in the general belief that whatever they do must be right.

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One of the things which an American multimillionaire is most apt to do in his imitation of European models is still the most conspicuous European mode of asserting social supremacy--the building of great houses." But in this, Mr. Godkin points out, they make two radical mistakes. In the first place, they have not the great territorial possessions which great houses in Europe generally are signs for, nor the practice of hospitality on a vast scale. These are the excuses for great houses in England, France and Austria. "The owner is a great landlord, and has in this way from time immemorial given notice of the fact; or he is the centre of a large circle of men and women who have practiced the social art, who know how to idle and have the means to do it; can talk to each other so as to entertain each other, about sport, or art, or literature, or politics; are, in short, glad to meet each other in luxurious surroundings.

"No such conditions exist in America. In the first place, we have no great landholders, and there

be ruled out, where would the topics of conversation be found? Would there be much to talk about except the size of the host's fortune, and that of some other persons present? How many of the men would wish to sit with the ladies in the evening and participate with them in conversation? Would the host attempt two such gatherings without abandoning his efforts in digust, selling out the whole concern and going to Europe?

A SUGGESTION FROM MR. GODKIN.

Mr. Godkin, after showing that the ordinary modes of attempting display in America are not even considered as vanity, suggests that there is a means of getting rid of cumbersome money which is untried and is full of honest fame and endless memory. We mean the beautifying of our cities with monuments and buildings. "This should really be, and I believe will eventually become, the American way of displaying wealth."

"Considering what our wealth is, and what the burden of our taxation is, and, as shown by the Chicago Exhibition, what the capabilities of our native architecture are, the condition of our leading cities as regards monuments of sculpture or architecture is one of the sorrowful wonders of our condition. We are enormously rich, but except one or two things, like the Boston Library and the Washington public buildings, what have we to show? Almost nothing. Ugliness from the artistic point of view is the mark of all our cities. The stranger looks through them in vain for anything but popu lation and hotels. No arches, no great churches, no court houses, no city halls, no statues, no tombs, no municipal splendors of any description, nothing but huge inns."

A THOUSAND YEARS OF THE MAGYARS. N the Canadian Magazine Mr. Thomas Lindsay

is no popular recognition of the fact that a great recalls several interesting phases of Hungarian

landowner, or great man of any sort, needs a great house. In the second place, we have no capital to draw on for a large company of men and women who will amuse each other in a social way, even from Friday to Monday. The absence of anything we can call society-that is, the union of wealth and culture in the same persons-in all the large American cities, except possibly Boston, is one of the marked and remarkable features of our time. It is, therefore, naturally what one might expect, that we rarely hear of Americans figuring in cultivated circles in England. Those who go there with social aspirations desire most to get into what is called 'the Prince of Wales's set,' in which their national peculiarities furnish great amusement among a class of people to whom amusement is the main thing. It would be easy enough to fill forty or fifty rooms from Friday to Monday' in a house near New York or Boston. But what kind of company would it be? How many of the guests would have anything to say to each other? Suppose "stocks" to

history which seem to have been very generally overlooked in most of the literature suggested by this year's millennial celebration.

While it is true that the Magyars suffered occa sional defeat, Mr. Lindsay declares that neither the Turks on the one side nor the Germans on the other were ever able to gain and hold one foot of Magyar territory.

"If Arpad rose from his grave to-day he would find that his descendants had remembered the oath of the seven, had been true to his memory, true to themselves, and were steadily Magyarizing the whole of southeastern Europe. Strong in their unity, there is no people in Christendom who can, so to speak. see so clearly through their past history, and for none is the future so bright. The union with Austria was a union of dynasties, not of peoples. The Magyar celebrates the millennial of Hungary, not of Austro-Hungary. If we would study the Hungarian we must forget his political name, which

only misleads us. We may study him as the result of an evolutionary process, which can be traced in most minute detail, leading from the barbarian of the Caucasus to a race not less cultured than the highest in Europe.

"In these days of celebrations, anniversaries and centennials among our own people, we are apt to forget that there are other people in the world who have histories to look back upon. Hungary's millennial may possibly awaken us. We may send greetings to the courtly Magyar in English but a few centuries old, and he will answer in the language spoken on the plains of Asia when the world was young.

"It is to be hoped that the western world may become better acquainted than it has hitherto been with the literature of Hungary. A people with such a glorious record must give expression to their feelings and their aspirations-we would like to know just what they think of their past and of their possible future."

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ences.

She has a deep sympathy for the creative artist struggling with the incubus of a weak body, and she agrees with the phrase "the insolence of health" and the saying of Longfellow, "No truly sensitive man can be perfectly well."

"Far be it from me," says the authoress, "far be it from me--to the farthest limit of good sense-to seem to undervalue by a semitone the supremacy of physical sanity. Next to holiness, nothing is so enviable as health. I am not ashamed to say it, I would rather be well than be Shakespeare. I would rather be a hearty, happy, strapping motorman, or woodchopper, or stoker, than-but would I? How can one tell? To understand the psychology of sheep,' said George Eliot, one must have been a sheep.' To understand the mental attitude of health, one must have been descended of health and chosen of it. Ideally speaking, the robust mind in the robust body ought to be the keenest as well as the finest in this world. In point of fact, it often partakes too much of its own muscle; the nerve of perception is bedded a little too deep in the fiber."

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Mrs. Phelps-Ward goes on to say that she has always had before her the wish to write, before her pen was stopped, what she had learned about "the relation of illness to energy, to sympathy and to fortitude."*

"The world has learned fast how to treat the other defective classes-the criminal, the insane, the shiftless, the pauper-in all these branches of investigation we are developing a race of experts.

In the comprehension of the physically disabled and disordered, it is my conviction that we are behind the age. I do not mean by this to cast any petty or ungrateful fling upon the usefulness of physicians. As a class, I think them men and women of courage and of unselfishness far beyond the line at which most of us exhibit these qualities. But the scalpel will never perform the finer surgery, nor the prescription formulate the hidden therapeutics that I have in mind. The psychology of sickness and of health are at odds; and both the sick and the well suffer from the fact. I believe that great pathological reformations are before us, and that a mass of human misery, now beyond the reach of the kindest patience which handles it, will be alleviated. In truth, I believe that sympathy as a fine art is backward in the growth of progress, and that the subtlest and most delicate minds of the earth will yet give themselves to its study with a high passion hitherto unknown to us."

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AN AUTHOR'S ADVICE TO INVALIDS.

'Avoid dependence upon narcotics as you would that circle in the Inferno where the winds blow the lost spirit about forever, and toss him to and fro-returning on his course, and driven back-forever. Take the amount of sleep that God allows you, and go without what He denies; but fly from drugs as you would from that poison of the Borgias which cunningly selected the integrity of the brain on which to feed. Starve for sleep if you must-die for lack of it if you must-I am almost prepared to say, accept the delirium which marks the extremity of fate in this land of despair-but scorn the habit of using anodynes as you hope for healing and value reason. This revelation is sealed with seven seals.

"Expect to recover. Sleep is a habit. The habit of not sleeping, once diverged from, may at any time swerve back to the habit of rest. The nervous nature is peculiarly hung upon the Law of Rhythm; and the oscillation, having vibrated just about so far, is liable, or likely, to swing back. But, if you are to recover, the chances are that you must do it in your own way. not in other people's ways. To a certain extent, respect your own judgment, if you have any, as to the necessities of your condition.

"Cease to trouble yourself whether you are understood, or sympathized with, by your friends or by your physicians. Probably you never will be, because you never can be. At all events, it is of the smallest importance whether you are or not. The expression of sympathy is the first luxury which the sick should learn to go without. This is peculiarly and always true of nervous disorder. A toothache or an influenza, a cough or a colic, calls forth more commiseration than these trifles deserve. Disease of the nervous system is, as a rule, and among enlightened and kindly people, regarded with the instinctive suspicion and coldness natural to a profound ignorance of the subject. Do not be afraid to act for yourself. Define your own conditions of

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the point of view of the expert psychologist, in which he presents most of the great emotional religious movements of medieval and modern times as so many cases of hypnosis. Our medieval parents were strikingly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. "Man carries with him the germ of the possible mob, of the epidemic. As a social being he is naturally suggestible; but when this susceptibility to suggestion becomes, under certain conditions, abnormally intense, we may say that he is thrown into a hypnotic state. We know that a limitation of voluntary movements induces light hypnosis, which is characterized by inhibition of the will if the memory is unaffected; self-consciousness remains intact, and the subject is perfectly aware of all that goes on; a loss of voluntary movements is one of its chief phenomena. Keeping this in mind, we can understand to a certain extent mediæval life. The mediæval man was in a state of light hypnosis. This was induced in him by the great limitation of his voluntary movements, by the inhibition of his will, by the social pressure which was exerted on him, by the great weight of authority to which his life was subjected."

It was nothing more nor less than this self-hypnotization, according to this writer, that caused the crusades, which agitated European nations for about two centuries and cost them seven million

men

"The mediæval ages present us with an uninterrupted chain of epidemics. No sooner did the crusade mania abate than another epidemic took its place that of the flagellants. The initiator, the hero of the solemn processions of the flagellants, is said to have been St. Anthony. In 1260 the flagellants appeared in Italy. An unexampled spirit of remorse,' writes a chronicler, 'suddenly seized on the minds of the Italians. The fear of Christ fell on people noble and ignoble, old and young; and even children of five marched through the streets with no covering but a scarf round the waist. All carried a scourge of leathern thongs, which they applied to their bodies, amid sighs and tears, with

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such violence that the blood flowed from the wounds. The flagellant epidemic spread into Ger many, and penetrated even into Poland. As it was slowly dying out, there arose another terrible epidemic, the black death,' with its horrible persecu. tions of the Jews. No sooner was the black death over than another epidemic, the dancing mania, began to spread. In the year 1374, at Aix-laChapelle, men and women began suddenly to dance in public, on the streets and in the churches. In wild delirium, and for hours together, they continued dancing, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions. From Aix-la-Chapelle the epidemic spread to the Netherlands."

We are confronted with a table of our mediæval ancestors' successive manias, showing an unbroken record of epidemics covering a period of nearly five centuries, as follows:

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"The first camp meeting in Kentucky was held at Cabin Creek, and continued four days and three nights. The scene was awful beyond description. The preaching, the praying, the singing, the shouting, the sobbing, the fits of convulsions, made of the camp a pandemonium. Religious suggestion soon affected the idle crowd of spectators, and acted with such virulence that those who tried to escape were either struck by convulsions on the way, or impelled to return by some unknown, irresistible power. The contagion spread with great rapidity, and spared neither age nor sex. The camp-meeting of Indian Creek, Harrison County, is especially interesting and instructive for its bringing clearly to light the terrible power of suggestion. The meeting was at first quiet and orderly. There was, of course, a good deal of praying, singing and shouting, but still nothing extraordinary occurred. The suggestion, however, did not fail to come, and this time it was given by a child. A boy of twelve mounted a log, and, raising his voice, began to preach. In a few moments he became the centre of the religious mob. Thus, O sinners,' he shouted, 'shall you drop into hell, unless you forsake your sins and turn to the Lord!' At that moment some one fell to the ground in convulsions, and soon the whole mob was struggling, wriggling, writhing and jerking.' In some camp-meetings the religions

mob took to dancing, and at last to barking like dogs. Men, women and children assumed the posture of dogs, moving on all fours, growling, snapping the teeth and barking."

ANTITOXIN TREATMENT OF DIPHTHERIA A SUCCESS.

THE

HE last word on the subject of the antitoxin treatment of diphtheria seems to have been said in the report of the American Pediatric Society's investigation, recently published. In the September Forum, Dr. W. P. Northrup reviews the conclusions of this report, which he summarizes as follows:

"Of 4,120 cases injected during the first three days, excluding moribund cases, the mortality was 4.8 per cent.

"The most convincing argument, and, to the minds of the committee, an absolutely unanswera. ble one in favor of serum therapy, is found in the results obtained in the 1,256 laryngeal cases (membranous croup). In one-half of these recovery took place without operation, in a large proportion of which the symptoms of stenosis were severe. the 533 cases in which intubation was performed the mortality was 25.9 per cent., or less than half as great as has ever been reported by any other method of treatment.

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"The committee, in editing its report, sought to exercise a judicial fairness while submitting antitoxin to a most exacting trial. Tonsillar cases of mild type unconfirmed by bacteriological culture, recovering, were excluded as doubtful. Fatal diphtheria cases, whose diagnoses were unconfirmed by cultures, were included.

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"Animals are susceptible to the diphtheria of Antitoxin is a specific' to this diphtheria in animals. There is every reason for believing it is 'specific' in man. If it could be conceived humanly possible for a healthy baby one year old to receive by injection ten times a fatal dose of diphtheria toxin, produced by a virulent bacillus, and at the same time a proportionate dose of Antitoxin, there is every reason to believe that the baby would suffer only the transient pain of injection; would in fact behave exactly like the guinea-pig.

"More than 600 physicians in their reports pronounced themselves as strongly in favor of the antitoxin treatment of diphtheria, a great majority of them being enthusiastic in its advocacy.

"Finally, to him who still feels distrust, who avers that statistics bring no conviction, that strong men are on either side, I would say: when he has seen one severe case of diphtheria clear up like darkness into daylight, he will look for no more argument. Since the days when Lister proposed antiseptics in surgery, medicine has not taken so great a step in advance."

THE

THE VIVISECTION QUESTION.

HE vexed question of animal vivisection is reopened in Appleton's Popular Science Monthly by Prof. C F. Hodge of Clark University, who boldly advances to repel the attack on the practice led by the valiant promoters of the Anti-Vivisection Society

Professor Hodge protests that the real issue has been obscured throughout the controversy, and that the purpose of biological science has not been comprehended by opponents of vivisection. That purpose he thus explains:

"Man finds himself in company upon the earth with an infinite number of living things, and he has found it of inestimable value to learn something about this maze of life The science which has come to embody this knowledge is now known as biology. It falls naturally into two great divisions: the study of the form and structure of organs and organisms-anatomy or morphology-and the study of the functions, of the actions, which the organs perform. This is physiology. Dividing further, physiology falls into the sciences of healthy actions, physiology proper, and diseased action, pathology, from aboç, a suffering. It is evident that for the study of form alone the dead body is in general sufficient But for the investigation of the activi ties of health and disease it is as evident that the physiologist and pathologist require vital action as much as the chemist requires chemical action or the physicist requires motion. It is continually being urged that the dead body is sufficient for every scientific purpose. As well say that the dead body is as good as a live man. It would be precisely as reasonable to agitate against driving live horses, contending that dead ones will go just as fast, as to oppose the use of live animals for physiological or pathological research. And those who make this claim prove conclusively that they have no conception of what the word physiology means."

NATURE SANCTIONS VIVISECTION.

Professor Hodge finds his warrant for the practice of vivisection in the operations of Nature. Every animal life, he says, is cast into the world as an experiment, often of the severest and most painful type, but in this life long vivisection, Nature provides neither ether, chloroform, chloral, nor morphine.

"By this very dispensation of Nature God clearly gives to man every sanction to cause any amount of physical pain which he may find expedient to unravel his laws. Not only this, the situation places upon man heavy duties, which he is bound to perform. These we will consider in a moment. As far as biological science is concerned the whole argument may be summed up as follows: Biology is not an exact science like mathematics and physics. These sciences are exact simply because it is possible in them to obtain as many equations as there are unknown quantities to be determined. Hence, with

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