become consumers of our merchandise and manufactured products as well as producers of others, that there has been during the twenty-seven years since 1865, subject to temporary variations and fluctuations, a steady advance in the rates of wages, a steady reduction in the cost of labor per unit of product, and a corresponding reduction in the price of goods of almost every kind to the consumer.

There has never been a period in the history of this or any other country when the general rate of wages was as high as it is now, or the prices of goods relatively to the wages as low as they are to-day, nor a period when the workman, in the strict sense of the word, has so fully secured to his own use and enjoyment such a steadily and progressively increasing proportion of a constantly increasing product. Hence, so far as our experience goes in dealing with the great flood of immigration which has poured in upon us in increasing measure during these twenty-five years, greater in the last ten years than ever before, all the facts and the conditions would tend to prove that we might invite its continuance, so far as it consists of the intelligent and the capable who constitute by far the greatest portion, rather than impose taxes to keep the intelligent and capable from coming here to improve their condition. We now have specific and absolute data in respect to manufactures, the mechanic arts, and mining going to prove that, through the application of science and invention in these specific directions, those who do the actual work in the sense in which the workman uses that phrase-in a lessening number of hours and with less arduous effortsecure constantly advancing wages, increased purchasing power, better food and more of it, more clothing, if not quite as good on account of the obstruction to the import of wool, and also, outside of a few congested districts in cities, better shelter at lessening cost to the occupant.

The agricultural class deserves some special consideration. It may be asked, If farming is not profitable, why do the crops increase? If market gardening is not profitable, why does the product increase in quantity and in value? If farmers do not prosper, why is it that there is a constantly increasing demand for labor on farms at wages that are much higher than they were ten to twenty years ago, to meet which demand for farm labor there is no sufficient supply? I anticipate the bugbear of the mortgage; but about that we are beginning to have data sufficing for a true solution. It is not true that the farmers, taken as a body, especially in the West, are oppressed with heavy mortgages. The very reverse is true. Let it suffice to refer to the special census bulletin giving the statistics of farm lands and mort

gages in Illinois. In this return, compiled by Mr. John S. Lord (whose reputation is well known to every one dealing with statistics) and by Mr. George K. Holmes, a separation is made between mortgaged acres and mortgaged lots. Dealing with mortgaged acres as a representative of mortgaged farms, we find that the percentage of the mortgage upon the true valuation of all the farms taxed in Illinois was only thirteen and twenty-seven-hundredths. Less than one-half of the farms in Illinois are subject to any mortgage, the percentage of the total number of taxed acres represented by the number of mortgaged acres being only thirty and seventy-eight-hundredths. Dealing with the mortgaged acres only, the average of the mortgage to the true valuation is but forty-two and twenty-seven-hundredths per cent. It therefore appears that much less than one-half of the farms of Illinois are subjected to any mortgage, and the average mortgage upon that part encumbered by debt is less than one-half its specific value. This official statement confirms the judgment which I had formed from data secured in a much less adequate manner from other States.

A comparison has been made of the quality of the immigrants who are now coming to this country with the quality of those of a former day. Without any reflection upon one race as compared to another, it may well be questioned whether any more hopeless class could have been dealt with than the poorest class of the Irish immigrants who were forced from their native land by the famine of 1846. Moreover, there are now within our borders a body of immigrants, greater in number than the five million who have landed on our shores during the past ten years, who have come out from more hopeless conditions than those people themselves: seven million blacks have migrated from slavery to freedom. Their progress is the wonder of economic history. Are we incapable of dealing with the Italians and the Jews? The records of the savings banks do not indicate want of thrift on their part, even of those who live in the slums of Boston. It does not appear that they are not ambitious. The records of the schools do not indicate that they are unwilling to learn; I have yet to hear of any great crowd of foreigners in any congested section of our country who have been as slow in recent years in their development of schools and English speech as the rich farmers occupying the richest part of Pennsylvania from a very early date.

There remains but one aspect of the question, namely, How is immigration regarded by members of the so-called labor associations, trades unions, and the like? According to the statement made, appar

ently by authority, by representatives of the labor associations, there may be one million persons in the various unions of this country. That number would constitute only one in twenty-three of all those who are actively occupied for gain in the conduct of all the arts of life, or a proportion of between four and five per cent of the whole number at work. The members claim rightly that their unions and associations are schools in economic science. This claim is certainly true; but these schools are not yet advanced in any very considerable measure in dealing with the subjects that come before them, although the pupils are beginning to understand them in a more sensible way.

To-day violence on the part of trades-unionists has practically disappeared in Great Britain and very nearly so in this country. It is claimed by prominent men among them that individualism is incomplete in its work, and that collectivism will take its place. That may be in particular trades where a mass of workmen are not themselves capable of dealing with their own affairs; but that phase cannot last long, because as the intelligence of each member is developed in the school of trades-unionism, he becomes restive and refuses to be bound to mediocrity. He works out from his narrow class into a broader and more hopeful mode of life and work. He soon learns that competition is the great force that lowers prices while it raises wages; he also soon learns that the effort of the union and association to limit the training or instruction of young people in each trade is a sure way to invite immigrants and thus to produce the very result which he is trying to have done with. I have observed that in just such measure as the regulations of trades unions and associations may for a time limit the number of artisans or operatives in a given trade, thereby preventing for the moment either the rise or the fall in wages, in just that measure invention is stimulated and immigration is invited.

It is greatly to the credit of the workmen, especially those in the unions, that they do not share in the effort to prevent immigration and do not approve a tax upon immigration. It is certain that in a very short time those who go to school in such unions will learn. that privileged classes in the trades are as obnoxious and as unjustifiable as privileged classes in any other department of life. There can neither be monopoly in the conduct of commerce, in the conduc tof manufactures, nor a trades-union monopoly in the conduct of any single branch of industry. The more an attempt is made to create a trades-union class, the more the effort will defeat itself; and the morebitterly it is carried out, the more surely will those who refuse to join

in such attempts to monopolize trade or art become the most skilful, the most prosperous, and the best representatives of that specific art, even though they are for a time subjected to opprobrium and ignominy.

Great forces are now in action in tending to break up the concentration of the factory system, which will also very surely break up the congestion in cities by diffusing the working population throughout the suburbs and over wider and wider areas. It will not fall within the scope of this treatise to deal at length with these new forces. But all the recent investigations as to the trend of population indicate that the increase of population within the limits of the cities is not so much in the crowded parts as it is in the environs, where better conditions of life and work can be obtained than have been possible under the extensive system of farming large areas. On the other hand, large farms are breaking up and the extensve system of farming is becoming more and more practised in agriculture. The excessive crowding in a few Eastern cities does not indicate a general tendency.

What may occur from the application of electricity in various ways one can hardly yet compass by any effort of the imagination. One of the latest consular reports is very significant. In and around the city of Saint-Etienne, France, there are eighteen thousand hand-looms which are operated in the dwelling-places of the weavers upon the finest kind of silk ribbons. The city authorities have lately made a contract with the owners of an electric plant to carry power for the operation of these looms into every household for two years, in which period a test may be made of the practicability and economy of this service. One can hardly imagine or picture the effect of such a force upon the future in the household arts when power, light, and heat may be applied in every household by the touch of a button in the wall; and until one's imagination can grapple with the possibilities of such a future the problem of immigration will remain undetermined. Every one's judgment upon the subject will vary with his confidence in a free-government. To the writer it seems almost pusillanimous to refuse a refuge to the oppressed and to the industrious and capable, for fear that the institutions of this country may suffer. If we cannot deal with one-half of this great continent, of which the resources are as yet hardly even known, will not this prove that our capacity is not yet equal to our opportunities? Boast as we may of what we have accomplished, we shall no longer be able to justify by our conduct of affairs the methods which were established by our predecessors.

EDWARD ATKINSON.

OCEAN TRAFFIC BY THE ERIE CANAL.

THE Hon. George H. Ely, of Cleveland, presented statistics at the Deep-Waterways Convention, held last December at Detroit, showing that about thirty-six million registered net tons of shipping passed that city during the two hundred and thirty-five days that the navigation of the Great Lakes was open. The aggregate tonnage entering and clearing from the ports of London and Liverpool during an entire year does not equal that passing Detroit in seven months, and this is a growing commerce. General Poe, the engineer officer in charge of the Government works on these channels, says: "For nearly thirtyfive years I have watched its increase, but neither I nor any one else within my knowledge has been able to expand at the same rate. The wildest expectations of one year seem tame the next."

This traffic has been growing nearly ten per cent a year, but this rate of increase will not be continued in the near future, as the restricted depths and widths at several places already crowd the channels with boats nearly to the danger point. Neither a marked increase in freight tonnage nor any material decrease in freight charges can be expected until a minimum depth of twenty feet from Buffalo to Chicago and Duluth is obtained, as asked for by the Deep Waterways Convention. This may be obtained by 1896 and, it is claimed, will reduce freight rates on the Lakes by one-half.

Although, on account of the practice of vessels going "up" light, only about 30,299,006 tons of freight were transported during the season of 1890, they were carried an average distance of five hundred and sixty-six miles; so that, multiplying the tons carried by the distance in miles, we have more than seventeen thousand million tonmiles, or a freight distribution equal to almost one-fourth of the ton-mileage of all our railroads. This lake freightage has been done at an average charge to shippers of 1.3 mills per ton-mile. The shipments by railroad, on the contrary, are averaged by the Interstate Commerce Commission at 9.22 mills per ton-mile; so that there was a saving on each ton transported by this water road over the average charges by railroad, for an equal distance, of $4.48, or an aggregate