operative received $328 or 59.94 per cent of the value created by his labor. His employer was obliged to invest $1,557 in money, per employee, which investment enabled the operative by his labor to create an industry product worth $548. In order to pay the operative his yearly earnings the employer had to clear 21.10 per cent on his investment.

In 1903 conditions in the industry showed a material change. The average annual industry product advanced from $548 to $600, while average actual yearly earnings were $393 as against $328.

The percentage of yearly earnings of industry product was 65.55 instead of 59.94. The average capital invested per employee became $1,381 as against $1,557, but the percentage on capital required to pay yearly earnings was 28.48 instead of 21.10. Any two years in the table may be compared in a similar manner.

COST OF LIVING.

Cost of living is a variable amount dependent upon size of family, age of members, place of residence, purchasing facilities, and very largely upon individual or collective tastes or requirements. The cost of living of two families of the same size with equal incomes may vary materially; one family may close the year in debt, the other with a balance in the bank. One may purchase the best of everything, while the other is satisfied with medium or even low grades. Each family becomes a problem as regards cost of living, and it does not solve a hundred problems to add them together and make one of them. Statistics of cost of living are valuable when grouped and compared with classified incomes. From such statistics we obtain the amounts paid for food, rents, clothing, fuel, light, and other items of household outlay. In them, however, we find no reliable indication of financial condition. When the budgets give income, debt or savings can be determined, but cost of living figures, in themselves, are not reliable indications of increase or decrease in prices. A man may spend $500 on his family one year and $750 the next, but this marked increase of 50 per cent may have been the result of a larger income and a higher standard of living, and influenced in no way by the ruling prices of family necessaries.

PRICES.

Prices of the "necessaries of life" should be exclusively for those items used in and by the family. As family purchases are made almost entirely from retail dealers, retail quotations are the only ones statistically applicable to the case. In determining numerical and percentage increases and decreases the same grades should be considered and the same quantities; that is, comparisons should not be made between pounds and barrels, and quarts and gallons. The quotations should be numerous and drawn from as large an area as possible in order to overcome, as far as possible, marked local influences.

COMPARISONS OF WAGES AND COST OF Living.

As previously stated, and illustrated, such comparisons are of doubtful, if any, value. Both factors in the comparisons are variable in themselves, and comparisons of such variable factors cannot produce fixed, reliable results.

COMPARISONS OF EARNINGS AND PRICES.

What a man actually receives in money for his services is a positive amount; what he actually has to pay for certain articles of family use is equally positive. If his expenditures for the necessaries of life are accurately computed for a week, or month, or year by giving to each its proper financial “weight” or influence (not the pound to pound basis of consumption, which is fallacious) then the result, either in numbers or percentages, can be properly compared with actual earnings, and the actual increases or decreases in earnings and prices can be arrived at in a legitimate statistical way, and be presented to the public in the form of comparative amounts or percentages.

FUTURE WORK OF THE BUREAU.

We presented in Labor Bulletin No. 31 quotations of prices for 17 cities in the State. In the fall of 1904 comparative quotations for the same articles in the same cities will be obtained by our agents.

In Part I of this report actual weekly earnings are given in many branches of employment. In the fall similar returns

will be gathered, and the Bureau will then be in a position to present comparable figures relating to earnings and prices for separate periods.

CONCLUSION.

The action of earnings and prices is mutually reflex. If the workingman toils for less hours and gets more money for his labor, the costs of production and distribution are increased and manufacturers and dealers advance prices.

Theoretically and practically the more money a man has the more he should pay in taxes. The average workingman's personal property is within the exemption, but many own or have equity in real estate. The dealers charge more for meats, flour, and other necessaries; the towns, cities, and the State join hands by raising the valuation and increasing the tax rate; then the real estate owners, paying more for materials and labor and higher taxes, put up rents.

The rich man has always found fault with the high taxes, but eventually pays them. Higher prices are the poor man's taxes. Like the rich man he can find fault with existing conditions and the law makers whom he holds responsible for them, but, like the rich man, in the end he must pay. Scarcity will raise some prices, combinations will advance others; over-production, or under-consumption which is the same thing, will bring down prices on many articles. Industrial attrition will finally regulate the wage question, and then prices, wages, and cost of production will reach a normal standard once more—and this normal standard will give a just return to all who make, sell, distribute, or use the manifold products of industry.