and as a whole it cannot be said they eke out more than a miserable existance.

A correspondent of the Industrial Vindicator from Gallitzin, Pa., says:

The average wages of the miners of this vicinity for the past year has not exceeded $25 a month. Take $5 from that for rent, which is about one-fifth his wages, and you leave him but twenty to maintain himself and family. Average each family at five members, and you have $4 a month or $48 a year for each member to live upon, which is less than $1 per week. The misery entailed upon the unfortunate workingmen may not be apparent to the man that draws the rent from his tenants, but it is felt just the same by the tenant and his family. It is not the outside appearance of the man we must take to get an estimate of his condition or standing in the world, but

his actual condition at home.

Mrs. L. M. Barry, the general invertigator of the Knights of Labor, writes to the Journal of United

Labor of her visit to the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania, and she calls attention to the conditions she saw there that should set

every reader to doing something to aid in improving those conditions, and it is only a sample of what it is in other places. She

says:

The homes of the miners are low, inconvenient and uncomfortable, with no comfortable surroundings; paint is a stranger to the company's house, and if repairing is done at the expense of the occupant or not at all. One well in some part of a hamlet answers for the whole neighborhood. A young girl whom I saw carrying water had a frame similar to a window sash in which she formed the central figure, and on either side was balanced a twenty quart tin-pail full of water. She carried it while in my sight more than half the lenght of a Philadel phia block. A short time previous to my visit a young man, while walking with two young women, was precipitated into a cave-in, or, in other words, an old and exhausted mine had caved in and he fell a distance of eighty-seven feet, while his companions were left standing one either side of the terrible yawning chasm, frightful of moving lest they too disappear into its terrible depths. The poor fellow was resurrected, frightfully jammed and bruised, but not seriously. This caving

on

in is a frequent occurence, and many poor people live in momentary terror whose homes are situated on ground which has been undermined, robbed of its treasure of black diamonds and left a standing menace to life and limb; but what care we, our homes are secure fn some picturesque spot of a leighboring city. On we went? Upon every side great black, frowning mountains meet the breaker loomed over all, telling no tails eye, while the begrimmed top of the of the young lives being dwarfed and stnnted within them.

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The letter then gives evidence of the arbitrary power that the miners work under, and continues:

The remark of an old settler of Milns

ville, a little hamlet between Hazleton and the Mountain House, gives the situation just as it is. He said:

"I come from a land of oppression and tyranny and sought a home in America, because I thought it was a free land, but experience soon taught me I had only left one form of bondage to enter another. There is no freedom where a man dare not freely express himself in either word or action, it is like stirring up a hornet's nest, if you touch or disturb one they will all set to and sting you--if you displease one boss they will all sting you as you pass by, refusing you the privilege to earn your bread unless you take it upon their conditions. They are and have been getting rid of intelligent English-speaking workmen and are filling their places with poor unenlightened foreigners; the few of us who are left are compelled to teach and instruct them, which is very hard, as they cannot understand us, and we must put our finger on every spot or thing we wish them to do, and," said he with a sigh, "when we get them fully instructed I suppose we must follow the rest, although some of us, myself one of the number, have been here for over twenty years."

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With all these unfavorable conditions their work is unsteady. The coal operators can close down when they choose. The Press reports now brings us the information that in the Pittsburg district 6,000 miners have been thrown out of employment at the beginning of winter, which will entail a vast amount of destitution and misery upon themselves and families. Organization is doing much to aid them, but they also need the aid and sympathy of those that organization does not reach.

FROM press reports the information is received that a gigantic railroad trust is to be formed by which rates are to be kept up, and in many quarters it is called "a good thing." Such a combination is nothing more than federation among railroad companies and it will give them a power that some of our citizens will notice more than the mere questions of rates, and will result in showing the necessity of federation among railroad employes better, perhaps, than what is felt now. The question is a good one for discussion in the halls of various organizations of railroad employes. "A stitch in time will often save nine."

Wages per hour of the following trades in England and Germany are reported by the United States Statistician as follows:

TRADES.

Blacksmiths

Machinists.

2 per hour.

Germany

England

per hour.

CENTS.

32

63

THE STRUGGLE FOR SUBSISTANCE.

Under this title Edward Atkinson contributes an article to the November Forum, from which we take the following extracts:

The optimist can find on every side facts that sustain his view that the general struggle for life is becoming easier and not harder, while the statistics of the life insurance companies prove that the duration of life is lengthening.

Even in some cases where the quality of the working people may appear to have deteriorated, and their standard of living to be no longer equal to what it was in the same pursuit twenty or thirty years ago, one may find, on looking a little deeper into the causes of the change, that by way of improvements in machinery either less intelligence of less mechanical aptitude is now required on the part of those who tend the machines than was formerly needed in the same branch of industry. In this way a class of operatives has been brought into the

factory and there enabled to do efficient work, for whom a few years since there would have been no place above the plane of unskilled, menial, or common labor; while the class of operatives formerly required to do this kind of work has been lifted up to better conditions, better work, and better wages by the position of the same superior qualities which first enabled them to do the

work of the factory when the machinery did less and the man or woman did more. Forty or fifty years since, the daughters thirteen hours a day in the cotton facof the farmers of New England worked tory in order to earn $175 a year; to-day French Canadians, working ten hours a day, earn $300 a year, yet the cost of labor is less now than ever before.

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CENTS.

17

Tanners..

101

Bookbinders

121

6

Harnessmakers

141

Coopers

131

Bakers..

1223

6

7

4

8

England's rate is about the same as the pauper labor of Pennsylvania, Maine and New Hampshire.

Again, many occupations that are necessary to the present methods of life, and without which modern society could not exist in its present form-especially the kind of work which is done in great factories, mines and furnaces-involve the continuous labor of multitudes of men and even of women under very monotonous and in some few branches even noxious conditions, or else under conditions in which even the attainment of even a physically clean and wholesome life for a part of each day or week seems almost hopeless.

What is called divisions of labor distributes and sorts men and women each to a separate part of the work, which may be in some cases harmful to health, in some cases so extremely monotonous that there is no mental stimulus in it, and in some cases so depressing and degrading in its necessary conditions as to preclude almost any hope of mental development. It is one kind of work all the time, in place of many and varying kinds dividing the longer day's labor. In former days there may have been more hard work, and even more unwholesome work to be done, but was it not so divided and distributed that but few persons were limited to work of any one kind, day in and day out, for three hundred days in a year? Was there not more variety, more versatility, and more opportunity for young men and women to find out for themselves what they could do in the best way, and also a better opportunity to improve their position than there is now in the arts to which this so-called system of division of labor has been applied? Was there not also a more humane relation between the employer and the employed, more sympathy and more recognized mutuality in the service of each to the other? Yet if the great factory did not exist, and were it not for modern machinery and mechanism and this subdivision of labor which has become necessary to any adequate supply of the means of living, how could the existing population of Massachusetts, for instance, of whom at the present time more than one-fourth are foreign born, and more than one-half foreign parentage, live even as well as they do? Had it not been possible for these foreigners to come here in order to avail themselves of the opportunity which it offered, how could they have existed at all in the lands which gave them birth, which are even now over-crowded? If it sometimes seems that progress and poverty march together, one may ask what would have been the poverty without the progress? If the analysis of our present condition, relatively good as is compared to former times or other countries, yet

proves that only a narrow, poor, and meager life has become possible to great masses of people, in what direction shall we look for the progress in which poverty shall cease to be one of the phases or correlatives? Can we lift great masses of people all together to a higher plane, or must we rest content with such developments as open their own wey to those who have the eyes to see and the capacity to attain each for himself or herself? Can any one be boosted by the state who cannot help himself?

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These problems must be studied from below as well as from above, from within as well as from without, if the discontent of the present day is to be removed by gradual, peaceful, and adequate methods; for the very reason that the better conditions of life which are now so readily attained by those who are capable of grasping the opportunity offered them, bring into more and more conspicuous contract the adverse conditions of those who have not yet become capable of such attainment.

Probably very few of the persons who will read this article, in fact very few among those who read with interest and intelligence any articles, essays or books upon which is called the labor question, have themselves had the kind of experience which is necessary to enable them to comprehend the aspect of life to the man who can earn only one or two dollars a day for the support of himself and and of his family, if he has one. Perhaps even a less number may have the kind of imagination that will enable them, without having had the experience to comprehend the struggle for life on these terms, even if they try to put themselves in the place of the common laborer or of the mechanic who can barely do the limited and monotonous work in which he is occupied, without the prospect of ever doing anything more or different.

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It may not be judicious for the mere business observer, who cannot claim to be able to comprehend anything more than the elements of the philosophy of history, to venture to forecast the future; yet to many prosperous persons who now pay little regard to the blind struggle of vast numbers of working men and women to improve their condition, and who think workmen have no rights to be secured and no wrongs to be redressed, one may rightly put the question: not you also something to do in the solution of the problems? Are there not signs of danger? May not the existing unbearable tension among European nations, burdened as they are with mon

Have

strous national debts that can never be paid, and with huge and onerous standing armies which it seems to be impossible to disband, end in revolutions in which many feudal privileges and vested wrongs may go down forever, but in which also many institutions covering not only rights of property in land but in all the products on which existence depends, may for a time be questioned? If such should be the course of events in other countries, are we so strong in our popular government that we ourselves may not share some of these difficulties and dangers? Or even if there be no danger to society in this country, and, as the writer most profoundly believes, nothing but benefit to be ultimately gained from the organization of labor and the study of so-called labor associations, clubs, and societies, might not all others also join in attempting to solve these problems, to the end that free institutions may be fully justified, not only by those who possess an abundance, but also by those who can find in such institutions the opportunity for themselves or their children to attain the conditions of life which may indeed make this life worth living to the poor as well as to the prosperous?

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. T. V. Powderly in his annual address to the General Assembly says:

We must have an aggresive and active campaign, and wage it unceasingly, so that the poorest in means may know his welfare is affected by a pernicious system of finance, by the absorption of the public lands and by the acquisition of power over the destinies of the people by the control of the railways of the nation. We have witnessed the expenditure of millions of dollars for the support of strikes; we have seen the effects of boycotting; we have watched the course of our co-operative enterprises, and yet cannot say with any degree of satisfaction that much of good has resulted. Had the millions which had been spent in strikes been devoted to carrying on an educational campaign on the lines which I have outlined, we would have made strikes impossible, for so long as it lies in the power of a favored few to issue the currency of the nation, so long as the people allow their representatives in Congress to delegate to private corporations the right to coin money and control its issue in their own interest instead of to meet the wants of the people, just so long will strikes prove abortive, just so long will they occur, and just so long will the people remain helpless to aid themselves in time of need.

So long as the entire control and man

agement of the public highways of the country-the railways-remains in the hands of private individuals while doing the work of the nation, just so long will the operation of co-operative enterprises be attended with failure. We may manufacture the best quality of goods and be prepared to sell at the most reasonable rates, but we cannot depend on having these goods transported to market, so long as the transportation facilities of the nation are controlled by monopoly. The government will to-day take charge of and deliver the order for material, it will see to the prompt delivery of that order, but will not compel a prompt and ready acquiescence on the part of those who control the railways and have the goods or material promptly delivered.

The continuance of the educational feature is an absolute necessity. The order demands it and should have it. Those who oppose the plan on the plea of economy, who argue that it is a drain upon the poor of the order, have only to read the letters which accompanied the vote as it was mailed to the General Master Workman, to be convinced that those whom they represent are progressive and earnest; that they long for the era of strikes to pass away. They have voted for the inauguration of an educational movement which will establish the true relations between employer and employed-which will teach men what their relations to the state should be. Those who have opposed the "special call" have done so on the plea that I opposed the only true remedy for the ills of labor-the strike. The strike was opposed, and no matter what position in life I may occupy in future my opposition to strikes will continue. Many would make use of the strike as the first step; your General Master Workman would use it as the last resort. If the strike is the only remedy and the best one then strike by all means; but study the situation first and know what is best, instead of striking first and learning afterwards that to do so was foolish and possibly criminal. Wasteful damaging and hasty strikes were entered upon against the law of the order, and those who were elected to enforce the law were appealed to to sustain those who violated it, and injured the order and themselves in doing so. Is not the age of reason here? Must we still depend on strike after all the advances have been made? Must we depend upon brute force as of old? Must we still resort to methods which make the appetite of man more powerful than his intellect as an arbiter in the affairs of life?

the

In workshop, mill and mine, along the

line of commercial steel which span the the continent, on field and farm, the men of toil are contributing each day to the wealth of the world. For every dollar that labor earns it gives two to interest and usury, two to monopoly. While the men of toil are producing the wealth of the state in contributing to our ave nues their elegant and costly mansions; while they are making the choicest of of articles, the finest fabrics; while they are placing the grain and meat within the reach of the hungry millions, other men are taking the bulk of these things for profit. The mansions erected by the worker are never occupied by him; the choice articles deck other homes than that occupied by the toiler, the broadcloth adorns the backs of those who could not make it. The meat, the grain, the food is cornered by hands that could not produce it, and men gather as in the temples of old to buy and sell what they could not dig or grow. We read of bulls and bears; we learn that they can raise and depress the price of food. We see them act in such a way as to bear down the price of labor, but never build it up. Everything that the worker creates from the raw material which His Maker places at his hand can be "beared" down until his wages are also depressed; other men can "bull" up the prices of everything which he makes or raises, but the price of labor is never "bulled" up while workman strike against the evils that presents themselves to their vision, they do not realize that their action is contributing to the wealth of thieves, who gamble in the stocks which the strike affects. They do not realize that the very men against whom they strike are reaping a rich reward in increased profits by purchasing from the timid owners the the stock which is affected by the strike; they do not realize that in nine cases out of ten the strike takes the stocks from the hands of many and turns them over to the few, who are the aggressors in the game of starve and steal.

I do not blame men for striking; I blame them for making fools of themselves in not knowing how to strike. They always strike at the top leaf on the tree, because it appears plainest to the vision; but they always leave the root undisturbed to grow other and more powerful shoots. On many an occasion I have almost lost patience with prominent men in the labor movement, men who lived in the past so long that they cannot see that the agencies of this generation are entirely different from those of any other, and from their point of view the strike has the same power as of old. We must teach men what it is that creates a necessary for a strike. They must be taught

how to strike effectively against the system which permits gambling in money, in land, in railways, and in the very food which is withheld from the mouths of millions at the sound of the stockbrokers ticker. Our lecturers and educators should be kept in the field and be in. structed to keep these questions always before the people. Rest assured we will meet with the opposition of all with whose interests we interfere. We will have to put up with the taunts and jeers of those who are in the pay of monopoly, and we will have men in our order bought over to do the work of the enemy; but these things must not deter us from going forward. Had our order not stood guard at the threshold of the poor man's home no poor man's enemy would have raised a hand against it. The opposition which has been shown to the order has convinced me that our principles are correct and true. I recommend that this General Assembly continue the work of education on even a more advanced platform than heretofore.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT. What is the present value of the United States? It is estimated at $43,000,000,000.

What is the present population utilizing this wealth? About 55,000,000.

If this wealth was devided how much would there be per capita? A little over $781.

How many millionaires would it make? Forty-three thousand.

If we had 43,000 millionaires, how many paupers would we have? We would have 54,957,000 paupers.

Is there any prospect of such a state of things? Most assuredly there is. The census of 1860, 1870, and 1880 demonstrate that the farmers' and laborers' share of the fruit of their industry decreased, while the share capitol got increased.

How can we stop it? By kicking the boodlers and their associates out of office and turning away from old politicians and old politicial parties, and striking out for the interest of the living instead of prating and listening to sophistry on issues that are dead.

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.-Emerson.