Street pavers, London and New York...................................................................... Spinning girls, factories (children), Wigan and Providence.... Tailors, Liverpool and New York... Telegraph operators, female, Manchester and New { Teamsters, Liverpool and New York.. Waiters, female, London (board themselves).. The mechanics of the United States work but nine hours a day, those in England ten to eleven. These figures were obtained by Mr. McKay from the best mechanics in Europe as in the United States. SAVINGS-BANKS. No better test of the prosperity of the wage-workers of this or any other country can be found than in the number of savings-banks, the number of depositors, and the amount of deposits of such country. And hence no better rule of comparison by which the condition of the working classes of the United States can be compared to that of these same classes in England or other countries than by contrasting the condition and number of this character of institutions in the two countries. It is conceded the deposits in savings-banks are composed principally of the savings of wage-workers, those composing the working classes. The financial records show that there are in New England, where, more than in any other section of this country, has been felt the influence of protection afforded by a protective tariff, $7 in savings-banks to every $1 in all England, where free trade prevails and dominates the interests of the wage-workers and of all other classes. And the marvelous increase in the number of savings-banks in protected New England, as also the great increase in the number of depositors and in the amount MIT of deposits in the past thirty years, is a convincing commentary in favor of protection and in opposition to free trade, considered in connection with the interests of those who toil for their daily bread. The increase in the deposits of the savings-banks of England was but $350,000,000 in little less than forty years, whereas the increase of deposits in the six New England States, and including also the three States of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, was in less than half that time, or about nineteen years, nearly double this amount, or about $628,000,000. The statistics show that in 1889 there were in the six New England States deposits in savings-banks to the amount of $592,000,000, deposited by 1,658,000 persons, or about $350 to each person, and including the States of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, $1,250,000,000. In Massachusetts alone the number of savings-banks had increased from 89 in 1860, with 230,068 depositors and $45,054,000 deposits, to 177 in 1889, with 1,029,694 depositors and an aggregate amount of deposits amounting to $332,723,000, or an average of about $323 to each depositor. SUGAR. The tariff on sugar, although heretofore imposed and maintained by the Republican party with a view of developing and building up the sugar industries in this country, which it is to be regretted has been to a very great extent a failure, has in a very large sense proven to be a tariff for revenue only, and as such the tariff has in a very great measure, if not wholly, been a tax, as claimed by our Democratic brethren, that has been added to the price paid by the consumer. Our imports of sugar and molasses the last fiscal year amounted to 2,700,547,667 pounds, the duties on which amounted to $55,975,984.52, and to this extent a tax was imposed on the consumers of this country, rich and poor. The pending bill proposes to release the people of this country from this tax on their sugar and molasses, as the tax from their tea and coffee was taken off by the Republican party some years since. By the bill as it passed the House and as reported from the Senate committee, there is a marked difference in the sugar schedule, although in the main each House proposes free sugar with a proposed bounty of 2 cents per pound to the producers of sugar in this country each year until July 1, 1905, to encourage the manufacture of sugar from sorghum, beets, sugar-cane, and maple-sap in this country. The total reduction on sugar and molasses proposed by the House bill is $55,975,984.52, while the total reduction proposed by the Senate committee is $55,758,220.98, a difference between the two Houses, so far as it relates to a reduction of the revenue, of only $217,763.54. This difference arises as follows: The bill as it passed the House proposes to place on the free-list all sugar not above No. 16 Dutch standard in color, all tank bottoms, all sugar drainings and sugar sweepings, the sirups of cane-juice, melada, concentrated melada, and concrete and concentrated molasses, and molasses. This is a reduction of 2 cents per pound on all sugars not above 13 Dutch standard and of 24 cents per pound on all not above 16 Dutch standard, while under the House bill, on all sugars above 16 and not above 20 on which the existing rates of duty are 3 cents per pound, and on all above No. 20 on which the present law imposes a duty of 3 cents per pound, the bill as it passed the House reduces the rate of duty to four-tenths of 1 cent per pound. The effect of this is to give the people of this country free sugar, whereas on the same grades there is under existing law a duty equivalent to an ad valorem rate of 99.95 per cent. Sugar of the grades thus made free by the bill as it passed the House of Representatives, including molasses, was imported into this country during the fiscal year 1889 of the value of $83,388,286. 49, and on which custom-house duties were collected of $55,975,984.52. The bill as reported from the Senate committee proposes a modification whereby all grades of sugar, only including No. 13 Dutch standard, and all below that grade, shall come in free. With those grades above thirteen and not above sixteen and on which under existing law there is a duty of 24 cents per pound and which under the bill as it passed the House are placed on the free-list, the Senate Finance Committee provide shall be dutiable at three-tenths of 1 cent per pound, while all above No. 16, which by the House bill are made dutiable at four-tenths of 1 cent per pound are dutiable at six-tenths of 1 cent per pound, and the effect of which would be, taken as a whole, if enacted into law on the basis proposed by the Senate committee, to make free sugar and molasses which were imported the last fiscal year of the value of $83,170,423.61, and on which duties were paid to the amount of $55,758,220.98, provided always that the statements and estimates of the Senate Committee on Finance are accurate, which I take it they are. The general effect, therefore, it will be seen of the two propositions of the House of Representatives and the Senate Committee on Finance, respectively, is in so far as it relates to placing sugar on the free-list, according to these statements, not materially different, only to the extent of difference of $217,862.88 on the values of imports, and a difference in revenue of $217,763.54, taking the transactions of last year as a basis. The vital difference arises between the proposition of the House and that of the Senate Committee on Finance from the limit proposed to be placed by the committee in confining the free-list to those grades of sugar not above 13 Dutch standard, instead of to those grades not above 16 as proposed in the House bill. I frankly confess I prefer the House proposition. The effect of this limit is, I fear, to promote to a certain extent the interests of the sugar refineries by giving to them raw sugar free, while at the same time it very materially, or at least to quite an extent, denies to certain classes of the people who use the grades of sugar above 13 and not above 16, a free article, and one that is generally used for household purposes and table use by many people. At the same time it must be admitted, if the statistics and tables presented by our Finance Committee are accurate, and if the removal of duties from grades of sugar above No. 13, Dutch standard, including all not above 16, would not tend to increase the importations of those grades, that then it would seem that there would be no very great difference in effect to the people between the House and Senate committee propositions, as it appears from these tables and statistics that the total amount of importations for the fiscal year 1889, of all sugars of the grade of above 13 and not above 16, was only 7,918,673 pounds of the custom-house value of but $217,862.82, or less than 2 per cent. of the total value of all sugars not above 16 Dutch standard imported into this country the past fiscal year. But inasmuch as there were collected as duties on the 7,918,673 pounds of all sugars above No. 13, and not above No. 16, 99.95 per cent. duty, amounting to $217,763.54, is it not much more than probable that a very much greater per cent. of these grades of sugar, much superior for household uses as they are than the grades under 13 Dutch standard, which are scarcely fit for such use without refining, would be imported, thus giving more liberally a free sugar, of a reasonably good quality, for household purposes to the masses, as provided in the House bill, than would be the case under the bill as amended by the Senate committee? But while the pending bill removes the burden of customs taxation from the consumers of sugar and molasses to the extent of nearly $56,000,000 annually, and the larger portion of which, of course, is paid from the pockets of the great masses-the working classes-it wisely provides a means of encouragement to the producers of sugar in this country by offering a bounty of 2 cents per pound for all sugar produced in this country. This bounty of 2 cents per pound comes from the Treasury of the United States, and not direct, as does the existing tariff on sugar, from the pockets of the consumers of sugar, and of course falls most heavily on the rich, whose general taxes on property, real and personal, are heaviest. GREAT BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE AND POWER. But time fails me, and it is quite impossible to discuss the various schedules. The principle of protection to our home industries, however, and home labor, is one that should never be lost sight of. It is as important to the material welfare of this country and the people of this country now as it was when advocated and enforced by the earliest and best statesmen and the first Presidents of the Republic. If Great Britain was in those days standing in the pathway of the industrial progress of the nation, she is doing so none the less, but to an infinitely greater extent, and with an infinitude of expansion of power to-day. As her power and influence as a nation have increased, her audacity has assumed a more defiant attitude. She aspires not only to crush us in the markets of the world, by controlling and fixing the purchasing power of our currency and fixing the prices of our products, but actually seeks to dictate the terms of our legislation and to control our home markets. Do those who insist on consenting to the demands of Great Britain in the matter of free trade ever pause to consider the magnitude in area, in wealth, in influence, in power, of that mighty empire? Do we appreciate fully the manner in which the great industries of this country are menaced from this source? Is it not well to remember that she has a total area of colonies alone distributed throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, the West Indies, and Australasia of 7,599,347 square miles, occupied by a population subservient to British influence and under British control of 19,797,893; that these are distributed as follows: In Europe and Asia 3,705 square miles, with a population of 382,169; in Asia 113,610 square miles, with a population of 44,565,951; in Africa 455,863 square miles, with a population of 4,230,246; in America, at our very doors, an area of 3,756,338 square miles, with a population of 5,444,913; the West Indies, an area of 12,175 square miles, with a population of 1,306,236; and in Australasia an area of 2,257,656 square miles, with a population of 3,868,378. But not only so. In India and Burmah her area extends to 1,058,814 miles, with a population of 210,754,578, or more than three and one-half times greater alone than that of the United States. In the feudatory states she has an area of 509,730 square miles, with a population of 37,453,374, which, with the United Kingdom of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, with an area of 121,562 square miles and a population of 37,453,574, give the tremendous aggregate, the enormous sum total of area of population of Great Britain, her colo nies and dependencies included, of 9,289,453 square miles, and an aggregate population of 328,388,511. This, therefore, is the area and population of the British Empire. This includes India and fifty-nine separate colonies, but comprising forty distinct and separate governments. These vast possessions have been gradually but rapidly accumulated by this great power by settlement, purchase, treaty, and conquest. From the date of the settlement of Newfoundland in 1550 with an area of 200,000 square miles; of Bermuda at our very eastern doors in 1612 with an area of 13,347 square miles; Barbadoes and the Bahamas to the southward in the years 1605 and 1629, respectively, and the acquisition of St. Helena in 1673, of Canada in 1759-'60, down to the cession of the Fiji Islands in 1874 and the annexation of New Guinea in 1884, the mighty and irresistible march of the British Empire in the extension of her area, population, wealth, and industrial and political power, has been onward. As a matter of interest and for the purpose of attracting attention to the gradual but remarkable growth and expansion of this empire, and as illustrating the grasping and insatiate greed and disposition to control, of this great power, a list of the various acquisitions, with areas and populations and the dates when and the manner in which respectively acquired, from the date of the settlement of Newfoundland in America to the present time, is herewith submitted and believed to be historically correct. It is as follows: General statistics of the colonies and dependencies of Great Britain. |