There is no permanent place in American politics for a party that bases its claims for popular support on the failures and disappointments of the people. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Rhode Island.

WAGES. (Continued.)

Mr. Fred Walker, a potter, of Trenton, N. J., said :

"We ask that the present duty be maintained, chiefly from the fact that if a reduction should take place it would affect the wages of the operatives in this country. We have never received as much wages at any time as we do at present.

"We believe as workingmen, that seeing as we receive over 60 per cent. difference in wages between the man paid in England, France, and Germany in several branches of our industry, that we ought to be satisfied as wage earners."

On behalf of the floor, encaustic, vitrified, and enamel tile manufacturers, he said:

"Our principle reason for not being able to compete with foreign manufacturers is the difference paid for wages, the rates in many instances being less than one-third of those paid in this country."

WAGES, THEIR PURCHASING POWER.

In a speech on the silver question Senator Mills (Democratic freetrader), of Texas, gave these facts:

"Mr. President, the wages of labor in this country and all over the world for a hundred years have been tending upward. They are higher to-day than they have been at any time in the past, and the wage earner, in whatever occupation employed, is deeply interested in the preservation of a standard of values as fixed and immovable as it is possible to make it. A few years ago our friends on the other side of the Chamber directed the Committee on Finance to make an investigation and report to this body the movement of wages and prices for a number of years. They took the year 1860 as a basis and compared it and other years with 1890. They intended to use these figures in their tariff battle of 1892. They intended to show that wages had been rising and prices had been falling, and the credit was due to a protective tariff.

"When that time comes I will discuss with them the conclusions to be drawn from these facts. It is enough here to state the facts. Taking 1860 as the basis and calling it 100, the rate of wages increased to 1864 to 125.6 or 25.6 per cent., and to 1890 to 160.7 per cent., or 60.7 per cent. In 1860 and 1890 there was a gold standard, and in 1864 a depreciated paper standard. Wages went up in four years 25.6 per cent., but the money the laborer earned was only the instrument which enabled him to procure the necessaries of life, and while it went up the ladder a few rounds, the necessaries of life that his wages had to buy to sustain himself, his wife and children, had ascended the rounds of the ladder till they were lost in the clouds. The annual average wages of laborers in manufactories in 1860 was $288.95. The average monthly wages was $24.08, in gold. In 1864 it was 26.6 higher, or $30.24 in paper, and in 1890 it was 60.7 per cent. higher than in 1860, and was $38.69 in gold. Now taking the official prices given by the Bureau of Statistics and the Finance Committee, the result is shown by the following table:"

Notice that the annual average of wages for 1890 is $464.28, as against $288.95 in 1860, and $362.88 in 1864

WASHINGTON.

Area, 69,180 square miles.

Admitted as a State Nov. 11, 1889.

Legislature composed of 34 Senators, 77 Representatives. Meets bien

nially, January 14, 1895.

State elections, biennially, Nov. 3, 1896.

SENATOR WATSON C. SQUIRE, (REP.) term expires March 3, 1897.
SENATOR (Vacant.)

The laws that we make must either dignify and exalt labor, or they must debase and level it to where caste for two thousand years has attempted to consign it.

-Hon. John A. Caldwell, Ohio.

WEALTH.

NEW ENGLAND NO LONGER LEADS IN ACCUMULATED WEALTH.

THE GREAT WEST SHOWN BY THE ELEVENTH CENSUS TO HAVE SURPASSED THE GREAT MANUFACTURING STATES IN THE ACCUMULATION OF TEN YEARS.

The increase of wealth from 1880 to 1890 in the States has caused much comment. Free Traders and Calamity Howlers have held up the Eastern manufacturing States as awful examples of greed and robbery, while the poverty of the West has been cited in such piteous and heart-rending stories of wrong and oppression that common justice demands that the people shall be informed at once of the fraud these deceivers of the people are trying to have them believe.

The following table from the Census Bulletin on Wealth, No. 379, issued March 19, 1894, is made the basis of calculation.

The increased wealth of the Nation is $21,395,091,197, or $1,039 per capita. Twenty-eight out of the fifty States and Territories exceed the average increase per capita. Of these only five are Eastern States, namely, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island; these five having only an average gain of $1,287 per capita, while the five Western States of California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Nevada have an average of $3,542 per capita.

The only States which have lost in the past ten years are Eastern States, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Kansas, which the Populists have pauperized on every possible occasion, saved and accumulated more wealth in the ten years preceding 1890 than did Massachusetts. Nebraska exceeded Pennsylvania in her accumulations, while Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin all and each passed New Jersey in the race for wealth.

Where do you find the "Robber Baron," the "Giant Robber," the "Fortress of greed and gain"? No longer in manufacturing New England. Pennsylvania gives place to Texas in the total sum of her savings, and New York, with twenty-two thousand millions of increased wealth, has not as much to divide to each person as those in the District of Columbia, where a factory is not known.