Page:Adolph Douai - Better Times (1877).djvu/8

 in the state of New York from about $300,000 to beyond three million and a half.

Says the official statistician of Massachusetts ("the model state"): "After giving the grand aggregate of all classes reported as supported or relieved as 283,476, and after making all allowances, it is found that we support in full or in part one person in every 19 of the population, while in England and Wales they have one in every 23." "In the number of convicts Massachusetts also claims leadership, having one convict to each 380 of the population, while England and Wales has one to every 790, or two and one-tenth convicts in Massachusetts to one in England." (Report of 1876, page 211.)

But this picture of misery is not complete without adding that there are from 100,000 to 110,000 weavers and spinners, from 50,000 to 60,000 shoemakers, and tens of thousands more of workers in that same state who are not receivers of alms or any public charities, but whose wages do not amount to more than $300 a year on an average, even when fully employed, so that they cannot support a family without their wives and most of their children going also to the factory. As early as 1870 the official statistician reported 66,000 children of school age who did not enjoy any schooling.

All the other states having no official labor statistics, we can only guess at the state. of things there from some established facts. In the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania there are about 60,000 miners whose average yearly earnings are not quite $300. This pittance is greatly curtailed by the truck-system which there as well as among the spinners and weavers of New England has made of the laborers real wages slaves.

The census of the United States taken in 1870 exhibits some labor statistics which have been analyzed in a book by Mr. and still further by Dr. of New York. Although that census was taken during the period of our greatest manufacturing and agricultural prosperity, and although the figures are derived from statements of employers who cannot be expected to understate the earnings of their employes; it appears from those figures that there were few industries in 1870 in which the employes could support a family without some additional earnings of their wives and children, or lay up savings and become small capitalists. Most laborers in those industries had to leave more than one-half of their earnings as profits in the hands of their employers, some two-thirds or three-fourths. As it is well known that since 1870 wages have sunk to less than one-half, rent and victuals to only about two-thirds of their former prices, it follows that even fully employed wages people can now no longer expect to become independent owners of their means of labor.