Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/96

 80 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

437,283. It is asserted that this is wrong, and that it should be reduced by $5,162,044,076, the cost of materials, and the difference $4,210,393,207 given as the true value of products. This latter sum comes nearer representing the enhanced value of the raw materials, or the value added by the expenditure of capital, labor, and other manu- facturing processes. It is the amount added to the wealth of the country by manufacturing processes, but it is not the true value of the products of the manufacturing establishments of the country. One writer criticising these totals even went so far as to say that the two values had been published in official reports as the value of the prod- ucts of industry, yet one was 66 per cent, greater than the other, and that the public was expected to accept both as showing the same thing. The public will accept nothing of the kind, though the writer referred to may."

So far from asserting that $4,210,393,207, or any other amount, represents the true value of manufactured products, the writer stated in a footnote (p. 526): "The census furnishes no data from which may be ascertained the value of manufactured products, which, besides the value added in manufacturing, would include the value of products of the mine, field, forest, and fisheries, consumed in manufacturing industry." It would seem that the value of manufactured products can be ascertained only by aggregating the values of finished products; yet Mr. Steuart would include also the value of manufactured products consumed in the manufacture of other products, though these values, having been destroyed, have no existence save in the minds of eminent census officials. To these Mr. Steuart also adds the value of mineral, farm, and fisheries products, which have likewise been consumed, and thus would discover the value of the products of productive industry.

It may be noticed that Mr. Steuart does not deny the authenticity of the writer's quotation of Colonel Wright's letter to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Census, in which that gentleman declares the incomparability of census wage statistics, which, in his Atlantic Monthly article, he compares as demonstrating the greatly improved condition of wage-earners. Mr. Steuart, nevertheless, labors to prove the com- parability of these statistics. For this purpose he quotes remarks of the census of which, as chief of division, he is himself the author, as follows: "The tendency of the questions used in 1880 was to obtain a number in excess of the average number of employes, while it is believed the questions used in 1890 obtained the average number. The questions in 1890 also tended to increase the amount of wages as