Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/369

Rh growth of large fortunes is likely to be slower in the future than it has been in the past; and the growth of large fortunes is in many quarters regarded as a menace to industrial and political freedom. That wages have in the main risen during the past twenty years is clearly shown in the statistics of the State and National Labor Bureaus. In many trades money-wages have advanced; in others, where they have remained stationary or fallen a little, their purchasing power has increased; in a few trades, superseded by newly devised machinery, and in the case of unskilled labor subjected to competition with hordes of immigrants accustomed to a low standard of living, wages have fallen below the purchasing power of those paid twenty years ago. No State in the Union adds to her population more immigrants of the wage-depressing type than New York; still, on July 1, 1889, her savings-banks held on deposit $536,417,974, due 1,389,907 depositors. The amount had increased $22,000,000 during the preceding twelve months, and $201,000,000 during the preceding nine years. These figures prove a rapid improvement in the condition of the working people of New York; and, since migration from New York to other States is easy and cheap, her advance in general prosperity may be fairly interpreted as gauging prosperity throughout the nation.

While, then, wages have been rising and interest falling, a new method has perforce entered into the management of large properties. It used to be remarked, as a characteristic of American engineering, that it presented not the best thing, but the lowest priced thing that would serve. This is true no longer. Everywhere we find railroads adopting the most substantial types of construction and equipment. Steel rails long since replaced iron rails; now steel bridges are replacing wooden bridges; not only on trunk lines, but on local roads, large outlays are being constantly made for improved curves, gradients and ballasting. Already the increase in the cost of lumber, due to forest destruction, has brought in the experimental use of steel both for ties and for car construction. A steel tie is dearer than a wooden one, but its life is vastly longer. The same principle obtains in mills and factories: net profit can be increased by a judicious increase of capital expenditure, which adds to the account for interest, but deducts a larger sum from disbursements for maintenance, repairs, and accidents. Cheap money for good security has, too, had much to do with the new architecture of our cities—architecture which employs granite instead of sandstone, substitutes sandstone and marble for brick, and demands brick of new durability and beauty. In quite modest dwellings it is now usual to find hot-water or hot air furnaces instead of the heating stoves still general a decade ago; ranges and gas-stoves for cook-stoves; elaborate laundry