People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1894 — Untitled [ARTICLE]

cent; bit from 1830 to 1893 there has been a leap from 23.57 per cent to 29.20 per cent “The maximum increase is found iu cities from 75,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, which have increased 91.35 per cent The striking decrease in the rate of growth of cities of more than 100,030 inhabitants is worthy of note.” This shows, Mr. Adams continues, that the local centers of industry grew portentiously by migrations from the surrounding rural districts Meanwhile industrial prices were probably sustained by the tariff, and the farmer paid the difference so long as his resources lasted. But finally the value of our crops fell so low that their sale no longer paid our foreign debts, ana a drain of gold set in. The drain caused the price of gold to rise, or in other words, forced values down, and is apparently still forcing them down, and must continue to force them down till we get to the general level of the rest of the world.

The writer quotes the New York Tribune, which estimates that the shrinkage in the value of the four chief crops alone, as compared with last year, amounts to upward of $220,000,000, and this loss of income represents a direct curtailment of the demand for manufacturers, for we have substantially only the home market The consequence is the general slackness of the demand for labor, which takes the form either of reduced wages or loss of time. The Tribune is further quoted to show how serious this shrinkage has been: “In the iron, cotton, woolen and shoe industries, employing about 1,008,000 persons a year ago, the work is now equivalent to about 620,000 persons full time, and with wages averaging about $1.60, against $2.00 then, so that a little less than $1,000,000 is now Daid for labor where $2,000,000 was paid a year ago.” It is also very certain, Mr. Adams concludes, that this fall in price is not caused by overproduction, for our crops have been unusually small, and our stock of manufactured goods was light when the squeeze of last summer began. The stock of everything is small, since the people are too poor to buy, and they are poor because gold is appreciating and prices are all falling. Certainly an era of monometallism has not been an Eldorado to the working man. And this process apparently must go on to its inexorable results. As the mass of surplus labor accumulates the unions overflow, and to protect themselves must exclude the weaker. These are left utterly helpless.