The world's appreciation was shown by penalizing them $125,000,000. The corn crop of 1912 was considerably larger than that of the preceding year, yet it brought $50,000,000 less.

Plainly, then, the farmer is not getting the profit from the increased cost of living.

To a worker no demonstration is needed that the working class is not getting it; he knows that well enough from his own daily experience. For the benefit of others it may be well to refer again to the statistics. The census of 1910 showed that the average income of a workingman that was the head of a family was a trifle over $500 a year. Investigations of the Agricultural Department showed a year or two ago that to support an average family in anything like decency anywhere in the United States at least $900 a year would be required. The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor recently went into this subject scientifically, and its tests showed that the conclusions of the Agricultural Department were too optimistic. The Association took twenty-seven tenement house families that it was caring for, and, after deliberate investigation, adduced the following table as giving the least a family could subsist upon in New York city, any

way:

If we take the Agricultural Department's figures as indicating the best that can be done in small communities, which is probably the case, and the tables of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor as showing the conditions in larger cities, we must be appalled at the next fact we are called upon to contemplate, which is that an analysis of the income tax facts of 1913 showed that 96 per cent. of the people of the United States that have any income at all, whether from wages, salaries or investments, have an average annual income of $601.

It is very common among well-fed persons that think superficially, or not at all, to push aside any such terrible facts as these by saying

that anyway the worker can better his condition if he wishes to do so. All he needs to do is to practice thrift, economy, zeal and other virtues, and be diligent in the performance of his duties. If he is faithful and intelligent he is sure to rise, and meantime let him deny himself and put money in the savings bank and get rich and independent.

Having delivered himself of which, this kind of a philosopher usually lights a fresh cigar and delivers an impressive lecture on the improvidence of the working classes. The thing has become so common that we even have now a National Thrift Society for the purpose of teaching workingmen and their wives how to make two dishes of one soup bone and to turn papa's trousers a third time for little Willie.

It is easy enough for a man with an income of $25,000 a year to preach thrift. If he were one of the many millions of workers whose average annual income is $500 with a $900 family to support his eloquence on this subject would drop a little. How are you to practice economy when every cent you can earn or hope to earn is swept away the moment it touches your hand by pressing needs and imperative demands? The Thrift Society has not told us

this. I wish it would in the next beautifully printed bulletin.

But about this matter of improving your condition and rising in the world and all that.

It is customarily put forth with a wealth of instances to make the grand old truth apparent to every workingman. James J. Hill began life as a farmer's boy, Charles M. Hays was an obscure clerk in a railroad office, Thomas F. Ryan's first job was to sweep out a store at $3 a week, Charles M. Schwab used to be a workman in an iron mill, Andrew Carnegie landed on these shores all but penniless. See? These are the opportunities offered in this country to men that are zealous and industrious. Be zealous; that's the thing. Regard your employer's interest as your own. Serve him faithfully and get your wages increased. Then you will not have to complain about hard times and the increased cost of living.

Yes. Well, there is about one foreman, overseer, superintendent or other salaried officer to every 333 workers, so that even at the best the gaudy prospect offered by this prescription is that maybe one person in 333 can rise and the rest must remain exactly as they are, no matter how hard they may strive, no matter how diligent, industrious, zealous and service

able they may be. They can wear out their hearts and lives in the effort to improve their condition, and have nothing to show for it but their pains.

This is on the theory that all officers of all corporations and industries are taken from the ranks, and that such officers have the same average length of life that workers have.

But, as a matter of fact, the situation is much worse than I have shown, because most officers are not taken from the ranks, and the average length of life among them is much greater than among toilers.

Prof. Scott Nearing, in his valuable book, "Financing the Wage Earner's Family," has some interesting facts that illuminate this subject. He takes the railroad worker as a typical case, which is good, since it is the officer of the railroad that is most frequently held up to the admiring throng as an example of "getting on in the world."

It appears that ostensibly and on the face of the returns a railroad trainman has one chance in three hundred of becoming some kind of an officer on his line, but he has every year a far greater chance of being killed in the performance of his duty for his kind and generous employer. Every year he has one chance in