Infant Mortality.

The condition of children, if taken as an index of the welfare of the people, shows an alarming situation. Children whose fathers earn less than $10 per week died during the first year at the rate of 256 per thousand. Those whose fathers earned $25 or more per week died at the rate of only 84 per thousand. Thus, children of the very poor die at three times the rate as compared to that of the children of the moderately well off. In six of the largest cities of the country, from 12 to 20 per cent of the children are noticeably underfed and ill nourished. In four industrial towns studied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 75 per cent of the children quit school before reaching the seventh grade.

In the families of the working class, "37 per cent of the mothers are at work and consequently unable to give the children more than scant attention. Of these mothers, 30 per cent keep boarders and 7 per cent work outside the home."

The Land Problem.

In agriculture, the situation is similar. In 1910, 37 per cent of the farms in the country were tenant operated, an increase of 32 per cent in 20 years. The conditions of the tenant farmers are considered hopeless. They have no future before them. They are badly nourished, uneducated, and exploited.

Causes of Industrial Unrest.

The causes of industrial unrest, therefore, are summed up as follows:

1. Unjust distribution of wealth and income.
2. Unemployment and the denial of an oppor-
tunity to earn a living.

3. Denial of justice in the creation, in the

adjudication and the administration of law.

4. Denial of the right to form effective organizations.

The summary of the distribution of wealth in the country is as follows:

1. One third of the adult male workers earn less than $10 per week; between two thirds and three fourths earn less than $15, and only about one tenth earn $20 per week or more.

2. One half of the women workers earn less than $6 per week.

3. There are forty four families with annual incomes of $1,000,000 or more.

4. The rich 2 per cent of the people own 60 per cent of the national wealth.

5. The middle class, 33 per cent of the people, own 35%.

6. The poor 65 per cent of the population own 5% of the national wealth.

(Pages 29, 30 et seq.)

In the great basic industries, the workers are unemployed at least one fifth of the time, and at times there are armies of men, numbering hundreds of thousands, who are unable to find work, or who have been so beaten down by circumstances that they can no longer do efficient work.

This unemployment arises from two great causes, the inequality of the distribution of income, and the denial of access to the land and tools of production except under prohibitive circumstances.

Another point that causes discontent among workers is the denial of justice to the workers. "Many witnesses, speaking for millions of workers as well as for themselves, have asserted with the greatest earnestness that the mass of workers are convinced that laws necessary for their protection against the most grievous wrongs cannot be passed except after long and exhausting struggles; that such beneficent measures as become laws are largely nullified by the unwarranted decisions of the courts; that the laws which stand upon the statute books are not equally enforced; and that the whole machinery of the Government has frequently been placed at the disposal of the employers for the oppression of the workers; that the Constitution itself has been ignored in the interest of the employers, and that constitutional guaranties erected principally for the protection of the workers have been denied to them and used as a cloak for the misdeeds of corporations." (Page 39.) An examination of the evidence, says the report, shows that every one of the charges is fully justified. Large numbers of instances are given to show the correctness of this statement, with the corroboration of leading authorities.

The Commission found also that the right of the workers to organize was frequently abridged, and that very often men had to sell their birthrights before being permitted to engage in any occupation.

Chairman Walsh, in a supplementary report, says:

"WE FIND THE BASIC. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DISSATISFACTION TO BE LOW WAGES: OR, STATED IN ANOTHER WAY, THE FACT, THAT THE WORKERS OF THE NATION THROUGH COMPUL

SORY AND OPPRESSIVE METHODS LEGAL AND ILLEGAL, ARE DENIED THE FULL PRODUCT OF THEIR TOIL. [Capitals are his.]

"We further find that unrest among the workers in industry has grown to proportions that already menace the social good will and the peace of the nation. Citizens numbering millions smart under a sense of injustice and of oppression, born of the conviction that the opportunity is denied them, to acquire for themselves and their families that degree of economic well being necessary for the enjoyment of those material and spiritual satisfactions which alone make life worth living." (Page 153.)

Additional Reports.

The statement of Commissioner Garretson and the one signed by Commissioners Lennon and O'Connell are supplemental to the main report, and agree in the main with it. Mr. Walsh dissents from the Commons-Harriman report because it "does not comply with the law creating the Commission."

That report is mainly an argument and recommendations, but it contains no findings as to social and industrial conditions. Many of the statements in the main report with regard to corporate control over politics are endorsed, and others added. But certain practises of unions, admitted and alleged, are condemned; such as violence, intimidation, graft, etc. "We condemn the conditions found in Colorado, which show the control of corporations over labor and politics, and we find there a system that has taken hold throughout the country." (Page 228-9.)

The other reports are merely supplementary and complementary to the main dissenting report.

There was a great struggle to get the report printed, various reactionary senators holding up the report of the committee that unanimously reported in favor. But the popular clamor for the reports overwhelmed Congress, and they were printed. The vast mass of testimony, however, has not yet been published.

NOTE: The final report of the Commission on Industrial Relations including the report of Basil M. Manly and the different individual reports of the several commissioners can be obtained from the Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.

It is the "dreamer" who keeps the world from going to sleep altogether.

EARNINGS IN THE UNITED STATES.
BY PROFESSOR SCOTT NEARING.

The manifest shortcomings of an "average" as a means of describing wages have led statisticians to the use of classified wages. Instead of saying that the wages of 1,000 men average $2.83, the statistician notes that of the 1,000 men, 28 receive a wage of from $1.00 to $1.49; that 324 receive a wage of from $1.50 to $1.99, and so on. By this means, a group picture is made of the amount received by all of the

wage-earners.

There are a number of rather complete summaries of the wages paid in certain American industries-chiefly manufacturing. A brief statement of some of the more important classified wage figures appears in the following table:

The Wage Rates of Adult Males Employed in
Manufacturing Industries.

The manufacturing industries of the north and east pay to the adult wage-earners wage rates of less than $1,000 in nine-tenths of the cases. With the exception of California, the percentage of men receiving less than $750, and the percentage receiving less than $1,000, are remarkably uniform. The one-tenth of the adult male wage-earners who receive wage rates of more than $1,000 a year are the income aristocracy of the wage-earning class. They are, for the most part, protected by powerful trade unions, by long terms of apprenticeship or by special training.

A diagram brings out, in striking form, the more detailed facts of the American wage scale. Massachusetts, one

of the leading manufacturing states of the Union, reports the wage scale for a larger number of persons than any other state.

The Weekly Wage-Rates paid to 436,576 adult males in the Manufacturing Industries of Massachusetts, 1912: 6

The diagram is illuminating. Almost exactly four-fifths of the adult males at work in one of the largest manufacturing states of the Union are receiving wage rates ranging from $8 to $20 per week. Ten men in 100 receive $20 per week or over and three men in 100 receive $25 per week or over. The great bulk of the men at work in the manufacturing industries of Massachusetts are paid a wage rate of less than $20 a week.

The fact should be emphasized that these figures show not what people earn, but the amounts paid by industry to those who do its work. The wage scale is set in each industry. Let 1,000 seek places in the factories of Massachusetts. They would find a wage scale already in existence that would pay to 500 of them less than $15 per week and to 900 of them less than $20 a week.

Most wage-workers do not earn in a year 52 times the weekly wage rate. Unemployment, varying in intensity from one trade to another, reduces yearly earnings a tenth, a fifth, or sometimes even a third. Wage-workers earn wages only while they work and work in modern industry is a gravely uncertain quantity.