enjoy a partial immunity from contribution. It is not un usual to deposit, up to the limit of the amount authorized by law, in each of a number of banks, and still further to multiply such deposits by entering equal amounts in the names of wife and children.'

Notwithstanding this, however, it is evident that a vast body of wealth is held by the laboring classes of the United States in movable form, in addition to the sums invested in houses and lands. In 1873 the savings-banks of Maine showed 91,398 separate accounts, with an aggregate deposit of $29,556,524; Rhode Island, 93,124 accounts, $46,617,183; Massachusetts, 666,229 accounts, $202,195,344; New-York, 839,472 accounts, $285,520,085.

II. Individual and mutual intelligence among the working classes. The phrase mobility of labor is very useful in discussions of the questions of wages, as expressing better than any other the one condition upon which laborers can receive the highest remuneration which the state of productive industry (their own present efficiency being taken into account) will allow, and the sole security which society can have that the inevitable immediate effects of industrial pressure or disaster shall not become permanent. Yet there is danger that the conception of what is involved in this term will be inadequate. Assuming the desire of industrial well-being to be universal, the mobility of labor should supply on the part of the wages class all that is needed for a perfect competition; and this clearly requires something more than legalized freedom of movement, something more, even, than the possession of the physical means of transportation and subsistence needed for migration. The laborer must be in a position to discern where his real interest lies, for to move in any other than the right direction may be more injurious than

'One case has come to my knowledge where a depositor, after exhausting the list of his human family, entered the maximum amount in the name of his dog.

to abide in his lot, since all movement implies loss of force, and is only to be justified by the prospect of a distinct gain in the result.

This ability to discern where one's interest lies requires two things, the acquisition of just information and the rejection of false information. Of the former it is not necessary to speak. It is seen in the mere mention, how large is the requirement it makes of the working classes; how slight the probability that this requirement will be completely filled. The second requirement is, among an ignorant population, even more difficult. So prone to discouragement are men, especially men lacking in mental training and culture; so efficient is Rumor in her evil office of spreading the news of failure and disaster, that the effects of acting upon false information in a single instance may, with ignorant persons, neutralize the most substantial inducements of self-interest in many other instances. Such persons have little to hold on to, or steady their minds upon; they generalize hastily and passionately, or, rather, they do not in any true sense generalize at all; and after the first shock to their confidence they become absurdly suspicious.

Even in enterprises of less pith and moment, the cloud of prejudice, vague apprehensions, and false conceits, originating in ignorance, obscures the view, in every direction, of the laborer's true interest.

"Few," says Mr. Chadwick,' "who have not had experience in the administration of relief to the destitute in periods of wide distress, can be fully sensible of the difference, in amount of trouble and chargeability to the ratepayers, between educated and intelligent and uneducated and unintelligent people of the wage-class-the heavy lumpishness of the uneducated, their abject prostration, their liability to misconception and to wild passion, their frequent moroseness and intractability, and the difficulty

1 Statistical Journal, xxviii. 11, 12.

of teaching them, as compared with the self-help of the better educated, who can write and inquire for themselves, and find out for themselves new outlets and sources of productive employment, and who can read for themselves and act on written or printed instructions. The really well-trained, educated, and intelligent are the best to bear distress; they are the last to come upon charitable relieflists, and the first to leave them."

III. Sexual self-restraint. I am not speaking here in the Malthusian sense with reference to the general supply of labor. In Malthusianism the average number of children to the family is the single consideration; it matters not whether each family have four children, or one family none, and the next eight: the supply of labor is equally affected. Again, while in Malthusianism the age at which marriage shall be contracted and children produced is not a matter of indifference, it is only of consequence as it affects the period within which population shall double. I here adduce the desirableness of sexual self-restraint on an account which is wholly additional to this—namely, the influence it must exert upon the mobility of the laborer. We have seen the occasion in modern society for a frequent, one might almost say an incessant, readjustment of population and industry. It is clear, that though the laborer can never wholly escape from this necessity, it is of peculiar importance that he should be as disembarrassed as possible during the years when he is coming to find out his own. powers and capabilities, learning how to work, and getting into industrial relations, presumably for life. It is certain that he can make a favorable disposition of his labor then, if ever; that he will never be able afterwards to seek his market with so little of effort and so little of loss.

It is, therefore, economically desirable, without respect to the effect his earlier marriage might have on the general supply of labor, that at this critical period his mobility should be at the maximum. Of course, this proposition does not apply generally to communities in

the condition of the American colonies and the early United States, where labor was almost painfully deficient, and where land was abundant. A young man there could scarcely have placed himself wrong; and any disadvantage the impediments of a youthful marriage might have occasioned him was amply compensated by the access of productive power which his rising family soon brought him, in a country where the condition of "diminishing returns" had not been reached. But when settlements became dense and production diversified, the necessity of a precise adaptation of labor to industry, and a consequent readjustment of population, becomes urgent, and that urgency increases with increase of numbers and diversification of products. Hence it is that early and improvident marriages, such as characterize the Irish' at home and in foreign lands, influence unfavorably the rate of wages, wholly besides their effect on the general supply of labor. The young laborer is no longer free to abandon the avocation his adaptation to which he finds he has wrongly estimated, or the locality where he finds himself crowded by equally needy competitors, and to seek the price of his labor in a better market; but, tied down by the cares of family, and harassed by immediate necessities, he sinks hopelessly into what he knows to be the wrong place for him.

But if we turn our attention from the fortunes of the individual to those of the whole wages class, we shall see an additional reason, in the interest of a bo neficent distribution of the products of industry, for the procrastination of marriage. The desideratum is, we have seen, to secure the readjustment of population to industry. It is clearly true that the longer marriage is postponed, the larger the proportion of the total labor

1 Sir Archibald Alison, writing of the Irish peasants in the days before the Famine, speaks of them as "almost always" marrying at eighteen, and not infrequently becoming grandfathers at thirty-four. (Hist. of Europe, xviii. 5.)

ing population which will be free, so far as domestic incumbrances are concerned, to respond to economical impulses suggesting a change of avocation or of residence. It is not merely that, if they go in obedience to such suggestions, they secure their own highest remuneration, but they also relieve the market in those localities or occupations which they forsake. With the disposable element thus increased by the procrastination of marriage, the heads of families, those who, in the words of Bacon, "have given hostages to fortune," may to a very large extent, except only in extraordinary emergencies, be exempt from this necessity.

The average age at which marriages are contracted varies greatly with the industrial necessities and the social habits of different communities.' In Belgium, in 21.17 out of 100 marriages the groom is under 25 years; in Holland, 21.42; in Sweden, 21.83; in Norway, 23.95; in Austria, 28.40; in France, 29.06; in Scotland, 41.32; in England, 50.95.

IV. Legal regulations clearly correspondent to infirmities in the mass of laborers, which tend to defeat the real freedom of choice and power of movement.

After making all allowances for the proneness of legislatures to meddle and blunder, and for defects in administration of the law, it still remains true that the wages class may, in exceptional instances, be helped for

'Marriages take place at a very early age in India. Mr. Beverley, the Census Commissioner, calls attention to the fact that the religious beliefs of the people contribute to this result, as it is deemed highly important that the burial rites, on which the welfare of the soul after death, according to their faith, greatly depends, should be performed by male offspring. (Economist, May 9th, 1874, p. 555.) In Ireland early marriages have undoubtedly been promoted by the influence of the priesthood. (J. S. Mill's Pol. Econ. i. 345, 446; Alison's Hist. of Europe, xviii. 10; Statistical Journal, xxii. 217, xxiii. 205; Prof. Senior, quoted in the Edinburgh Review, October, 1868, p. 328, cf. p. 336.) In England Mr. J. S. Mill charges that the policy of the Tory party has been to encourage early marriages. (Pol. Econ., i. 426.)