ments as to rates of wages. Such a scale requires not only great intelligence to adjust it, but excellent moral attributes to enable both. sides to abide by it. Whatever of value there is in the adoption of a sliding scale, and there is undoubtedly virtue in such a measure, would result in the highest benefits of which it is capable under such complete organization as that indicated.

Quality as well as quantity would be an element affected by thorough organization, and the community at large would reap a benefit equal to that brought to the workman and to the capitalist. The constant division of labor, as it has grown through the past century on the one hand, has stimulated the combination of industrial forces on the other, and this combination, resulting from the still finer subdivision of labor, may be confidently expected in the future.

There is no contest between labor and capital, nor between the laborer and capitalist as such, but there is a contest between the latter as to the profits of capital and wages of labor, or, in simple terms, as to the profits each shall receive for his respective investment, and this contest will continue so long as the purely wage system lasts. It is absurd to say that the interests of capital and labor are identical. They are no more identical than the interests of the buyer and seller. They are, however, reciprocal, and the intelligent comprehension of this reciprocal element can only be brought into the fullest play by the most complete organization, so that each party shall feel that he is an integral part of the whole working establishment.

12854 LAB-19

CHAPTER V.

SUMMARY.

The endeavor throughout this report has been to present facts truthfully and fairly as brought to the attention of the Bureau through its original investigation, and to present the spirit of the testimony offered, fearlessly and impartially. It is therefore fitting that the treatment of the subject of industrial depressions, but more especially of the present industrial depression, should be summarized, that the reader may have whatever benefit accrues to one in the closest contact with the whole material collected.

Contemporaneousness and Severity of Depressions. It has been clearly shown that the depressions of the past in the manufacturing nations of the world have been nearly or quite contemporaneous in their occurrence. Summarized as to dates, the following table is deduced:

The United States..
Great Britain..

1814 1818 1826

France

Belgium

1837 1847 1857 1867 1873 1882 1803 1810 1815 1818 1826 1830 1837 1847 1857 1866 1873 1804 1810 1813 1818 1826 1830 1837 1847 1856 1866 1837 1848 1855 1864 1837 1847 1855

1883

1873

1882

1873

1882

1873 1882

Germany

As to the severity of the present industrial depression and its duration, it can safely be asserted that the depression commenced early in 1882 and has continued until the present time. From the time the agents of the Bureau entered the field in prosecuting their investigations to the time they left it, a period of five or six months, there had been a marked change in the condition of business. At the present time (March, 1886), the effects of the depression are wearing away, and all the indications are that prosperity is slowly, gradually, but safely returning. The extent of the depression has not been so great as the popular mind has conceived it. An industrial depression is a mental and moral malady which seizes the public mind after the first influences of the depression are materially or physically felt. Falling prices, or any of the other influential causes by which an industrial depression is inaugurated, create apprehensiveness on the part of all classes, and the result is that the depression is aggravated in all its features. The severity of the present depression, while real and tangible, should be

considered as in part moral in its influences. The nations particularly involved, in their relation to each other, and as to severity stand in the following order: Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Belgium. It is worthy of remark that in those countries where machinery has not been largely adopted the depression in its peculiar features, as shown between 1882 and 1886, has not been felt to any material extent. In connection with the order of nations just given it is interesting to note the order of the same countries with reference to other points. In the rate of wages and earnings the rank is as follows: The United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany; in regard to the introduction of machinery, Great Britain, the United States, Belgium, France, Germany; in regard to the cost of production, the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany; in regard to the cost of living, the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany; in regard to the standard of living and the condition of work people, the United States, Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany; with reference to popular education, the United States, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, France; efficiency of labor, the United States, Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany. If Italy had been added in these gradings it would have been named last in every instance, and Spain would have come after Italy. Austria would have preceded Italy in nearly every case, but Austria and Spain have not been included in the investigation, and Italy only to a certain extent.

Causes.-The causes of the present depression, so far as the United States is concerned and as they have been alleged, are varied indeed. The most potent and those most susceptible of illustration have been given. A chain of causes, or rather a combination of coacting causes, has probably worked to produce the present industrial depression in this country. These causes might work in a legitimate track. Good crops in England and other countries of Western Europe have caused considerable decrease in the exports of American breadstuffs. This has been aggravated by increased supplies of wheat from India by the Suez Canal, and to some extent by short crops here. The prohibition fully or in part of American meats by some countries has resulted in an injury of the export trade in food products. These influences tend in some degree to cripple the consuming power of the larger part of the population of the United States. The influence of the loss of exports in these ways to the United States has been aggravated through the cessation of railroad building, whereby a large unproductive force has been thrown upon the resources of the country, and the consuming power of which force has been necessarily reduced. Rapid immigration has aggravated the accumulated influences by a surplus of labor, which, with the presence of too great a supply of machinery, has rendered over-production easy. The decrease in Europe of the consumption of American cotton, in connection with the corre sponding decrease in the United States, has helped to cripple the con

.

suming power in the regions given to cotton-raising and thrown on the labor market a considerable number of laborers in those regions, this crippling coming at the same time of the increased importations and large numbers of immigrants, the other influences affecting the East. Thus these wide-reaching and widely-separated causes, in their initial influence, have combined to make the industrial depression of the past few years a reality. These influences have received contributions from the various minor causes described, and so the ball has rolled until the period of readjustment set in, and now, as that period of readjustment is passing away, prosperity dawns on the country. The lessons to be learned from these causes are what have been denominated as

Remedies.-Probably no human device or combination of devices can be instituted powerful enough to prevent the recurrence of finan cial and commercial crises and industrial depressions, but this should not prevent men seeking devices which will mitigate the severity or shorten the duration of such calamities. When it is considered that each great manufacturing nation of the world is struggling for indus trial existence as against the fierce competition of every other nation engaged in like pursuits, some of the questions which seem to absorb the minds of individual employers and employés seem trivial indeed; yet it must not be assumed, nor can it be assumed with reason, that the workmen of the United States or their employers wish to cripple in any degree the implements of industry. Therefore it is well to consider those remedial agencies which have been suggested. Which of these agencies can be reduced to practice in any degree?

There is no universal panacea, no absolute remedy for depressions; but if the public, through sentiment or through its agents in the legis latures of the country, can stimulate any methods for the mitigation of the severity and the shortening of the duration of the industrial depressions, certainly the effort should be made. And first, what can be done by legislation? With a healthy public opinion behind it, the law-making power can prevent to a great degree the unholy speculation in food products. It can indulge in a conservative care in extending railroad building and in facilitating the organization of manufacturing corporations. It can restrict the grants of the public domain. It can enact uniform bankruptcy laws, extending the provisions of such laws so that the poor man indebted but a few hundred dollars shall be able to readjust his financial affairs as readily as the larger debtor. It can abridge the provisions of laws relating to the collection of debts, to the end that the credit system shall not be abused. It can regulate transportation on a just and uniform basis, to the end that the stockholder shall not be robbed by ruinous competition, and that the workman may calculate with some degree of certainty the cost of his living and the producer the cost of production, so far as transportation is concerned. It can see to it that the tariff shall be regulated on the basis of justice and science and not on a haphazard basis which affects only individual interests and oftentimes inflicts general harm. It can see that a stable currency

be guaranteed, that the workman may know the purchasing power of his stipulated earnings. It can consider what reasonable and humane regulations may be adopted relative to immigration, and see to it that labor is not lowered either in standard or through earnings by the pernicious method of importations by contract; that every lawful endeavor be made to stimulate industrial education in all parts of the country; that the necessity shall be recognized of the industrial development of all parts of the land that there may result a legitimate increase in the consuming power of the people. It can stimulate the growth of the principle of industrial copartnerships through methods of profit-sharing by wise, permissive laws. Public sentiment can encourage the perfect organization of the forces involved, to the end that each shall treat with the other through representatives, and that production shall be regulated by the demand and not by the ill-advised eagerness of men to push their work individually, to the detriment of others; that there may come the universal adoption of shorter hours of labor, and demand that after capital and labor shall have received fixed and reasonable compensation, each for its investment, the net profits of production shall be divided under profit-sharing plans or methods, or through industrial copartnerships, to the end that all the forces of production shall be equally alive to mutual welfare. It can ask that the contracts of labor be as free as the contracts for commodities, under fair agreements for services rendered, to the end that the workman shall not be obliged to make contracts on terms not acceptable to him, and it can hold the party which declines to resort to the conciliatory methods of arbitration morally responsible for all the ill effects growing out of contest.

These remedial agencies or remedial methods, alleviatory in their design, are all possible by the reasonable acts of men. They are not chimerical schemes, but measures adapted to practical adoption. They demand simply a fair recognition of a part only of the truth bound up in the rule which insists that all men shall do unto others as they would have others do unto them.