SOCIAL BACTERIA AND ECONOMIC MICROBES. 3 2 5 



is distributed by way of railway charges, duties, national expenditures, 

 support of schools, fire losses and losses by commercial failures. 



Item No. 7, Tea, Coffee and Cocoa. — The editor of the American 

 Grocer computes the annual expenditure for tea, coffee and cocoa by 

 a method that leaves very little margin for error and which gives $2.34 

 per head; which assessed on 80,000,000 comes to $187,200,000. This 

 sum added to the amount computed for liquor and tobacco gives a frac- 

 tion over $25 per head for beverages and tobacco, or over $2,000,000,000 

 a year. 



Item No. 8, Textile Fabrics. — The census data on cotton, woolen 

 and silk fabrics, deducting exports and adding imports, gives approxi- 

 mately $15 per head for clothing materials and carpets at the works. 

 The extension of these values at mills in clothing and other uses will 

 give approximately $30 per head as the expenditure of consiimers on 

 this class; which assessed on 80,000,000 comes to $2,400,000,000. 

 After consultation with clothing manufacturers, I put cotton clothing 

 at $8 per head, woolen, $12, silks, linens, laces, embroideries, etc., etc., 

 at $10, subject to further study. 



Item No. 9, Boots and Shoes. — The value at the factories is $3.42 

 per head, approximately $5 to consumers ; which assessed on 80,000,000 

 comes to $400,000,000. 



Item No. 10, Wool. — The average value of the annual wool clip of 

 the United States at the farms and ranches comes to 66 cents per head. 

 The maximum value of the largest product of beet root sugar is 10 

 cents, making together 76 cents; which sum assessed on 80,000,000 

 people amounts to $62,800,000, or a sum not exceeding V/ 2 per cent. 

 of the total product of agriculture in a normal year. Yet the farmers 

 have been led to believe that their interests demand almost prohibitive 

 duties on these two petty products, leading them to support a policy 

 which costs them in the price of their clothing and sugar twice or 

 thrice the total value of these two products, which duties obstruct the 

 export of their surplus of the principal crops and the development of 

 domestic industry in the most obnoxious way. 



'We may now deal with a few other problems of distribution which 

 may be of interest. 



The freight charges on all the railways of the United States in the 

 year 1900 amounted to a little over $1,071,000,000, which was at the 

 rate of three quarters of a cent per ton per mile, and at the rate of 

 $13.79 per capita, which may be compared with $23 per head for liquors 

 and tobacco. 



For this sum of $13.79, 14 tons of food, fuel, fibers and fabrics were 

 hauled 142 miles for every man, woman and child of the population. 

 The average capital invested per capita amounted to $151, on which 



