TWO AND A HALF PER CENT. 355 



growth of large fortunes is likely to be slower in the future than 

 it has been in the past ; and the growth of large fortunes is in 

 many quarters regarded as a menace to industrial and political 

 freedom. That wages have in the main risen during the past 

 twenty years is clearly shown in the statistics of the State and 

 National Labor Bureaus. In many trades money-wages have 

 advanced ; in others, where they have remained stationary or 

 fallen a little, their purchasing power has increased; in a few 

 trades, superseded by newly devised machinery, and in the case 

 of unskilled labor subjected to competition with hordes of immi- 

 grants accustomed to a low standard of living, wages have fallen 

 below the purchasing power of those paid twenty years ago. No 

 State in the Union adds to her population more immigrants of 

 the wage-depressing type than New York ; still, on July 1, 1889, 

 her savings-banks held on deposit $536,417,974, due 1,389,907 de- 

 positors. The amount had increased $22,000,000 during the pre- 

 ceding twelve months, and $201,000,000 during the preceding nine 

 years. These figures prove a rapid improvement in the condition 

 of the working people of New York ; and, since migration from 

 New York to other States is easy and cheap, her advance in gen- 

 eral prosperity may be fairly interpreted as gauging prosperity 

 throughout the nation. 



While, then, wages have been rising and interest falling, a new 

 method has perforce entered into the management of large prop- 

 erties. It used to be remarked, as a characteristic of American 

 engineering, that it presented not the best thing, but the lowest- 

 priced thing that would serve. This is true no longer. Every- 

 where we find railroads adopting the most substantial types of 

 construction and equipment. Steel rails long since replaced iron 

 rails ; now steel bridges are replacing wooden bridges ; not only on 

 trunk lines, but on local roads, large outlays are being constantly 

 made for improved curves, gradients and ballasting. Already 

 the increase in the cost of lumber, due to forest destruction, has 

 brought in the experimental use of steel both for ties and for car- 

 construction. A steel tie is dearer than a wooden one, but its life 

 is vastly longer. The same principle obtains in mills and facto- 

 ries : net profit can be increased by a judicious increase of capital 

 expenditure, which adds to the account for interest, but deducts a 

 larger sum from disbursements for maintenance, repairs, and acci- 

 dents. Cheap money for good security has, too, had much to do 

 with the new architecture of our cities architecture which em- 

 ploys granite instead of sandstone, substitutes sandstone and mar- 

 ble for brick, and demands brick of new durability and beauty. 

 In quite modest dwellings it is now usual to find hot- water or hot- 

 air furnaces instead of the heating stoves still general a decade 

 ago ; ranges and gas-stoves for cook-stoves ; elaborate laundry 



