CORRESP ONDENCE. 



ic 7 



merchant to a trifle, and ending in bank- 

 ruptcy and strikes. 



If all our cotton-mills and their depend- 

 encies, all our iron industries, and some 

 others, were to suspend, we should not ex- 

 haust the supply on hand of their fabrics 

 for quite a number of years. 



To sum up 



1. There is do over-production of grain 

 and meat. 



2. There is a great surplus of textile, 

 iron, and similar fabrics. 



Hence, there is a one-sided over-produc- 

 tion, a one-sided depression of prices for 

 labor and for fabrics ; and, on the other 

 side, a normal prosperity and attending ac- 

 cumulation of savings. 



The problem for relief at once presents 

 itself in the question whether a change of 

 occupation of a considerable number of fac- 

 tory-operatives, mechanics, and forward- 

 ers, from the trades to agriculture, would 

 afford the remedy and reestablish the equi- 

 librium. 



The farmer, even at the most Western 

 frontier, has always a sufficiency of food 

 raised by himself, and generally a surplus, 

 adequate for furnishing his family some 

 comforts, and always independence. 



If a large majority of the weavers and 

 machine-workers of to-day were to become 

 agriculturists, they would become consum- 

 ers instead of producers of the very arti- 

 cles which are now made in excess ; and, 

 while the price of the articles might not be 

 advanced, those that made them would have 

 full and steady, instead of interrupted and 

 uncertain, employment a double gaiu on 

 the present disturbed state. 



No legislative or government interfer- 

 ence is needed or desirable. The adjust- 

 ment of the disturbed equilibrium in the 

 productions will work itself out as soon as 

 the true causes of the " stagnation in trade " 

 are clearly understood. 



A case in point will illustrate. In a small 

 county town, the trade-centre of a good 

 farming district, the retail stores had done 

 a very profitable business up to about 1874. 

 As a natural consequence, many persons 

 with a small capital had engaged in this 

 line ; finally their sales diminished, profits 

 declined, because their number had in- 

 creased beyond the former ratio between 

 stores and customers. A few of them 

 looked about for other occupations. One 

 engaged in tanning, which was a good field ; 

 another started a custom grist-mill, for 

 which there was a demand ; another opened 

 a pork-packing establishment; another went 

 into farming on a large scale. Here, the 

 overcrowding with its attendant evils was 

 understood as the cause of the decline in 

 trade ; the enterprising members of the 

 profession left it for occupations that pay 

 better, and the equilibrium has been rees- 

 tablished. 



All efforts at relief from the dull times 

 must lie in the same direction. A large 

 number of our mill-hands and factory-oper- 

 atives must take to farming, must, raise 

 themselves the food for their families, and 

 some to exchange for comforts which their 

 fields and herds cannot directly give. 



The old mill-hands ought not to attempt 

 the change ; but the young and middle-aged 

 ought, and escape from their " bondage " in 

 the East to the free fields of our wide West- 

 ern country. F. A. Nitcuy. 

 Jefferson Citt, Missouri. 



THE GEEAT EAILEOAD-STEIXE OF 187T. 

 To the Editor of the Popular Science Monthly. 



The loss from peculation in the manage- 

 ment of railways has probably been exag- 

 gerated ; these important institutions have, 

 in the main, been conducted on business 

 principles, with an eye to dividends. Those 

 in control have aimed with success, until 

 recently to secure competent and willing 

 aid, and the esprit de corps so essential in 

 great enterprises. But managers aud men 

 are alike the victims of a train of circum- 

 stances foreseen only by a few political 

 economists. The plain fact is, that the 

 railroad system finds itself in the brunt of 

 a movement that has been long approach- 

 ing culmination. Multitudes of our native 

 youth, seduced by the supposed attractions 

 and opportunities of the city, and swarms 

 of the poorer immigrants, have precipitated 

 the catastrophe, by swelling the already 

 overcrowded centres of population have 

 added to the number to be fed, by decimat- 

 ing the army of producers have lowered 

 the price of labor, by increasing the num- 

 ber of applicants. Reduction of extrava- 

 gant salaries and other "leaks" is to be 

 commended, but will not, it is to be feared, 

 effect any material increase of wages for a 

 Ions time to come, and that from no indis- 

 position on the part of managers, but from 

 ccmses beyond their control. 



Populations have been passing through 

 the throes of greater social transitions than 

 were ever before crowded into a century, 

 and a vast amount of inconvenience was and 

 is inevitable. The immense industries cre- 

 ated by labor-saving machinery have, in 

 not a few instances, outrun the present de- 

 mand, and hence too often an advancing 

 throng of aspirants has found itself con- 

 fronted with another throng in disorderly re- 

 treat : the result is a fierce struggle for ex- 

 istence, in which reason exercises but a 

 feeble sway. 



Nature and Providence are inexorable, 

 and take no thought for the individual in- 

 truder in their track. These forces are now 

 apparently engaged in starving the surplus 

 humanity back into the cornfields. 



