THE EVOLUTION OF hiGH WAGES. j^^-j 



those who found good employment in textile factories in the ante-war 

 period. In point of fact, the women of native birth who were then 

 so numerous in the textile factories have advanced into employments 

 which are better paid, less arduous and of a more individual quality. 

 Their successors, largely French Canadians, who have taken their 

 places in the factory, might not have been able to operate the ma- 

 chinery of a former day for lack of the individual qualities then 

 called for. The mechanism is now more automatic than ever before. 

 Consequently, those who do the work may be of less intelligence, yet 

 their wages or earnings are now twice as much per day, more than 

 double per hour, as compared to the American factory operatives of 

 a generation since. 



Again, the prices of the goods have been much reduced. In the 

 grades of work which still require individual skill and aptitude in 

 directing machinery of the highest type, the competition of em- 

 ployers to secure the services of the workmen of highest skill has 

 advanced their rates of wages in some cases in excessive measure. 

 Thus it happens that while during the last fifty years all wages have 

 advanced, even the earnings of common laborers, there is a greater 

 disparity in the rates at the present time than there ever was before. 

 In this same period, while prices have been reduced, the margin of 

 profits on each unit of product has been diminished yet more; the 

 exceptions being only those products in which the supply of the 

 crude material has been diminished in ratio to the increasing demand. 

 This exception applies especially to the products of the forest. 



We therefore find existing conditions to be, in fact, low relative 

 prices, high relative wages, coupled with a lessened margin of profits 

 in ratio to our total product as compared to each decade of the last 

 fifty years. But, on the other hand, our aggregate product has been 

 so vastly increased that even at the lessened margin on each unit the 

 aggregate of profits is greater than ever before. The rich have be- 

 come richer. The people of moderate fortunes have become much 

 more numerous. The condition of the large proportion of those who 

 do the manual and the mechanical work is better than ever before; 

 and lastly, the submerged tenth are still poor in the ordinary sense 

 in which the word is used, not from any fault in society, but because 

 their own individual capacity has not been developed as rapidly as 

 the opportunity which is offered them. There is probably a less 

 relative demand for mere common and unintelligent labor than ever 

 before. Such poor we shall always have with us and how to deal 

 with that element in every population is not the purpose of this essay. 

 I merely submit the fact that in the economic records of this coun- 

 try, which has enjoyed a continental system of absolute free trade 

 among a greater number of persons spread over a wider area than 



