TEE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK. 463 



food has, \rlthin recent years, been largely and progressively increasing ; 

 and as the consumption of rich and well-to-do people in such counti-ies 

 remains almost stationary, inasmuch as they have always been able to 

 have all they desired of such articles, it is reasonable to infer that 

 this result has been mainly duo to the annually increasing ability 

 of the masses to consume. In Great Britain, where this matter has 

 been more thoroughly investigated than in any other country, the 

 facts revealed (as will be presently shown) are most extraordinary. In 

 the case of the population of Paris, M. Leroy-Beaulieu also reports a 

 wonderful increase in the consumption of food-products since 186G, 

 and states that, if the ravages of the phylloxera (vine pest) could be 

 checked, and the price of Avine reduced, the cost of living for the 

 whole of France would be less than it has ever been during the last 

 half-century. 



Furthermore, not only has the supply of food increased, but the 

 variety of food available to the masses has become greater. Nearly 

 all tropical fruits that will bear transportation have become as cheap 

 in non-tropical countries as the domestic fruits of the latter, and even 

 cheaper ; and the increased consumption thus induced has built up new 

 and extensive branches of business, and brought prosperity to the 

 people of many localities that heretofore have had no markets for any 

 products of their industry. 



An acre of the sea, cultivated by comparativ^ely recently-discovered 

 methods, is said to be capable of yielding as much food as any acre of 

 fertile dry land ; but thirty or forty years ago, fish in its most accej^ta- 

 ble form — namely, fresh — was only available to consumers living in 

 close proximity to the ocean. Now, fish caught on the waters of the 

 North Pacific, and transported more than 2,000 miles, are daily sup- 

 plied fresh to the markets of the Atlantic slope of the United States, 

 and sea-products of the coast of the latter, transported 2,000 miles, 

 are regularly furnished in a fresh condition to British markets. 



One point of immense and novel importance in helping to a con- 

 clusion as to whether the race under the conditions of high civilization 

 is tending toward increased comfort and prosperity, or toward greater 

 poverty and degradation, is to be found in the fact which recent in- 

 vestigators have determined, namely : that in the United States the 

 daily wages paid, or the daily earaing capacity of a healthy adult 

 worker, in even the most poorly remunerated employments, is more than 

 sufficient, if^ properly expended, to far remove the individual recipient 

 from anything like absolute want, suffering, or starvation. Thus, in 

 the case of fifty-nine adult female operatives in a well-managed cotton- 

 mill in Maryland, the per-capita cost of subsistence, with a bill of fare 

 embracing meats, all ordinary groceries and vegetables, milk, eo-jrs, 

 butter, fish, and fruit, has been found to be not in excess of twenty 

 cents per day, including the cost of the preparation of the food and its 

 serving. In Massachusetts, where the results were derived from the 



