FOREIGN TRADE NO REMEDY. 203 



hold exceptional employments and receive excep- 

 tional salaries. 



Seventeen years ago, at the time of the close of the 

 Avar of the rebellion, there were of this class, in the 

 North alone, about seven millions, in large part males. 



The wages paid to the industrial classes are very 

 nearly the exact measure of the amount contributed 

 by those classes to the trade of society. Almost cer- 

 tainly is that the case where the amount of wages falls 

 within one thousand dollars a year. Even where small 

 savings are made, and stored in savings institutions, 

 it is soon withdrawn and goes into the volume of trade 

 in some shape. 



Upon the basis here laid down we will see how our 

 foreign trade pays as compared with our home traffic. 



Before the close of the war, and for sometime after- 

 wards, all who found employment received as compen- 

 sation, upon an average, at least two and one half 

 dollars, geld value, a day, or seven hundred and fifty 

 dollars for a year of three hundred days. At this rate 

 the seven millions belonging to the great industrial 

 class, in the North, contributed, in the first half of 

 1865, at the rate of five and one quarter billions of 

 dollars per annum to the home trade of consumption. 



At the same rate, with our present fourteen millions 

 in our whole country belonging to the great industrial 

 class and who should be in active employment, our 

 home traffic would swell to the enormous amount of 

 ten and one half billions of dollars per annum. But 

 it is only about one quarter that amount. 



Among these fourteen millions there is an amount 

 of idleness that equals the full time of six million per- 



