FOREIGN TRADE NO REMEDY.- 205 



The amount of present wages is based on the Mas- 

 sachusetts Labor reports. 



This great contrast between two billions four hun- 

 dred millions, and ten billions five hundred millions, 

 is just the difference, in dollars, between the home con- 

 sumption of fourteen millions of partially employed, 

 poorly paid persons, and their dependents, and that of 

 the same persons when all are employed and well paid, 

 leaving altogether out of the account the amount of 

 destitution and misery in the one case, and the com- 

 fort, happiness, and improvement in the other. It is 

 the home trade contrast shown by more than fifty 

 millions of the most generally educated and advanced 

 people on earth, when the industrial classes are all 

 employed, at good wages, and the time when nearly 

 half are practically idle, and those who do work are 

 ground to the lowest cent. 



The contrast in the quantity of products consumed 

 at home by each individual now and sixteen and 

 eighteen years ago, may be determined by learning 

 the number of furnaces, forges, factories, mills, and 

 workshops of every nature now standing idle, or but 

 partially employed ; the reduction of the number of 

 employes in all establishments as compared with the 

 production ; the immense stocks of products now on 

 hand for which there is little or no demand ; the large 

 exportation of home products, and the difference in 

 the number of consumers in the two periods. The 

 factors that enter into this contrast are too many and 

 too complicated to be satisfactorily considered in a 

 limited space ; I therefore simply call attention to 

 the point. 



