TRADE AND LABOR, 239 



Boston institution for the shelter of poor working 

 girls, says the insufficiency of wages paid to girls in 

 that city is most disheartening. Because of low pay 

 and the increased cost of living, more young women 

 have gone astray during the past two years than has 

 been known to be the case in a great many years be- 

 fore. This complaint finds an echo throughout the 

 country. Degradation and crime in every form, of 

 every texture, is the fabric that is woven of competi- 

 tion and cheapness. Poverty is everywhere, with a 

 rapid concentration of all property, all the sources of 

 subsistence, of comfort, and wealth into the hands of 

 the few. Trade is in a chronic state of demoralization. 

 Our annual failures are numbered by thousands ; for 

 the last ten years but once a little below five thou- 

 sand, and ranging up to more than ten thousand per 

 annum. Society and all its interests are the sport of 

 gamblers, speculators, and monopolists. 



It has been shown how these evils have grown upon 

 us as the people have been forced into idleness as 

 their labor has been saved, or dispensed with 

 through the operation of the mechanical forces that 

 have been so largely developed during the present 

 century. That, as they have become idle, poverty, 

 helplessness, and demoralization have spread in every 

 direction, reaching up and permeating every fibre of 

 trade and financial development. But every step 

 that has been taken on the road that has led to the 

 present condition has become an important indicator 

 of both cause and cure. 



The first thing to be done in seeking for remedies 

 to cure the evils that have been pointed out is to 



