THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



109 



must be not far off. Wise and good men 

 have vainly tried to adjust things so that 

 the two might work harmoniously together 

 for their common good. Their aims are. 

 in reality, the same if they could but be 

 made to realize that. A man who has re- 

 cently tried to harmonize these two factors 

 is EL J. Smith, founder of the New Trade 

 Alliance in England. Under the title of 

 *'A Living Profit and a Living Wage," 

 Mr. Smith writes an interesting article in 

 the January Forum, relating the success 

 of an experiment in England. He makes 

 the somewhat socialistic declaration that 

 "We as manufacturers have no more right 

 to determine the wages of our work people 

 than the work people have to determine 

 our profits. 1 ' Mr. Smith's theory and it 

 is a theory which has been put to practical 

 and successful test in England is based 

 upon two cardinal principles: (1) selling 

 from the well-ascertained cost of produc 

 tion and (2) co-operating with the work 

 people in securing a fair profit. ''Manu- 

 facturers would not fight trades-unions 

 were they not convinced that the unions 

 ask more than they ought to have; trades 

 unions would not fight manufacturers if 

 they knew that they were asking for the 

 impossible." Therefore the thing to do is 

 to establish mutual confidence. The 

 movement inaugurated by Mr. Smith has 

 so far been very successful. At present it 

 controls about 50,000,000 capital, and 

 numbers among its adherents about 500 

 -employers and 30,000 work people. 



Chicago is now in a position to 

 Water defy the critics who have 



heretofore cracked jokes con- 

 cerning her drinking water. 

 and the newspaper humorists will have to 

 confine their attempts at wit to the Chi- 

 cago girl's feet, the microbe no longer 

 be a resource, since the completion of the 

 great drainage canal. Seven years ago, 

 Sept. 3, 1892, this great work was begun 

 and the main channel of the canal, 28.05 

 miles long, was practically completed last 

 November. The congressman who in- 

 spected the work at that time said that 

 this engineering feat would folve the 

 water problem of Chicago for the next 50 

 years. After seven years of work and the 



expenditure of $33,000,000 the canal was 

 finished and the water turned in to it Jan. 

 1, 1900, the city beginning the new year 

 with a fair prospect for unpolluted drink- 

 ing water. The water from Lake Michi- 

 gan flows through the canal connecting 

 it with the Chicago river, then the Des- 

 plaines, finally emptying into the Mississ- 

 ippi, carrying with it the sewage and filth 

 that has hitherto polluted the city water 

 by being emptied into the lake. The action 

 of natural forces, air and sunlight, will 

 purify the waters of the Mississippi, so 

 that the sewage carried by its waters will 

 do no injury to inhabitants of St. Louis 

 and other cities along its banks. 



The following item from an 

 laf?rs. exchange will, no doubt, be 



news to many of us, as it is 

 hard to realize that we are the greatest 

 sugar eaters in the world. This is what 

 the exchange tells us we are, and every 

 year sees an enormous increase in our con- 

 sumption per capita, some placing this in- 

 crease as high as 12 per cent, per annum: 

 In 1884 we consumed 53.4 pounds per head, 

 but 10 years later this had risen to 66 

 pounds. The question of deepest interest 

 to us is as to where we shall get the 

 4,894,156,800 pounds which our people must 

 have annually. This is what has given 

 Germany such a keen interest in our acqui- 

 sition of the Spanish islands, for she wants 

 this immensely valuable market. So long 

 as the island remained under the misrule 

 of Spain they could not compete success- 

 fully with her, and her sales of beet sugar 

 to us went up by leaps and bounds. As it 

 was, we took two- thirds of the sugar raised 

 in the Philippines, a fact of which most 

 people are ignorant. and in some years as 

 high as 93 per cent, of that raised in Cuba, 

 We nave tried raising sugar ourselves, but 

 so far have only produced a very meager 

 proportion of what our people require. 

 The average yield of the Louisiana cano- 

 fields is only 707,951,878 pounds, and the 

 utmost produced by our beet factories is 

 but 90,491,670 pounds: so that altogether 

 we have not more than 10 of the 66 pounds 

 that our people want. Hawaii is now 

 American soil, and it produces 431,217,118 

 pounds a year. Porto Rico is also Ameri- 



