The Increase in Wages.
The month of November was marked by the announcement of the most general increase in the wages of employes ever recorded in this country during so short a period. This increase was made, for the most part, by the railroads and other large corporate interests and chiefly affects employes whose salaries are less than $200 a month. In many instances the advance began with the first of December, while in others it becomes effective with the new year.
It would be a difficult matter to make anything like an approximate estimate of this golden harvest which is to go into the pockets of the laboring men. It is said by those who are in a position to know, that the advance in wages announced by the railroads during the month of November would alone amount to $20,000,000 annually, affecting 200,000 employes. Even so conservative an authority as The Chicago Evening Post thinks it entirely probable that the advance in the wages of railroad employes becoming effective on the first of the year will reach something like $100,000,000 a year, while others place it still higher. The Steel Trust and the street railroads have also advanced wages.
EDWARD H. HARRIMAN.
It is only fair to say, in dwelling upon this general advance in the wages of labor in so many departments of industry, that, according to the mercantile agencies, the cost of living is higher now than it has been at any time in twenty years, and the continuance of agitation and discontent in certain quarters is held to be justifiable for the reason that the purchasing power of a dollar is so much less than formerly that it is no more than off-set by an increase of ten per cent in wages.