"The wants of mankind never can be satisfied. Every new means of supplying a want creates new wants. They grow by what they feed on. As long as humanity is so constituted, over-production, in a general and enlarged sense, is impossible. It is this impossible thing with which the reformers would deal who propose to work fewer hours each day, or fewer hours in the week. The trouble they deplore does not exist; the remedy they propose defeats itself. A man cannot get rid of his load by shifting it from his right hand to his left hand. Production will not be stopped by making men their own employers certain hours in the day or certain days in the week, instead of allowing them to pursue their usual avocations.
"The real trouble, which the labor reformers seem incompetent to fathom, is that there is not enough diversity in employments. What is desired is more work in productive enterprises, a more diffused industry, and a closer commercial connection with those countries wherein we can make desirable exchanges both of our raw material and our manufactured products. Every miner that drops his pick and takes up a hoe, every idle man that turns himself into an earner of wages, every person that picks up some loose thread of employment, every capitalist that takes advantage of stagnating industry and cheap material to build a house or beautify or improve a country seat, or set on foot some new process of manufacture, does something toward working out the problem which is puzzling the economists. In good time the surplus iron and coal will be sold; new populations will want new railroads; recuperated capital will gather confidence and take hold of new enterprises, and the whole nation will move forward again to more assured prosperity and to vaster undertakings."
[Labor in Germany.]
The consul at Barmen reports that for agricultural labor the pay varies greatly, according to the proximity to or remoteness from manufacturing centers; and ranges from fifty-six cents a day in the neighborhood of Barmen to thirty-one cents a day in the lower Rhine valley, and as low as eighteen cents in parts of Silesia. At Barmen, Crefeld and Düsseldorf, carpenters, coppersmiths, plumbers, machinists and wagonsmiths earn fifty-one to seventy-five cents daily; saddlers and shoemakers forty-seven to fifty-two cents daily; bakers and brewers, with board and lodging, from $1.42 to $2.14 weekly, and without board from sixty cents a day to $4.28 a week; farm hands are paid from $107 to $215 yearly, with maintenance; railroad laborers from fifty-six to eighty-three cents per day, and as high as ninety-five cents daily for piece work on tunnels; silk weavers can earn $2.15 to $2.85 a week per loom; factory women $2.15, and children $1 a week. Business and wages are very low. In good times wages are eighty per cent higher. The cost of the necessaries of life has increased some fifty per cent in thirteen years, although it is now but little higher than five years ago. A man and wife with two or three children can live in two or three rooms in a poor and comfortless manner for $275 a year, and to support such an establishment all the members have to work ten or twelve hours daily. For a family of six persons the cost is about $7 per week—an amount but few families can earn, as the depression of trade and the reduction of time allow few to do a full week's work, although wages are nominally a trifle higher than five years ago.
[ Petroleum June Review.]
DRILLING WELL ACCOUNT.
The low price of oil and large accumulation of stock in the producing regions have had the effect to lessen operations in this department during the month of June.
The total number of drilling wells in all the districts, at the close of the month, was 266, which was 110 less than in the preceding month. Rigs erected and being erected 243, against 309 last month. The number of drilling wells completed during the month was 269, being 151 less than in May. Aggregate production of the new wells was 3,788 barrels, against 6,851 barrels in May. The total number of dry holes developed in the month was 22, against 42 in May.