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.
The Harriman-Fish Embroglio.
The final triumph of Edward H. Harriman over President Stuyvesant Fish, of the Illinois Central, after a long and bitter feud extending over many years, is still a topic of absorbing interest in the railroad world and to the public in general. At a special meeting of the directors of the road held in New York early in November Mr. Fish was defeated for re-election by a vote of eight to four, the thirteenth director, Vice-President Welling, being confined to his bed from an illness of which he died a few days later. The formal complaint made against President Fish was that he had not observed the “harmony” agreement of last July, when it was at one time proposed that a special committee should solicit proxies, and not Mr. Fish personally. He was charged with arrogating to himself alone “the duty and function resting upon the entire board,” and not being able to “distinguish between the powers and duties of the president and those of the directors of the corporation.” The purpose of the board was known before-hand and it was no surprise when James T. Harahan, one of the vice-presidents, was chosen to succeed Mr. Fish.
The nomination was seconded by Charles A. Peabody, President of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, which was one of the many reasons sustaining the belief on the part of Mr. Fish’s friends that his refusal to take part in the “white-washing” of the Mutual officials was really responsible for his overthrow. It is recalled that Harriman made threats at the time that he would make reprisal on Fish for his refusal to knuckle under.
