The population of the state at that time, including men, women and children, was 3,160,000. Such a population in a competitive state will contain about five thousand lawyers.
We had one hundred and fifty lawyers and four thousand eight hundred and fifty strong men in our producing ranks. The wives of these men were also in our Industrial Army.
Such a population in competition usually supports six thousand saloon men and bartenders. Liquors were sold in the various department stores of the Association at that time and in the restaurants and hotels, but there were no bars and no saloons. They were handled incidentally with drugs, medicines or foods. In the competitive system the liquor dealers and bartenders form a special force. The liquors in Idaho were dispensed by the clerks and waiters who handled other goods. We could safely count six thousand workers in our Industrial Army aiding in the production of wealth instead of six thousand saloon men and bartenders.
Instead of eight thousand claim, commission, real estate and insurance agents and collectors we had an equal number of men at work in our factories, on our farms, or in the distributing departments.
The restaurant and hotel keepers, brokers, commercial travelers, hucksters and peddlers and merchants in such a population in a competitive state would number sixty thousand. All these, instead of preying upon us and consuming the fruits of our labor without giving any return for it, were now at work with us.
Body and personal servants who wait upon the rich in a state of three million inhabitants will number in the neighborhood of ninety thousand, and all these were in our Industrial Army helping to increase the annual wealth of the state.
We had no gamblers, professional capitalists, speculators or leisure classes in 1910, but we had an equal number of honest workers.
We were not compelled to waste time in searching for employment, hunting for customers or waiting for trade.
We were not distressed by the pressure of a few overburdened and a large number who could get neither the burden nor the reward for carrying it.
There were no overdone trades and no overstocked markets.