which I turn, with something like a
sense of relief, to discuss those economical considerations affecting
wage-earners which have hitherto been made to give place to social
inquiries.

We have now to ask what are the wages of labor in the States, their
relation to the cost of subsistence, and to wages and cost of subsistence
in our own country? Finally, I shall briefly consider certain propositions
of the American political economist which are so inextricably mixed up
with the question of labor and wages in the States that it is impossible
to discuss the one without taking some note of the other.

Until quite recently, no complete investigation, bringing the rates of
wages paid in industries common to the United States and European
countries, has ever been made, although the results of such an
investigation have been constantly and earnestly called for both by the
press and people of America. Permit me to remark, in passing, that we know
little in this country of the desire for full, trustworthy, and accessible
statistics, concerning all matters of national interest, which dominates
the public mind of America; and as little of the willingness with which
American citizens of all classes place the particulars of their private
business at the service of the statistician. This desire for statistical
bases whereon the statesman and economist may build, is vividly
illustrated by that publication, perhaps the most wonderful in the whole
world, entitled a "Compendium of the Census of the United States," issued
with every decade. These volumes, accessible to everybody, and arranged
with marvelous skill and lucidity, offer to the social observer a
complete, accurate, and suggestive survey of every field comprised within
the vast domain of the national interests. An evening's address would not
more than suffice to indicate the scope and appraise the value of this
work, which is a mine wherein, the ore ready dressed to his hand, the
politico-economic or industrial essayist might work for years without
exhausting its riches.

But the United States Census does not treat specifically of wages and
subsistence, and it is to the Massachusetts Labor Bureau that we must
again turn for such information as we now require. Dr. Edward Young,
indeed, the late chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics,
published an elaborate work upon this subject in 1875, but his comparisons
as to the relative cost of living in America and Europe, good