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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 8

Surplus Saving

Surplus Saving.

If the cost of living leaves no margin at the year's end, how is the man, the family, or the country to get better off? And with workingmen it is a known fact that the majority does not obtain a support from their own labor alone, but are forced to depend on their children for from one-third to one-quarter of the family earnings. The Massachusetts Labor Bureau report contains returns of more than 50,000 workingmen taken at the census of 1875, which show the average annual income from daily wages, earnings of wife and children, garden crops, all combined at $534.99 to each head of family. The average cost of living, on the other hand, is $488.96. This leaves a possible saving of $46.03 yearly, or 8 per cent. What is actually realized, however, is about $16.55, or only 3 per cent. And certainly the industrial condition of Massachusetts will compare favorably with that of any other State. It may, indeed, be taken as a flattering type of the whole country. Thus the dollar of surplus, or the dollar of debt, becomes the vital problem of life, and seeing how small the margin is which separates living from starving, can we wonder, in the face of six hundred millions of wages dedicated to the Still and the dram shop, there should be prostrate industries, and idle hands, and sullen hearts? page 8 The good time coming will as surely need that other order be taken of the saving and the spending.

Look it, my friends, square in the face, this great spectral fact which is