In further illustration of the fact just referred to I annex the average daily earnings, over a period of ten years, of another establishment in Germany. These embrace the men engaged at the converters and rolling mill:

I have given these German rates of wages at some length, because it is from that quarter that the British rail-maker meets his most formidable competitors.

In Wales the average earnings of the higher classed men at the Bessemer converters will run from 30s. to 42s. per week. In Germany they are very little more than the half of this, the highest being 20s. and others 188. The average of all the men employed in Wales at and about the Bessemer pits is about 3s. 7d. per day, as against 2s. 6d. in Germany, or a difference of 33 per cent. against the former. When however the actual money paid for labour in each comes to be compared, the number of men is so much greater abroad than in England, being nearly double, that the actual cost for workmanship, per ton of product, in the Welsh works, is about 221 per cent. only above that in Germany.

Since the foregoing comparisons were made, very considerable improvements have been introduced into the recently constructed rail mills in England. One of the latest consists of three powerful directacting engines, each driving one pair of rolls only. The hot ingot is brought to the cogging mill, from which, by means of a series of rollers driven by steam power, it is conveyed direct to the roughing rolls, and from these in like manner to the finishing mill. After the operation of rolling is completed, a third set of rollers passes the rail on to the

saws, from which it is removed by mechanical agency, in which however there is nothing very novel. In this way an ingot, a ton weight or more, is reduced to 100 feet of finished railway bar and cut to length in 4 minutes. The work is performed with such rapidity that the mere act of compression on the steel is a source of considerable heat so that the rail when completed is almost as hot as the ingot was when it first entered the cogging rolls.

SECTION XVII.

ON LABOUR IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. In the preceding section, devoted to a comparison of the conditions and cost of labour in Great Britain and in certain foreign nations, little reference has been made to the United States of America. They were purposely omitted, notwithstanding the fact that in the annual quantity of coal and iron produced the Union stands second only to Great Britain. It has been thought expedient to adopt an arrangement which assigns a separate section to the North American Continent, owing to the important differences in the circumstances which surround the question in the opposite hemispheres.

In Section XIV. it has been assumed that the price at which labour can be supplied is more or less dependent on the terms at which the necessaries of life can be procured; and certainly, so far as human agency is required in the production of such necessaries themselves, some connection between their price and the rate of wages appears to have obtained, at all events in former times, in the old world.

In the Western States of the Union, the extent of land is so immense, as compared with the population, that the element of rent in the cost of growing agricultural produce may be regarded as almost nil. It is widely different in Europe, where denser populations have exercised a corresponding influence on the value of land, by the greater demand there exists for its products.

After the elimination of the item of rent it is extremely difficult to form any very satisfactory estimate of the comparative cost of food, as it is produced in the United States and in Europe. This difficulty arises from the totally different nature of the conditions under which the cultivation of the soil is pursued in the two continents. In the Western States, prairie lands are broken up and continue to grow wheat

year after year, the produce after a few years gradually diminishing in quantity until the average per acre is only about one-half that in the United Kingdom. According to information given me in 1882 by Mr. Welch, the President of Iowa College of Agriculture at Ames, six or seven men are employed on a farm of 1,000 acres of wheat land. They are retained from April to December, during which time they receive 3s. 24d. per day, which, with board and lodging, is equal to about 4s. 2d. About half of this staff remain the year round to look after the horses and other work on the place. No manure whatever is purchased, so that any laid on the land is confined to what is produced by the horses employed on the farm or by a cow or two. Upon land so worked, with a produce of about 20 bushels per acre, wheat can be put into the granary on the farm at 1s. Od. to 1s. 3d. per bushel. Another estimate brought the cost to 1s. 44d. including taxes and interest on purchase of land.

Upon large farms the machinery employed is of the most improved type, and in ordinary seasons the pursuit of agriculture is a very lucrative one. The profits of one consisting of 6,000 acres, growing different kinds of grain were spoken of as reaching £9,375 per

annum.

To this information I would add the results of my own enquiries when in the United States.

A banker of St. Petersburg in Illinois gave me the following particulars of his own farming in 1874. He is the proprietor of 10,000 acres of land, which he purchased at the rate of £11 per acre, and of it he retains 1,000 in his own hands. He pays his labourers, chiefly immigrants recently arrived, 17s. 6d. per week and their board, equal altogether probably to 30s. Female domestics have 11s. 3d. per week and board. He spoke in disparaging terms of native American labour, and even the fresh importations from Europe only continue to satisfy him in point of efficiency for about three years. His average produce for thirty-five years has been 71 bushels of Indian corn per acre, weighing 56 lbs. per bushel; of wheat he does not exceed 15 bushels.

A gentleman from West Minnesota informed me that the farmers paid about 5s. 9d. per day in harvest time, and that the land can be bought there at 3s. 6d. per acre, which for some years yields from 20

to 30 bushels per acre, weighing 65 lbs. per bushel, after which it falls off considerably. In spite of the high price of labour, the actual cost for this item is probably even less than with us, although in England it is little more than half the price paid in Minnesota. On a farm growing nothing but wheat, a force of men at ploughing and seed time, with a second force in harvest, constitute the chief cost for wages. The heads of corn, when ripe, are pulled off, and the straw is burnt; after which the land is ploughed and sown as long as it will bear a crop worth the expense of cultivation. With a price of 30s. per quarter, free on the railroad, they express themselves abundantly satisfied.

I was informed that in Colorado good land could be purchased for 5s. 6d. to 15s. per acre, according to the distance from the railway. Farm labourers get £5 12s. 6d. per month, and their board. The soil immediately after being broken up produces 25 bushels, but this gradually falls off, so that in twelve or fifteen years it has sunk to 12 bushels; after which the location is deserted and other land is purchased.

Upon the occasion of my first visit to Cleveland City, Ohio (1874), a leading banker of that place had just returned from the Red River; and he stated that prairie land in that country could be purchased for prices varying from 11s. to 34s. per acre, which for some years after being ploughed up yielded 46 bushels of wheat per acre. The Red River is about 150 miles from Duluth on Lake Superior, where the grain is shipped direct for Buffalo on Lake Erie, and forwarded thence by rail to New York City.

Mr. Clare Sewell Read, and Mr. Pell, who recently visited the wheat-growing districts of America, as members of a Royal Commission, report to our government that the total cost of labour in some districts, including board, was only 3s. 7d. per day; from which they estimated that wheat could be delivered at the local depôts at 28s. per quarter, and this estimate is based on the yield being only 13 bushels per acre.

According to the authority just quoted, the cost of sending a quarter of wheat by the lakes to Chicago, thence by rail to New York, and by steamer thence to Liverpool, is 19s. 94d.; which, added to the cost price, brings up the total charge to about 478. 91d.