that you break down the line of protection to that beet-sugar industry. You not only break down the refineries, you not only send their employees to tramp the streets looking after other jobs, but you break down the most promising farming industry that has been held out to the farmers of this country in the last century. The remedy is worse than the disease, when you try to eradicate the trouble in any such manner as that.

“What shall be done with the sugar trust? Well, I will tell you what in my opinion is the best way of dealing with it. Establish a beet-sugar factory in every Congressional district in the United States. [Applause on the Republican side.] Give competition, and lots of it, everywhere. Put the farmers over against the trust by passing this bill, and reduce the price of sugar so that German raw sugar can not be brought in to be refined here. Gentlemen on the other side, come over and help us, while we help the farmers out. [Laughter and applause.] You grangers over there, come and help us. You Populists that go up and down the streets day after day proclaiming your devotion to the interests of the farmers, help us out now when we are trying to help the farmers in this industry that we can establish so successfully. In this way you will do something toward demolishing the trust. You will accomplish more in this way than by mere invective-by running windmills and all that. [Laughter and applause.]

"Why should we not produce all of our sugar in this country? Why, it costs us, Mr. Speaker, about one hundred millions. We were looking around for proper subjects for taxation. We knew that sugar would produce an enormous revenue; and besides all that, we knew that an adequate protective tariff would build up the industry in this country, and as it was gradually built up the revenue from that source will be reduced; by and by the revenue will come in more largely from other sources, and when this industry is fully established and revenue from sugar ceases, the reduction will keep pace with the increase."

PROTECTION AND TRUSTS.

The charge that trusts are fostered by protection can not be successfully maintained. The trusts with which we are most familiar are not in the protected industries. The Standard Oil Company deals in an unprotected article. So does the anthracite coal combination. As regards the sugar trust, it seems to make no difference to it whether there is a duty on sugar or not, or what that duty is. England has no tariff, and yet trusts exist and flourish in England-trusts more monstrous than any that we have any knowledge of.

Trusts have long existed in free-trade England, even

a coffin

trust forming one of the features of English manufacturing enterprise not many years ago. A few years ago there was organized a steel-rail trust, which embraced the steel-rail manufacturers of Great Britain and of several continental countries. On February 15, 1896, the London Ironmonger announced the organization of another steel-rail trust, its operations to be restricted to the steelrail manufacturers of Great Britain, one of its features being that "there is to be no underselling." The London Iron and Coal Trades Review says that this trust was organized in October, 1895. The Ironmonger says that "it is worthy of note that at this juncture there are ten home steel works producing rails, as against seventeen or eighteen formerly combining, and it is believed that this smaller 'ring' will be more easily managed." In a subsequent issue the same authority stated that "all the principal British concerns are in the 'ring,' so that it will not be easy for the smaller mills to run against it with good results to themselves." Prices of English steel rails were remarkably uniform after October, 1895, and all through 1896, averaging above £4 10s. per ton. Early in 1895 the Sheffield Telegraph published the draft of a scheme proposing that 200 iron firms of South Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Worcester, and Shropshire should form an organization to be known as the Midland Iron Trade Association, which would regulate the prices of all classes of manufactured iron.

Early in 1896 it was announced that twenty-three makers of structural iron and steel in France had just completed a "pool,” an agreement having been reached by which each of the works represented was allotted a specified tonnage, and all sales were to be made by a new company, to be styled Le Comptoir Général des Poutrelles, with headquarters at Paris. Near the close of 1896 it was stated by a writer in a French newspaper that the "pool" had put up the price of beams and columns "from 12 francs to 17 francs 50 centimes per double hundredweight if sold for France or the French colonies. As, however, the home and colonial consumption is not sufficient for all the production, the syndicate sells for foreign countries at 12 francs 50 centimes." Early in 1896 it was announced that "the syndicate of sheet and plate makers in France has been renewed for another period of five years, and its operations are to be extended. So far it has controlled the sale of sheets and plates in France and the colonies, but henceforth it is to regulate prices for export. Its operation has given every satisfaction to the members of the syndicate."

Trusts and syndicates are a common incident of manufacturing industries in continental countries, and one of the functions of some of these trusts has been the regulation of the prices at which surplus stocks should be exported to foreign markets, which, under such conditions, have been well named "slaughter markets."

A FREE-TRADE ARMOR TRUST.

[From the Manchester, England, City News, January 2, 1897.] Arrangements are being completed for the amalgamation of the great armament-manufacturing firms of Manchester and Newcastle, Sir Joseph Whitworth, Limited, and Sir William Armstrong, Limited. Of course, until the proposals and their conditions have been adopted by the shareholders of both companies, the proposal is open to rejection; but it is believed that within a month those financially concerned will confirm and complete the steps taken by the directors of the Elswick and Manchester concerns. Elswick, if the amalgamation is effected, would have at its back the added resources of the Manchester works, which, it is expected, would be found of the utmost value and importance in case of emergency, as giving Sir William Armstrong & Co., Limited, power to fully and promptly meet those sudden demands by which the Elswick firm have, within recent months, been very much pressed.

The capital of Sir William Armstrong, Limited, is £4,000,000, consisting of 3,000,000 ordinary shares of £1 each and 200,000 preference shares of £5 each. At the beginning of the present year the ordinary share capital of the company was £2,000,000, made up of 20,000 shares of £100 each; but a revaluation of the concern took place, and showed an increase of £1,000,000. The increase was presented to the shareholders by the one-hundred-pound shares being fixed at £150, and the reconstruction of the company immediately followed, by which the ordinary share capital was raised to 3,000,000 one-pound shares. The last annual meeting was held on September 24, and the dividend declared was 114 per cent. In the year 1874, Sir Joseph Whitworth & Co., Limited, was formed to conduct and carry on the engineering business up to that time managed by the firm of that name. The company, however, was registered in 1888, with extended powers, as Whitworth & Co. of Openshaw, Limited, but the old title was afterwards reverted to. All the authorized capital of £700,000 in ten-pound shares has been subscribed and paid up, and there are also £278,398 of 5 per cent debenture stock and £17,713 of deposits. In 1889 the company paid a dividend of 10 per cent, and in the two following years 15 per cent was distributed. In 1892 and 1893 the dividends paid were at the rate of 10 per cent, and in 1894 and 1895 the rate was only 5 per cent, while in 1894, in order to make the distribution, £15,000 was transferred from reserve.

It is understood that the Elswick firm will take over the working of the Whitworth Company. The effect of the union will be to largely destroy competition in the manufacture of quick-firing guns. In several departments of the work of the Elswick firm no compe

tition has been felt from the Manchester Company, but both firms have been makers of quick-firing guns for the British and foreign navies, and the competition in these weapons between the two companies will now cease. The Elswick works at present are very busy, about 19,000 men being employed.

WAGES.

Wages in 1890, Compared with Those during the So-Called "Good Old Bimetallic Times."

From the famous Senate report on Wholesale Prices, Transportation, and Wages are taken the facts for the following table of wages in leading occupations every tenth year for some time before the war, when we had our mint "open to the free coinage of both metals," in comparison with wages in 1890, a sixth of a century after we finally adopted our present system of unlimited coinage of gold and limited coinage of silver:

There are in almost every community men who worked by the day before the war. Any young workingman who is at all taken by the glowing promises of the free silverites, would do well to ask one of these old gentlemen how much he really was paid in those "bimetallic" days, and how much he could buy with his daily pay in the way of necessaries and comforts.

WAGES AND PRICES.

Following is the table of Labor Commissioner Wright of average prices of 246 articles and of wages from 1840 to 1891, the prices of 1860 being represented by the index number, 100 as the basis of comparison, and the index number for each year indicating the rise or fall from that basis. The London price of silver per ounce for each of the years named is added:

WAGES AND PENSIONS-HOW FREE COINAGE WOULD AFFECT THEM.

The Journal of the Knights of Labor, published at Washington, on October 15, 1896, during the national campaign, told workingmen in a half-page article, entitled: “A Recapitulation-Have the Opponents of Mr. Bryan made out a good Case?” that the value of all workingmen's deposits in savings banks, the pensions of old soldiers and "money in all forms," would be cut in two by free coinage. The Journal is the official organ of the Knights of Labor and advocated free silver and Bryan. The article undertook to answer four propositions in behalf of sound money. The editor admitted that savings and pensions would be cut in two.

The paper said on this head: "Third-That the purchasing power of pensions and savings bank deposits would be cut in two by free coinage. This is the only true contention made by the gold men and it is fully agreed to by all candid advocates of an increased volume of money. Fixed incomes, bond mortgages, and money in all its forms, whether in savings banks or national banks, would have much less purchasing power."

The article was from the pen of Mr. H. B. Martin, the editor of the paper, and a member of the general executive board of the order.