The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-26 00:00:00

COMMISSIONER WELLS' REPORT.

(From the New York Nation.)
In the, compositiou of this incendiary pamphlet,
Mr. Wells starts with •the astoundine but hardly
queetionable assertion, that the cost of the v. ar
was nine thousand millions of dollars; and this of
itself is, it must be admitted, a good deal to recover
from. To meet it, however, we have had, since the
outbreak of the war, au immigration amounting to
1,664.363. Since the termination of the war. too.
thirteen thousand miles have• h. ell actiel l
to ie
rail, oa is of the eon. try ',pi-I,g up
, „
virgin soil hart e. :h . • ie a ee,
the telegraph lines e received an increase o,
eighteen thouse.nd miles of wires. Moreover, the
South mayto '
fairiy,-aid to have recovered. The
cotton crop has a._&ato reached its old waTjtnidard iu
quanti-y, and is superior in quality., w
same‘
thin,/ may be said of tLe , crops peculiar
prices have furnislisd it
the South, white the high
once more with cali7.al, of wi.ich the close of the
war found it to ally bereft. ar. Wells estimates
tai total number of perseps now engaged in add-
ing directly to the wealth of the country by their
labour es 10,e00,000, out of a population of
39,000.001), and the total annual product of their
labteir at $6,82.5,000,000, or $682 50 etch. Of this
total product, about one-halt is to be attributed to
agriculture. The cotton manufacture only counts
for $71,500,000 ; the woollen manufacture for
666,000,000 ; the iron manufacture, $119,950,000 ;
the leather manufacture. $222,600,000 ; and the
-ailway service, $360,000,000. It will thus be seen
that the iron industry, which makes most of the
disturbance over the tariff, is only fourth in the
order of importance, and ranks far below the leather
industry, which has been seriously injured for its
benefit. Of course, the country is growing in every
way, but Mr. Wells holds that it is not growing as
it ought to grow, and as it would grow in the ab-
Fence of a vicious system of currency and taxation.
Be says, when we leave the region- of general esti-
mates and descend into others in which we have
exact figures, the prospect is not pleasing. The
deposits in savings banks have not increased in
proportion to the increase in population, and there
is every reason to believe that the depositors no
longer belong exclusively to the working classes.
Moreover, the increase in the number of houses has
not kept pace with the increase of population, which
means not only that fewer families have homes
of their own, but that a greater number of
persons are crowded under one roof. In short,
though wealth increases, it is not increasing
in anything like the old ratio, and it is not distri-
buted with anything like the old equality. The
direct effect of the bad currency and bad system of
taxation is to put a premium on the talents of the
broker and speculator, while lessening the rewards
of the producer; so that, while the great capitalists
and exchangers find things very pleasant, the work-
ing man finds things very unpleasant. In other
worde, the more complicated your system of taxa-
tion is, and the more variable in value your cur-
rency is, the more call there is for shrewdness and
smartness in the transaction of business, and the
less chance is there for simple industry and energy.
Tee banking, brokerage, insurance, and commis-
sion businesses thrive. They draw into them all that
large and able class of the community who are
skilful in dealing with uncertainty, while the dull
plodders, on whom the country is after all mainly
dependent for solid additions to its wealth, go
to the wall.. To this state of our currency and
taxation Mr. Wells ascrib:s, too, the listlessness,
the dislike of labour, and the determination to
do as little as possible, which are now reported
as prevailing in nearly all branches of industry ;
but this theory is shaken by the fact that the same
phenomena show themselves in nearly every civi-
lized country. They are, in our opinion, mainly the
result of growing social ambition, and a growing feel-
ing of equality on the piirt of theworking classes ; and
the discontent of these classes is stimulated by the
sight of the immense rewards which the capitalist
classes have reaped from the application of steam
and electricity to industry and commerce within
the last thirty years, and in which thus far the
working classes can hardly be said to have shared.
But the disadvantages of the working man's con-
dition, all things considered, are perhaps greater
here now than elsewhere, and would be greater still
sf it were not for the resource offered by the
abundance of fertile land. Another cause which
t%lr. Wells looks upon as seriously impairing
the rapidity of national accumulation as the
condition of the foreign trads of the country,
though, as he states the case, the condition of
the foreign trade appears rather as evidence that
we are not accumulating rapidly than as an agency
preventing rapid accumulation. lie thinks that
there are now about $1,400,000,000 of American
securities of all kinds held abroad, drawing annual
interest to the amount of about $80,000,000, and
this indebtedness to foreigners gees on increasing,
owing to the now annual adverse balance against
us in our dealings with Europe. I est year this
balance amounted to about $210,000,000, and this is,
Mr. Wells calculates, the average sum which now
stands against us every year, and is settled by the
transmission of bonds and other promises to pay.
Now, the conclusion Mr. Wells draws from this is
that, if we had either the gold or the goods to pay
with, we should pay with them as we did in old times,
but not having them we pay in bonds. "Of course,
we have not the gold"—some one will say—" but
why have we not the goods ?" For the simple
reason, that the cost of production in this country
now, owing to our system of taxation and the con-
dition of our currency, is so great that we cannot
afford to furnish goods at prices which foreigners
will pay for them. We make hardly anything now
which cannot be found cheaper or better made else-
where. In other words, the process of protection,
as now carried on, is very like, in its effects on the
national industry, the process of training to go
without food to which the man subjected his horse
by cutting down his allowance every day, and
which was giving every promise of success, when
the horse unfortunately died. Under this stage
of things, not only have we ceased to export our
products to foreign countries, but we have almost
entirely lost the carrying trade, which was once the
pride and glory of the country. The American
shipowner cannot compete with foreigners, any
more than the America manufacturer, so that Mr.
Wells calculates that the loss to the country from
this source alone is equal to $24,000,000 per annum.
In 1859, American ships did two-thirds of our total
foreign trade; in 1869, they do one-third. Losses
by the Alabama will not account for this The
painful truth is, that we cannot build a new ship
and sail her at a profit iu competition with Euro-
peans ; and new ships would have been needed,
even if Semmes had never sailed the sea. Mr. Wells
has collected a great deal of evidence, also, as to
what he calls " the diversion and demoralization of
industry"—that is, the propulsion of capital and
labour itito unprofitable channels, and the decline
of zeal and diligence on the part of workmen.
Moreover, he confirms the statements made by the
Nation two years ago, and which excited so much
hiltrity at the time amongst some of our contem-
poraries, as to the decrease in live stock, and its
value as an indication of a change in the relations
which production formerly sustained to. consump-
tion and population. In the State of Ohio, for
instance, for the agricultural statistics of which
greater accuracy is claimed than for those of any other
State, the official report for 1869 shows that, as com-
p tried with 1868, the number of sheep has decreased
nearly a million and a half, the hogs nearly four
hundred thousand, the cattle over twenty thousand.
Indeed, the Department of Agriculture estimates
the decline in the number of sheep all over the coun-
try at 25 per cent. But we must reserve for an-
other article Mr. Wells' account of the Iscariot, of
the existing financial situation on the farming po-
pulation—that is, be it remembered, 50 per cent. of
the population of the United States.

N a

The University of the South, established at
Swanee, Tennessee, just before the war, under the aus-
pices of the ten Southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church,
suffered severely during the rebellion, all its buildings
having been destroyed, It has now been thoroughly re-
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hundred students. The University owns by grant
and purchase a tract of ten thousand acres, on a
high plateau, in a healthy region, and accessible
from all points of the South. After the war the institu-
tion received important aid from England—a subscription
headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury having yielded
$20,000, and the University of Oxford having presented
five thousand volumes of valuable books, as a commence-
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to increase the number of buildings of the University, so
as to provide for two hundred applicants for admission,
who cannot now be accommodated.
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