The weekly examiner., 1901-07-20
TRUST PROSPERITY.
READING BETWEEN THE LINES OF CENSUS BULLETIN NO. es.

Facts Often Overlooked.
 Census bulletin No. 6, issued April %. is an interesting document If is a special report on the coke industry This report justifies it's own conclusion that 'the modern tendency of industry to concentrate in comparatively small number of establishmentsais strikingly exempNfied in the coke industry, where there Is an increase of only B, or 1O.6 per cent in the number Of establish ments reported as compared with 1889, while the increase in the number of tons of coke produced is 962 per cent and in the value of all products 115.7 per cent" But the report does more than justify that conclusion. It justi- fies another, which it not only does not express, but actually appears to gloss over. Observing that there has been a greater increase in the amount of capital invested than in the product, 1t adds, with the ingenuousness of a narrator who tells the truth in form which he hopes will not reveal it, that there has been "a nearly equal increase in the number of wage earners and in the amount paid in wages
 This does not say, indeed, that wages in the coke industry have increased since 1889. On the contrary, the fact of increase in the number of wage earn CTS and the fact of increase in the total of wages paid are brought into juxta- position, so that a little consideration would suggest to the reader that there had been no increase of individual wages. Yet the hasty reader might in- fer from the statement that individual wages had risen, and no pains are talk en to warn him against that false in- ference. Every other fact is itemized, but individual wages are not Yet upon the faith of the tables of this census bulletin individual wages In the coke industry since 1889 have decreased.
 Notwithstanding the vaunted in- crease of product and values in the coke industry in 1899 as compared with 1889 there has been, according to the census bulletin under discussion. an ab- solute decrease in individual yearly wages of more than $35 Tn 1889 the aggregate sum of $4,072, ,632 was paid in wages, and there were 8,998 wage earners, which yields an average annu- al sum for each of $452.61. But in 1899, although $7.0S5, ,736, was paid in wages, there were 16, ,999 wage earners to share 1t, which allows for each only S416.S3, a decrease of $35.7S. Were we to disre- gard employees under 16 years of age, considering only men, the annual wages for men in 1889 would be $454.49 and in 1899 $417.69, decrease of $36SO. So much for the decline in wages absolute
 As to wages relative-that is, wages compared with product-the decline zs still greater. This may be seeK by ref erence to the following items extracted fromake tables of the census bulletin:
 Isse-
 Cost of materials. I.5oe. .7s7 % Net product ...................... s4,oss.eos % Net product per wage earner (s,9o6
 wage earners) .................... $554 50 Individual wages .................. z52 01 Surplus product .................... s1o1 s9 Value of products. $35,585, ,4z5 % Cost of materials. s................. 19,665,5 ,5S2 % Net product Sl5,9l9,918 % Net product per wage earner Q6,9s9
 wage earners) ..................., $936 % Individual wages ................. 416 sS Surplus product ............. s519 IT
 Thus it appears that whereas in 1889 the wage earners each got within $101.89 of the net products of the in- dustry in 1899 the net products amounted to $519.17 more for each than each of them got. Or, to put 1t in the form of percentages, whereas they got 81 per cent of the net product in 1889 they got less than 45 per cent in 1899.
 But not so with the trust which con- trols the coke industry. Though the wage earners were immensely less prosperous in 1899 than in 1889. both relatively and absolutely, the trust was vastly more prosperous. This is demon strated by the following table drawn from the tables of the census bulletin under consideration:
 yalue of products s164ee .s45