The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-04-29
investigators, is the minimum amount on which the average Wor,ingman can bring LID g family

wor,lingman can bring up family in bare decency. Bare decency excludes nearly everything thas we call luxuries. It signifies a condi- tion under which a workingman is practically, in brutal terms, no bet ter off than breeding animal. II merely makes it possible for the race of workingmen to continue. Where a mans income falls below s7cO it has to be made up by actual deprivation (which means hunger, ccld and sickness), by child labor, by the labor of women, by oter- crowding, or, in the individual case, Uy the simple expedient of remain ing unmarried.
 At Youngstown, Ohio, where the recent riots occurred, it was esti- mated that "the average head of family among foreign born steel workers, who constitute more then 70 per cent of the entire force, earns less than $500 a year" The Youngstown Steel end Tube con- pany is not member of the steel trust, but it's working' conditions are similar to those under the steel trust On such a basis the compa- ny has paid 8 per cent in dividends for the past eight years. Since 1913 it has paid 8 per cent on a stock dividend and 50 per cont, making 12 per cent on the original capital ization The steel trust, for the past few years, has been splitting it's gross income almost helf end half between wages and salaries on the one hand end interest and profits, under various names, on the other. The steel industry might, the ob- server infers, pay living wcges and still be able to survive.
 The steel manufacturers ere not solitary offenders. By some con- parisons they are quite munificent Of more than 100000 adult wage schedules examined by tho census office 10 years ago 47 per cent fell under $500 year; on railroads in 1911 the average wage for unskilled work was $20S a day; end so on indefinitely. Late statistics gre hard to get, but it seems, on tho whole. that wage advances have all, or moro than all, been absorbed by 9 higher cost of living.
 After considering these facts it is difficult to take very seriously the boosts that this nation is immensely wealthy or the charge that it is over fat. A few of us are wealthy, but not many Prosperity means. for millions of us, just the chance to work steadily at very hard iabur for wages which will just keep our families in existence. Undoubtedly most foreign workingmen are far worse off. The criticism of the Am. erican systems is that it's wages arc not in proportion to the national wealth America has sucked the human marrow from Europe, brok en open the treasure-houses of it's own fields and mountains and taken out wealth which it did not not create and can not replace. The process has seemed to work so well that we have grown proud of it.
 How bad all this is for sound business it is easy to imagine. Our home markets are barely tapped for the sufficient reason that millions of possible consumers have no money with which to make purchases. These home markets are certainly more important to us than foreign ones, but it is the foreign ones that that our great business men and statesmen worry about and our navy is held ready to defend. A wiser na- tion would satisfy home needs first, It is no argument to add that no na. tion-least of all England, the very home of surplus wealth--has ever done this.--San Francisco Bulletin