The Warwickshire Herald. — 1896-10-01 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

LEEDS SLIPPER:MAKERS AND JEWISH WORKERS.  THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.  ,  In Pearson's Mr. Robert H. Sherard deals this month with the slipper-makers and tailors of Leeds. "The English workers," says Mr. Sherard, "have been almost entirely crowded out of the slipper trade by the foreigners, and the few that remain are literally on the verge of starvation. On the other hand, there are over 1,000 Jewish families of foreign extraction engaged in this industry in Leeds alone," and they are still increasing, for every year almost sees a new batch arriving. It is not an uncommon thing, the writer tells us, to find the slipper-maker start work at 7 o'clock in the morning, and finish at 12 midnight; and working all the time the most that can be earned on the average by a good worker does not exceed 144 a week.  There is • very old story, which sober-minded statisticians reject as erroneous and apocryphal, that tells how a Paris Socialist obtained an audience with the head of the banking house of Rothschild, and argued that there should be an Nual division of property, doing away with the existing disparities, which he alleged svere unjust. M. Rothschild, SQ the story gces, took from his desk a piece of paper and figured upon it the total wealth of France. Then he divided the total by 36,000,000, the population of France at that time, the result being the per capita share of the wealth to which his visitor would have been entitled. Men M. Rothschild, handing his visitor a one-franc piece—Wipe/ice—said: .hly friend, here is your Mare of all that I would owe you on the re-die-mien if the property of the country. Collect the balance from others." Whatever may be the basis of fact ‘pun which this story is founded, there is no disputing its periodic recurrence in the form of an estimate of how much each citizen of a country would have if the wealth of such • country was equally divided among its inhabitants. In point of fact, it is, of course, unreasonable to base any plan of division on the total number of inhabitants, for • very large number of these are infants below the age of five years, and a still larger number are male minors between five and 21 and female minors between five and 18. It has been estimated that the average wealth to each inhabitant in the following countries is in excess of £2OO per person: The United States, England, France, Denmark, Holland, and Australia. Between the £l5O and the £2OO limit ire Switzerland, Belgium, and Canada. Below that ire Germany, Spain ,Italy, and Sweden. In RUlSill :he average is £6O, and in no country from which inthentic statistics are obtainable is the amount oi vealtit less.  There nave recently been half a dozen mild cases of diphtheria in Spurgeon's Orphanage. Warrants have been hustled against Corbett and Fitzsimmons in New York, on a charge of having arranged to ta.ke part in a prise fight. An artist named Frederick Wenzer, who had been indfering from the n3sulta of overwork, committed suicide at HalegOwan by cutting his throat.  News haa just come to hand of the crew of the steamship Ealing, which was wrecked off Nova Scotia in January. After taking to the boats, the captain and eight men were frozen to death, and two o became insane.