Knowledge that Transforms

or mnore than two and one half timiies as mnuch as was available for dividends in I894 or I895. And yet the dividends actually paid in I898 are 5.4 miillion dollars less than in I894. But the dividend payments of I894 left a deficit of nearly 46 million dollars while in 1898 there remnained a surplus after dividends *were paid of 44 million dollars. Although the gross aind net earnings of the roads were greater in I898 than ever before, there are only three years since I890 when the stockholders have not received g,reater dlividends. Fromii I890 to I894 dividends were always above ioo iiillion dollars, but in those years the surplus never exceeded I5 miilliondollars after dividends were paid, and in tbe years 1894, I895, and I897 there were heavy deficits. the surplus of iS9S looks as if the roads were being ianaged on a imiore conservative basis. The inana-ers seemi to lhave profited by the experience of the lean y ears and are layin-t up a surplus which will enable themn to weather the next stormn without takinrefuge in tlhe receiver's court.

labor is still opposed to anything that tends to raise the price of that commiiiodity, and the habit of courts of relying on precedents gives a somniewhat disproportionate authority to cases decided when the interests of those who had labor to sell were not considered by the m-len who made and interpreted the laws. It rnay easily be shown in economnics that high wages are in the public interest, but if the judges so regarded it wN-e shotuld have a considerable change in the tenor of judicial decisions. With a degree of frankness not often encountered in his class, Lord Brassey said in a lecture in I877 M uch of the objection which exists in the public mind towards trade unions irsts, as it must he conifessed, on the genleral reluctance to see any effort ma(le to r-ise the price of labor. Lord Prasseyl has himiiself supplied, largely fromli his own and his father's experience, many strikingevidences of the economy of high wagTes. A miiass of stich evidence has accumnulated since. It does not incline, anid of course it should not incline, any individual buyer of labor to pay for it miiore than the miiarket price, and he would he somnething, ninore than humllan if he were not generally complaining that the price was already too hig,h; but with Amnerican comnpetition as sharp in foreiglYn miarkets as it is now one might suppose that the conception of the relation of the rate of wages to the general state,of trade would undergo a change and that the agencies by which wages are advanced or stustained would seemn less obviously "in restraint of trade," less palpablv "against the public interest." FRED. PERRY POWERS. N E WNVORK.