in their own interest, in the interest of rational labor organization, in the interest of public order and well-being, is to go to work and mine coal. If those who are permitted to represent them in making demands and entering into agreements see fit to assent to the reconsideration and resettlement of the question of wages and adjustment of complaints well and good, but in that case there should be a resumption of work pending these proceedings. if there is a strike it will be the worse for the miners and for the organization of mine workers. It can hardly fail to result in disorganization and the definite establishment of the "open shop" principle in anthracite mining.

GERMANY'S COAL SUPPLY.

[American Manufacturer.]

But

German statisticians are useful creatures. Just as we have become accustomed to the warmth of the fireside, some statistician proves by a mass of figures that in the near future, say three or four hundred years, the world will have exhausted its coal supply. But one of Germany's wise men says this is not so. Of course, he knows. And the best part of it is that the German savant, like all of his ilk, proves by these same figures that should all the neighboring countries of Germany consume their coal supply, Germany has enough to last until the year 3000.

We are also given an insight why German diplomats are so anxious to get a slice of China. The German statistician has called attention to the

fact that after the year 3000, when Germany's supply shall have been exhausted, there is enough coal in the Chinese empire to tide over a few more generations. It's a good thing for China and the Chinese can expect to be Germanized almost any day. Not for the love of the Chinese, but because they have coal deposits which the Germans need to keep them warm after the year 3000 Anno Domino.

OUR TRADE WITH CANADA.

[From the New York Tribune.]

Co with

OMPLAINTS that our trade with Canada is languishing because of the administration's failure to wheedle commercial concessions out of a neighbor who ob stinately shies at any form of reciprocity have been for several years the stock in trade of leading Democratic politicians in Massachusetts. The fact that it takes two to make a bargain in diplomacy as well as in business and that Canada does not want to sign a trade agreement with us has not deterred these politicians from agitating for immediate and unconditional admission of Massachusetts products to the Dominion market. They have depicted the restraints imposed on commerce by two mutually obstructive tariffs and have sonorously lamented the inevitable diversion to Great Britain of Canada's favor as a customer under the rebate clauses of the present Canadian tariff. Unfortunately for these pessimistic statesmen, their conclusions and prophecies are confounded by trade statistics, for on examination it will be found not only that our commerce with Canada is

growing at an unprecedated pace, but that, in spite of preferential rates on British goods, we are selling propor tionately more to Canada than ever and Great Britain is selling proportionately less.

The 1905 trade figures just issued by the Bureau of Statistics of the Department of Labor and Com

merce are, in fact, a complete refutation of the charge that we are losing ground in our commerce with Canada. The Dingley Tariff law went into effect in 1897. The same year the Dominion granted on British products a rebate of 12 1-2 per cent and increased it in 1898 to 25 per cent and in 1900 to 33 1-3 per cent. In 1895 our commerce with Canada, imports and exports, amounted in value to $89,429,096. In 1905, after eight full years under the Dingley law and the British concessions system, our commerce with Canada, imports and exports, amounted in value to $202,999,213

-a gain of 127 per cent. Between 1875 and 1895 the gain had been only $27,000,000 or 43 per cent. Moreover, this increase in trade has been largely in exports from this country to Canada. In the last thirty years the Dominion's sales to us have risen from $27,866,615 to $62,469,632-a little more than doubled. But in the same period our sales to the Dominion have advanced from $34,547,219 to $140,529,581—or more than quadrupled. In our dealings with Canada to-day we sell more than twice as much as we purchase. Certainly no prophecies of retrogression can be based on such a showing.

So far as British competition is concerned, the 1905 figures are equally reassuring. In 1887 our share in the Canadian import trade exactly equaled Great Britain's. Each country furnished 42.6 per cent of the Dominion's imports. Between 1887 and 1897, both coun

tries remaining on the same tariff footing, the United States forged rapidly ahead. In 1897 our per

centage rose to 53.5 and Great Britain's fell to 27.6. The marked concessions in rates after 1897

steadied and even slightly increased Great Britain's percentage, while they also slightly checked our ratio of gain. But in 1904-'05 our share of the Canadian import trade rose to 60.6-the highest point ever reached

while Great Britain's fell to 24— the lowest ever recorded. Reciprocity and freer trade may come in time, if Canada wants them. But we can see nothing in the commercial situation as it exists to-day to warrant the lamentations of our inconsolable reciprocity agitators.

GERMAN TEXTILE CONDITIONS.

Consul Harris writes from Chemnitz on textile and other topics pertaining to Germany as follows: In the hosiery branch of textiles the outlook was never better than the present. The only cloud was the prospective tariff difficulty. If a twenty-five per cent additional duty had been imposed on hosiery by the United States exports would have dropped lower than in any preceding year. Otherwise more German hosiery will go to America than ever before. The German manufacturers were nervous about the situation and flooded this consulate with inquiries on the points at issue. Discontent exists among the weaving glove makers in Saxony. They demand shorter hours and twenty-five per cent more wages. Their pay has been the lowest of any textile industry. The glove manufacturers claim that profits have been so low that many have thought of closing down or changing to some other product.

TRUSTS AND PRICES.

[George W. Russell in the Boston Ad

WHY

vertiser.]

as

HY can't we look at things as they actually exist and not as some socialist or demagogue describes them? There is no monopoly or a very near approach to one in this country. Possibly the Standard Oil Company comes near a monopoly as anything we have, but this company has sharp competition. They put a single gallon of good oil into our houses for twelve cents. Any other capitalist, or any combination of capitalists, has the absolute right and privilege to do this for less if he or they can. We have kept house for something over fifty years and have

no

desire to go back to back to the "good old times." In looking over an old expense account we find that we paid $1.25 for a gallon of poor oil when we began to use it. At the same time (1857) we got five pounds of sugar for one dollar. Now we get twenty pounds and sometimes twenty-two pounds for a dollar. There were then no great aggregates of capital invested in sugar or oil refining, or in any other industry. Most of the capital that was in the country in 1846 had been sent out under the Democratic Walker tariff, for imported goods that we ought to have produced ourselves. There are in this country now nearly seven million farms, most of which are competitors of the so-called beef trust.

Under these conditions there can be no monopoly. In this morn

ing's Advertiser choice beef was quoted at, hind quarters, 9 1-2 @ 10 1-4 cts., and forequarters, 5 1-2 @ 5 3-4 cts. per pound. There is no proof so far that the aggregates of capital invested in the production of oil, steel, meat, sugar and other products have increased the cost of living to the people one particle, but there is plenty of proof that capital in the hands of well-managed concerns has decreased the cost of living to all of the people.

As long as our railroads will carry us anywhere for two cents per mile, and haul a ton of freight forty miles for ten cents, why need we spend time discussing a "rate bill"? Successful men are not plenty enough to be legislated out of business. The industrial history of this country shows that men who can organize an industry and make it a success are scarce. More than ninety-five per cent of those who try it fail. Those who succeed are benefactors in the communities which are are fortunate enough to have them. Whatever tends to hurt these people will hurt labor more than it will them. If we would serve our own interests we should help those on whom we must depend for employment at high wages and all that these wages bring us. We are by far the best conditioned people in the world. Why not hold fast to that which is good? The benefit of government ownership is an idle dream of the demagogue and socialist. We shall not put all that we hold dear into the hands of these two classes of people if we are not fools.

THE WOOL IMPORTS.

[From the Textile Manufacturers' Journal.]

THE

'HE arrival recently of over a million pounds of first-class wool at the port of Philadelphia, in addition to the usual quantity at other ports, calls attention to the quantity of foreign wool which this country is now consuming. Our imports of 250,000,000 pounds of foreign-grown wool during 1905, while as large almost as those of low tariff and freetrade years, have evidently been pretty well absorbed, for sales to arrive have been numerous during the last two weeks. Large domestic mills have taken up the excess supply of Montevideo and South American wool and are now reported to be scouring the seaboard markets for Australian crossbreds. This may be taken as confirmation of the gener ally accepted theory that the consumption of wool has enormously increased during the last two years. In addition to the increase in our wool imports there have been some increases in the importation and use of shoddy, noils, hair and other substitutes for wool. When the figures are scanned the conclusion is inevitable that our general consumption of wool must be nearly fifty per cent greater than it was in most of the free-trade years with which the import figures have been compared by some of the clothing journals.

The meaning to the clothier of our recent wool imports is not so much an argument for free raw materials, meaning thereby cheaper clothing,

as it is an evidence of the increasing population and the prosperity of the country under present conditions. The necessity of the mills for supplies and the comparative bareness of the seaboard wool markets are strong evidence that the situation is healthy; that it is not the result of speculative conditions or an artificial scarcity. When the immigration figures for the last five years are compared with those showing the increase in domestic woolen machinery for the same period, the result is enlightening. Without regard to the normal increase in the population already here, the newcomers alone are more than sufficient to take care of the increased production of our woolen mills. It is probable that the per capita consumption of wool has decreased considerably below the ratio known ten years ago, otherwise even the large importations referred to would not have sufficed to keep our wool markets supplied.

The small increase in the domestic clip, despite the fact of our evident need of wool, is not to be wondered at when the condition of the domestic flocks after the disastrous free trade is taken into consideration. To produce a marked increase in the wool clip some years of preparation and careful culture under the most favorable conditions are necessary. Wool cannot be grown like cotton, merely with an increase in acreage devoted to the crop. Not only in the United States but in South America, and even in Australia, conditions incident to civilization are continuously operating against the natural in

crease in the flocks. The old world is facing a problem only slightly less acute in regard to its wool supply. It does not now seem possible that cheap woolens or worsteds will be obtainable by the clothier for some years to come. Regardless of tariffs, pure wool clothing is high the world

over.

FINANCIAL EFFECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

[New York Journal of Commerce.] The large destruction of values in fixed capital by war or such a disaster as has occurred in San Francisco, and the absorption of floating capital in repairing the damage, must necessarily have a widespread financial effect; but the very fact that it is widespread will serve to mitigate its force. Material interests have become so closely knit together over a wide area, extending even beyond the limits of any one country, that the burden of loss and the task of recovery, which would crush the community directly afflicted, are borne by a vast constituency whose interests are more or less implicated with its own in the network of modern industry and commerce. This involves a wide "community of interest," a policy of "help one another," which is the necessary result of a complication of individual self-interests.

It will take time to supply the place of capital destroyed, and until the energies of production feel the impulse capital for the purpose will have to be drawn from other uses. . . . There is no question that destruction is loss, which is not diminished in volume by being widely distributed through the complex arrangements of modern finance, but its effect upon any particular community or interest is greatly mitigated by this distribution. When the work of restoration begins another set of forces is put in motion, and they are likely to begin promptly. There will be a call. for material and labor, as well as for capital, and this will not have to draw