Mr. J. S. Jeans, the Secretary to the Iron and
Steel Institute, on Thursday read a paper before the Statistical Society, in which he showed that the fourteen millions of wage-receivers in the United Kingdom earn an aggregate income of £580,000,000 a year, the average being about £42 per head, or 10 per cent. more than they earned in 1867. Since 1850, the average wages of workmen in the leading industries have increased 40 per cent., and are now 58 per cent, higher than wages in France, and 42 per cent, higher than wages in Germany. They are, however, 45 per ceut, lower than those of the United States. Mr. Jeans believes that the cost of living, except as regards rent, is much the same everywhere, and that the higher wages, therefore, mark a distinct increase in comfort. He noticed incidentally that while in England 23 per cent, of the people, or nearly a quarter, live by manufactures, the proportion in the United States is only 7:i per cent.,—a curious fact when we remember that the whole system of American protection is kept up for the benefit of this fraction of the 'total population. The majority, who are cultivating freeholders, allow themselves to be taxed for everything, from a spoon to a spade, for the benefit of a minute minority.
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