establishments in the State; the second report, which was issued in 1897, contained returns from 349 establishments, a very gratifying increase over the first, but still far below the number required to carry out the useful purposes of the publication. Many manufacturers objected to giving the information required by the office, and regarded as necessary, appearing to believe that their doing so would expose the secrets of their business to the public, and questioned the authority of the Bureau under the rather vague and indefinite terms of the act as it then stood to require them to do it.

The Legislature of 1898 remedied this difficulty by conferring on the Bureau in the act quoted above the necessary specific authority to collect and publish these statistics.

But that is as far as the act goes; the collection and publication are authorized, but no authority is provided to compel the making of returns, and until it is improved in that respect the work will necessarily be slow in attaining that degree of thoroughness which its importance demands.

Many manufacturers, notwithstanding every effort has been made to remove objection on that account, still profess to believe that reporting to the Bureau involves the risk of exposing their private business, and refuse to do so, taking the ground that in the absence of any penalty for refusal, the act is not compulsory; however, the progressive increase in the number of establishments reporting each year since the work was begun is such as to afford reasonable ground for believing that it is rapidly gaining in favor, and will in time attain its much-desired plane of usefulness even without further legislative assistance.

The tables on which this report is based contain returns from 503 establishments, divided among 43 general industries; from the principal ones, viz, the manufacture of silk goods, jewelry, brick and terra cotta, brewing lager beer, hats, glass, shoes, leather and woolen goods, the greatest number of returns proportionately have been obtained, fully 90 per cent., it is believed, of their total volume; therefore, the conclusions shown in the tables relating to these industries may be accepted as correctly setting forth their condition at the time the reports were made out.

ANALYSIS OF THE GENERAL TABLES.

Table No. 1 contains the presentation of private firms and corporations, partners and stockholders; the character of the ownership of each industry, whether private or corporate, and the number of partners or stockholders, as the case may be, are set forth plainly and may be seen at a glance.

Of the 503 establishments considered, 275 are managed by private firms, and 228 by corporations; the number of partners included in the private firms is, in the aggregate, 585, of whom 538 are males, 45 females, and two estates.

The establishments controlled by corporations have 3,045 stockholders, of whom 2,445 are males, 488 females, and 15 banks acting as trustees.

The average number of partners to firms is 2.13, and the average number of stockholders to each corporation is 13.35. Of the aggregate capital invested in all the establishments considered in the tables, which amounts to $77,173,371, the corporations control $59,962,371, or 77.60 per cent., and the private firms $17,211,273, or 22.40 per cent.; the average investment of each partner in private firms is $29,420.98, and of each stockholder in corporations, $19,692.07.

These figures do not show as great a difference in the average investment of partners as compared with stockholders as did those of 1897; this is caused by the great increase in the number of establishments included in these tables as compared with last year, many of which are corporations with large capitalization and small number of stockholders, but the difference is sufficiently marked to show that under corporate management, as compared with private, the individual investments are much less in amount, and that therefore the profits and risks of industrial enterprise are distributed among a greater number.

Table No. 2 shows the capital invested, value of the stock or material used and of the goods made or work done; these items are given in the aggregates for each of the 43 industries, and the totals for the 503 establishments considered are given in the bottom line of the table.

The following summary shows the industries that produced goods to the value of $1,000,000 and over, with capital invested and value

of stock or material used; it is given not by any means as including the totals of these industries in the three respects named, but only as conveying some understanding of their relative rank and importance:

These 25 industries comprise 78.73 per cent. of the total number of establishments reporting, 84.40 per cent. of the capital invested, 90.60 per cent. of value of stock or material used, and 92.53 per cent. of the value of goods made or work done.

The average capital per establishment is $164,467, the average value of stock or material used by each is $101,906, and the finished product, $191,779.

Electrical appliances show the largest amount of capital invested per establishment among the industries, $965,150, and hats the smallest,

$38,116. The following table gives the value of finished product per $1,000 of capital invested for each of these 25 industries :

Table No. 3 contains the aggregate average number of persons employed for each industry, the number employed at periods of the greatest and smallest number, and the excess of greatest over smallest number; the total average number employed in the 503 establishments, as shown in the bottom line of the table, is 57,918; the smallest number, 49,330; the greatest, 62,103, and the excess of greatest over smallest, 12,813; this latter figure represents the number who, for some reason, were idle a part of the time during the year. The absolute number so idle, and its equivalent percentage of the total, is given for the selected industries presented in the two preceding tables.

Only one industry, corsets, has worked with a force uniform in number throughout the year. Those who come nearest to doing so, and in which the smallest percentage of idleness occurs, are brewing, foundry, leather, silk goods and woolen and worsted goods, in which the percentages of idleness are respectively 3.63, 4.54, 2.10, 7.42, 6.26 and 6.81.

The manufacture of glass is generally suspended during the months of July and August, and brick and terra cotta during the winter months, so that their high percentage need not be regarded as indicating any inordinate degree of idleness. Exclusive of these two, the industries in which the greatest percentage of idleness occurs are cotton goods, electrical appliances, heaters and boilers, metal goods and structural steel and iron, which are 32.16, 24.43, 32.94, 24.62 and