under the penalties of frightful disease, the devotion of more than a few years to the work. Lately, however, the lucky invention of a French chemist suggested, as the two ingre dients were harmless by themselves, the putting of one of them on the match and the other on the rough rubber whose attrition supplied the heat, and thus the chemical union which made the poison took place only at the moment of their destruction by ignition: just as the dangerous explosive union of the gases, oxygen and hydrogen, is rendered safe by uniting them only at the point of burning. But these extreme cases of dangerous occupations must remain exceptions and occupy only a small part of the labor time of life, while their operatives turn to other trades. The painter's trade is familiar to every one in its limits, and is more to the point which we are illustrating.

Society has need of a careful list of the average lives, and the number of years of work, and the number of days of work in a year, and the classified prices of board of the respective occupations in the United States. We have sta tistical societies that can collect and furnish such a list from study, inquiry, and observation.

TABLE I.

Showing the expectancy or average duration of Life of each individual; calculcated from the Carlisle Table of Mortality.

TABLE II.

Showing the expectation of life in England in 24 trades and occupations, within decennial periods of ages from 20 to 60; and the average number of days of sickness in the same.

Will
Live

Sickness
from

20 to 30.

Live at Sickness
30.

from
30 to 40..

9 wks 26

7"

264

66

15

20

44

8"

23

"

13

13 24"

84"

22

12"

29"

We give above a table of the general length of life to be expected at any age from birth to seventy-nine years. Also a table showing the general length of life in England and Wales, the actual length of life among the thousands of members of the Manchester (Eng.) Unity of Odd Fellows, and the different expectations of life between the ages of 20 and 30, 30 and 40, 40 and 50, 50 and 60, as shown in twenty-five different trades and occupations in England. We have also inserted in the last table, as germane to the matter in hand, the different average number of days of sickness in a year in those trades and periods of age. These were published by H. Radcliffe, Secretary of the last named Society. Similar subjects are treated of in Mr. Ansell's "Treatise on Friendly Societies in England," Mr. Nieson's "Vital Statistics," and with more or less extent and particularity in several other publications and articles in Europe and in the United States. A table showing the rate of annual premiums which our life insurance companies charge

on a sum payable at the attainment of any given age, or at death, if it occur before, will be found in the manual of any insurance company whose prospectus appears in this journal. These tables are sufficient for illustration, so far as vital statistics are concerned, of our principles of the measure of wages of labor.

An endowment policy premium adds very little to the amount of wages to be claimed, yet it is an investment, a savings bank, and an insurance. An isolated operative with no heirs to provide for, may pay his little annual part of his wages for a large deferred annuity after he has done the active work of his life.

The use of life insurance and annuities enters in England into the calculations of every family that has forecast enough to make any economical calculations at all; they are getting into use in the United States quite extensively, and should be encouraged in every way.

Another element of the calculation of wages is the tools which the laborer furnishes, if any, their first cost, its interest, and the cost of keeping them supplied and in order.

The above are the just and fair limits of the wages claims of mere labor, that is, all that labor has any right to. An operative gets his day's wages, say $4, for labor on an article for ten days, and receives $40. He sees his employer sell that same article for $100; and he feels that he has been oppressed, ground down by having only 40 per cent. of its great price paid to himself, whose labor, as he says, made it and its value. But his mistake is that his labor did not make all its value, very often not so large a proportion of it as he himself received in wages: the general proof of this is that employers of many operatives often fail in business. Price is a very complicated result of various laborers, that need not be mentioned here, from the time the materials of wood, or minerals, or animals are collected from nature, transported and freighted by individual skill, social insurance, and public protection, and stored and advertised and sold and realized by various distinct investments of other labor, apprenticeship and wages, and capital with its interest and riches and guarantees, every one of

which has its claims for wages out of that price aggregate which the workman sees the consumer pay and his employer receive, and with which he compares his own disproportionate claims only.

He begins at the wrong end; the claims of labor come by themselves and from themselves, without reference to the products of that labor and what is done with them, or the price received for them. When this principle is understood the labor question will be very much simplified and easier of settlement.

Let us now on the above principles cipher out the amount of daily wages that uneducated labor in the United States can claim. The average life of this class is 46 years; the average number of years of work is 45 years; the average days of work in this climate in a year is 250. The price of board in the city of New York is $4.50 a week or $234 a year; clothes, of that, $78 a year; money for improvement and amusement, of board, $78 a year; amount of transmitted property from his parents, on investment, that is, the expenses of his childhood for 14 years at half price of board, $16.38, and for six years up to the age of twenty at whole board, $1,404, and his improvement and amusement, $468, making $3,510, or fifteen times the board of an adult of this class, the interest on which at 7 per cent. per annum is $245; the annual premium by table, at 20 years of age, upon an endowment life policy, payable at 45 years of age when he is unfit for work (or at death if it happen first), say for $1,375, or sufficient for his annual expenses for the 1 years remaining of his average life after he has ceased work, $50; annual interest on the husband's proportion, of the expense, $7,000, of rearing two children till 20 years of age as above, $1,000 $280; State, county and town tax, say $40.

=

Here we have all the data for the calculation of the claim for wages of an uneducated laborer, which show that the amount is $965 a year, at the present price of living; and that divided by 250, the number of days he can work annually, gives $3.86 a day, and at eight hours a day 481 cents an hour.

These details may and will vary with men, for the board and clothes and personal expenses of women of that class are less than those of the men-and with localities-and they may not be considered exactly correct, but let every citizen or philanthropist and employer anxious for truth and justice, take what he may deem the true statistics and apply these principles, and ascertain where they need modifying or correcting or if right, join us in their use; we speak for justice and not for victory. The importance of the matter demands it, and the verisimilitude of the results is certainly very great.

The confessedly inadequate wages of labor in England, for instance, show plainly that the bare correlation of demand and supply does not prevent misery nor satisfy the claims of humanity to even a mere subsistence. Nor has it in the United States prevented the question of labor and wages from paralyzing enterprise, bringing ruin on employers and misery on the employed, and threatening or exciting deadly civil strife. The constantly appealed to principle of demand and supply fails here also, because of the essentially universal classes of speculators and legalized gamblers in stocks and gold, as well as the regulators and forestallers whose own "bearing and bulling" exertions affect prices abnormally and irregularly, and put the whole community at the mercy of their selfishness and of uncertainty.

We are practically handling a practical subject that comes home to every man and woman, and one of the most important that can come under national review before the American people. We treat the subject in a direct and novel manner-make it a simple arithmetical calculation, and we trust it will elicit discussion and the suggestion of improvements in the data.

It is easily seen how various in actual life will be the results of the same wages among different individuals. We are only ascertaining that inevitable law of social averages which pervades here, as gravity pervades the physical world -you cannot leave it out in any working plans. There may be more days of work, it may be indoor or outdoor-or the ambitious may add the income of extra work-household