The collection of statistics about wages is in flat opposition to the proverb that one fool is able to ask more questions than ten wise men can answer. For it is only the expert who is able to ask the questions which shall produce any trustworthy information. This is well illustrated by the difference between wages and caruings. There are, says Mr. Bowley, deductions and additions to be allowed for and suspected. "The deductions include necessary payments for assistance in work, rent of machinery, payment for light, tools, oil, gunpowder, etc.; fines for bad work or breach of rules-sometimes amounting to a regular tax, and expense of getting to work; there are others less easy to reckon, and theoretically perhaps not entering into the question, such as compulsory deduction for insurance, specially high house-rent, due to the necessity of living in a special district, specially high prices of commodities, those concealed extortions which have been diminished by the Truck Acts, expense of special clothing, or of an arbitrarily high standard of living, all of which come under the economic question of real income, rather than the statistical question of wages. The additions are payments in kind, which have gradually diminished throughout the century, and vitiate simple comparisons of money wages; free board, free house or ground, free clothes, cheap coals or free haulage, special facilities for cheap purchase without middlemen's profits, bonuses, or special opportunities for earning extra money for special tasks" (pp. 6, 7; cf. pp. 41, 96). (On p. 55 a case is quoted from Ross where the money wages of a foreman ploughman were only £26 per annum, but his total estimated earned income was £50.)

Another difficulty in some trades is caused by the complexity of organization, as in the cotton-trade, where we are told that "the workmen have to employ skilled officials to estimate the rate of payment in conformity to the general agreement" (p. 4). A further point, which is, perhaps, deserving of more prominence than is given to it, is that it is in periods of depression that statistics are chiefly available, and more rarely in those of undue inflation (p. 125). The averages, therefore, tend to be calculated from data which represent the minimum rather than the normal.

In the presentation of his results Mr. Bowley has preferred to use the kinetic method, which, as he explains, "consists in studying, not wages themselves, but their rates of change, making no attempt to construct a wage census for former dates or at the present time, but to study the proportionate changes of wages, period by period, whenever we can obtain a sequence of figures" (p. 3). It would be impossible here to give any idea of his facts and figures in detail. But

there are one or two remarkable conclusions which emerge. One is, that "wages generally increased from 50 to 100 per cent. between 1780 and the battle of Waterloo. Some trades were able, chiefly through their trade unions, to maintain the pecuniary advantage gained, and in that case their wages are not even now greatly above the rate then prevailing" (p. 125). And an inspection of the tables in this book enables us to see that in nearly all trades wages are now double what they were a century ago. Another point is that the purchasing power of money has also increased. In 1831 and in 1892, for instance, the weekly wage of agricultural labourers in Sussex is put down at 12s. But in 1831 that sum would buy 58 pecks of wheat; in 1892 it would buy more than double the amount-12·7 pecks.

The great variation in wages according to locality is a feature of agricultural labour which is well brought out by the recent blue book on the subject, which has appeared since Mr. Bowley's essay. It agrees with him in finding the explanation in the fact that, in the neighbourhood of the manufacturing towns and of the coal mines, it is impossible to persuade the agricultural labourer to work for so much. less than was paid for hardly more arduous work in mines and manufactures.

In another trade, that of the hand-loom weavers, we get a reminder of the pathetic picture drawn by Disraeli in Sybil, who, from being in 1790 a fairly well-to-do and contented set of men, in 1840 "were earning a miserable 5s. a week, at the expenditure of fourteen hours daily work." One cannot help hoping that the Christian Social Union may help to alleviate such distress if it should occur in the future, by throwing light upon it in its social and economic bearings.

It only remains to say that the Cambridge Press has done its work with its usual thoroughness. Maps and charts are often the weak points in a book. These are excellent; but the reader would have been grateful if the chart which faces p. 23, but which the text states should face p. 22, had in fact faced p. 21, where it is first discussed. LAWRENCE PHILLIPS.

VALEURS MOBILIÈRES: RUSSIE: Réimpression de Notices et de Tableaux du Bulletin Russe de Statistique. [144 pp. 4to. St. Petersburg, 1900.]

The notes and tables in the above publication, issued under the supervision of the Russian Finance Department, contain matter of very unequal value. We are furnished (pp. 18-26) with statistics of the securities of all sorts created, and at present existing in Russia. Their total issue price amounts, it appears, to 32 milliards of francs

(£1,280,000,000), and their present value to 34 milliards (£1,360,000,000). The total value of the securities quoted on the London Stock Exchange mounts up to £5,675,746,000. The writer suggests that an English reader might feel flattered by the comparison, but, at the same time, points out its obvious unsoundness. The securities quoted on the London Stock Exchange include foreign securities which are also quoted on every other stock exchange in Europe. But what English reader of any intelligence, one may ask, would think of instituting any such comparison? The total of securities created in a country is a total which, without analysis, cannot be said to indicate anything. Both the Russian and the London securities in question consist in part of the State debt, in part of the shares and debentures of railways and other dividend-paying concerns. The amount of the latter may perhaps fairly be taken, so far, as an indication of national wealth. The amount of the former, on the contrary, is pro tanto an indication of the negation of wealth; and it is not easy to discover what purpose it is imagined can be served by adding the two together and giving the total in a lump sum.

The portion of the paper which deals with the history of the State debt (pp. 9-13), and with the reduction of the floating debt and the resumption of specie payments (pp. 32-37), is of much more interest and value. The State debt, in the modern sense of the word, begins with Catherine II. We hear, indeed, of one of the predecessors of Peter the Great borrowing £6000 from James I. of England, which he was honest enough shortly afterward to repay. As to Peter the Great's own methods of raising funds for the conduct of his wars with Sweden, with Turkey, and with Poland, they were distinctly of the mediæval type, consisting of forced loans from rich private individuals and from the monasteries, sales of privileges, and, over and above all, of the depreciation of the metallic currency. At a period when the copper rouble should have weighed the fourth of a pound, it sometimes weighed, as a matter of fact, no more than a fortieth. Catherine II.'s methods showed but a moderate advance on Peter's. She raised, certainly, a small loan in the modern fashion at Amsterdam, which had even then hardly lost its pre-eminence in European finance. Her main resource, however, was the issue of assignats. All the States of Europe, indeed, as the writer says, "navigated for long in the galley of a floating debt before reaching the haven of a consolidated one." At the time of the death of Catherine, the funded debt of Russia was still only about £2,000,000. By 1803, however, the issue of assignats had reached the figure, formidable for the epoch, of £12,000,000, and the Napoleonic wars brought it up to something over £40,000,000.

At present the consolidated debt of Russia stands at £660,000,000. Out of this, however, £60,000,000 represents a nominal increase in the capital amount, owing to the conversion of five per cent. bonds into four per cents., a measure which really effected a large annual saving in interest; and another £200,000,000 represents the loans raised for the construction of railways, which return about 8 per cent. on the outlay. The returns from the railways, indeed, are now sufficient to meet half the sum needed for the total service of the debt.

The floating debt of the empire is now practically a vanishing, or, it might be said, a vanished quantity. The writer thinks the present therefore a suitable occasion for giving it an obituary notice. In England and in France there are floating debts in a technical sense, but they are of little concern to any one. It would take a financial expert, indeed, to tell us what part of our debt is floating and what is consolidated. In Russia the case was very different. At the close of the Crimean War the floating debt amounted to £240,000,000, and consisted of (a) paper money in the strict sense of the words, and (b) paper money bearing interest. By the latter is meant the large mass of Treasury bills then afloat which had, in theory, some years to run, but which were, at the same time, available for the payment of taxes, and the acceptance of which, at any moment, and in any, quantities, was obligatory at the Exchequer. In these circumstances, it was not surprising that the attempt to resume specie payments in 1862 proved a failure. By 1876 the situation was much improved; the amount of the paper money was greatly reduced, and, at the same time, a large metallic balance had been accumulated in the coffers of the bank Then, however, came the Russo-Turkish War, and added 400,000,000 of paper roubles to the 900,000,000 already in circulation. The steps taken towards the re-establishment of sound finance had all to be taken over again. They were begun, and, from 1885, at any rate, were carried out on a definite plau. It was decided, pretty much as we subsequently decided with regard to the rupee in India, to let the paper rouble settle down to an average value in gold on the stock exchanges of Europe, to take this average value over a series of years, and on that basis to resume payment in gold. The average value of the rouble on the Berlin Bourse, between 1877 and 1896, was a little over 2 marks, or, in English money, about 24d. From the 1st of January, 1894, to the 31st of December, 1895, it did not fall below 2.16 marks. It was decided, accordingly, to announce in 1897 that rouble notes would be redeemed on that basis, or, rather, on equivalent in gold, 0-7742 grammes, and that this value would be maintained with all the resources of the State. The decision, as we know, has not

On

caused anything in the nature of an exodus of gold from Russia. the contrary, the treasure held against the notes has since considerably increased, and the country has become a gold standard one in the fullest sense of the words.

WILLIAM WARRAND CARlile.

DIE SÄCHSISCHE BAUMWOLLEN-INDUSTRIE. Von Dr. PHIL. ALBIN KÖNIG. [370 pp. 8vo. M. 9.60. Teubner. Leipzig, 1899.]

This volume is a minute examination of the fluctuations in the local cotton industry of Saxony, from 1770 to the end of the Napoleonic wars, and is based, to a great extent, upon the records of the great fair of Leipzig, held biennially at Easter and Michaelmas. This huge market formed a distributing centre, not only for the numerous German States, but also for Poland, Russia, and the countries of the Lower Danube. At the earlier date mentioned, the slender stock of cotton goods brought to Leipzig consisted of productions of French, Swiss, Saxon, and Indian looms. England was represented by silk and woollen goods, tin, lead, and hardware. But the recent innovations in the processes of manufacture, introduced early in George the Third's reign, were giving our manufacturers an advantage, in spite of the higher wages even then prevailing in England, which some of them were ready to grasp at once. Cotton goods of English and Scotch manufacture began to find their way to Leipzig from 1773 onwards, an enterprising Manchester man named Humphries taking a foremost part in the new trade. Adopting the principle of small profits and quick returns, he figures in the annals of the fairs of Leipzig and Frankfort as the native producer's most formidable competitor from 1796 till Napoleon instituted the Continental system. In 1798, at Frankfurt, he cleared off all his stock to the amount of 500,000 florins, while the sales of his competitors barely cleared their expenses in travelling to and fro from the fair.

Indeed, interest in this book centres in the testimony it bears to the enterprise of our men of business a century ago. Their methods were those with which we credit our German competitors of to-day. "By a sharp drop in prices, and by despatching a great number of travellers with samples who were ready to transact business on very reasonable terms, especially with regard to credit, the English sought to secure the lion's share of orders," says Dr. König, and he proceeds to show that they succeeded. The Russians, Poles, and Wallachians were our best customers, always insisting on obtaining goods of British manufacture.

A painstaking German, named Baumgärtel, undertook a