We have now to ask what are the wages of labor in the States, their relation to the cost of subsistence, and to wages and cost of subsistence in our own country? Finally, I shall briefly consider certain propositions of the American political economist which are so inextricably mixed up with the question of labor and wages in the States that it is impossible to discuss the one without taking some note of the other. Until quite recently, no complete investigation, bringing the rates of wages paid in industries common to the United States and European countries, has ever been made, although the results of such an investigation have been constantly and earnestly called for both by the press and people of America. Permit me to remark, in passing, that we know little in this country of the desire for full, trustworthy, and accessible statistics, concerning all matters of national interest, which dominates the public mind of America; and as little of the willingness with which American citizens of all classes place the particulars of their private business at the service of the statistician. This desire for statistical bases whereon the statesman and economist may build, is vividly illustrated by that publication, perhaps the most wonderful in the whole world, entitled a "Compendium of the Census of the United States," issued with every decade. These volumes, accessible to everybody, and arranged with marvelous skill and lucidity, offer to the social observer a complete, accurate, and suggestive survey of every field comprised within the vast domain of the national interests. An evening's address would not more than suffice to indicate the scope and appraise the value of this work, which is a mine wherein, the ore ready dressed to his hand, the politico-economic or industrial essayist might work for years without exhausting its riches. But the United States Census does not treat specifically of wages and subsistence, and it is to the Massachusetts Labor Bureau that we must again turn for such information as we now require. Dr. Edward Young, indeed, the late chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics, published an elaborate work upon this subject in 1875, but his comparisons as to the relative cost of living in America and Europe, good in themselves, are rendered of little value by the absence of such statistics as would give the true percentage of difference between American and foreign wages. Several elaborate wages reports were also published between 1879 and 1882, which, while they gave the American side of the question with great fullness, presented foreign wages very incompletely.