It is often disagreeable to admit a plain truth, and there are truths which one may safely admit in private which have an almost incendiary character when printed. To admit in private that the commercial outlook is not good costs nothing; to print the fact and prove it is to run the risk of aggravating the causes of the unpromising condition of affairs. The public is like a patient whose chance of recovery depends upon his not knowing his critical condition. If his nerves get to playing around that danger, they may drag him into it. To state in printed words that the times are bad and growing worse might be to tell a truth; but it would tend to produce the worse times. This is the reason why editors are either silent, or even lie a little, in seasons of financial and commercial depression. But it is also true that in our present circumstances there are unpleasant things which admit of mitigation, and even of radical cure; and it is perhaps wiser to state what most of us know and suggest the remedies for an evil case. It is known that the wages of laboring men and clerks all over the country are being cut down. It is probably within the mark to say that seven millions of wage-earners (of all classes) will receive in 1885 an average of ten per cent. less compensation for their services than they received in 1884. Assuming a very low average for the old wages, $1.25 per day, the total reduction in wages for the year will amount to more than $260,000,000. This amount will of course be taken from the net total of trade. The workmen and clerks will buy two hundred and sixty million dollars worth less of goods in 1885. The reduction will be dispersed over a large area, but it will not spread into a thinness which will render it impalpable. Nor does the reduction end with the workmen. All the persons of whom workmen buy manufactured goods will buy less for their own consumption—they also will have less to buy with. This class is a very large one, and there are few of us who do not belong in it—are not in some way dependent on workmen for patronage. To say that all these will reduce their annual purchases two hundred and sixty millions, carrying the reduction up to five hundred and twenty millions, is probably within the mark. We may as well consider in this connection the reductions in the price of farm products, another great drain on the volume of trade. Agricultural products are worth at most ten per cent. less than in 1883. The effect of the reduction in prices of farm products acts more disastrously on trade, since farmers usually double their caution. They will not merely buy ten per cent. less; they will buy as little as possible. Old clothes, old wagons, old tools, will be kept in use, and it may be within the mark to say that the loss of farmers’ trade of all sorts will amount to as much as all the others—to five hundred and twenty millions more. One thousand and forty millions taken off from the