On November 5th, the _Mail and Express_, of New York City, published the following editorial, which is absolutely truthful:-- BUSINESS AND POLITICS. “Here it is the last week before the Presidential election, and so sound are all the conditions that people seem to have little time to talk politics. Never before in the history of the country has business gone right on with so much more than usual activity for the season. Money has been easy and the volume of exchanges, as shown by the Clearing House returns, unprecedented for the season. Anxiety over the result of next Tuesday’s election has neither interfered with the ordinary trend of trade nor has it checked its activity. “The fact that wheat has this week sold at the lowest price ever known at New York (73½ cents) must interest the farmer in the cry of English cheap labor. If the Englishman comes to this country because he can live better here, he increases the demand for bread, and the farmer can certainly get a better return for his produce when he sells it to a workingman at home instead of sending it 3,000 miles across the ocean, paying freight room in a foreign steamship to support a foreign workman. “It is rather surprising that this cry should have been raised just at this time. If the consumer and the producer are brought closer together, is it not better for both? They save the cost of the transfer from one to the other. If the English weaver can come to this country and work, so that his product does not have to cross the ocean, and then get his wheat, flour, and meal without having to pay the additional cost, do not both profit? The country is so large that we can well afford to increase its population when we can reduce to a minimum the cost of the exchange of necessary means of life. “The market for iron is better all around, from the fact that stocks are being taken up faster than ever at this season of the year. This is due very largely to the even weather, which has been so favorable to building projects, the number of working days in October being probably more than in the same month for years, and now, in the first week of November, work is going on just the same. “This will be apparent to every one who has watched the progress of work and seen new buildings reach the fifth or sixth story when, if the season had been adverse, they might not have been half as high at this time. The railroads have also contributed to consumption, for they are forehanded in placing early orders for the large increase in the equipment that they will have to have for next year.