Mr. G. B. Waldron, continuing the estimates of the increase of wealth by the Director of the Mint, from 1870 to 1897, has shown that by 1890 the increase [SN: INCREASE OF WEALTH.] of wealth had reached $65,037,091,197, as has been already stated in several places, while in 1897 the increase amounted to $86,825,000,000 worth.[114] So that an addition of $21,787,908,803 worth of wealth has been made by the people’s energy during seven years. Yet, with this enormous increase of the wealth in seven years, listen! listen! to what the statisticians said in 1897: “In the United States wealth has increased phenomenally; wages since 1873 have fallen (on account of too great supply of labor); the concentration of capital has [SN: STATISTICAL CONCLUSIONS.] increased; the number of the out of work has grown.”[115] Some men tried to minimize the significance of these statements by proving the contrary situation. Mr. Atkinson is one of those who said that “wages have risen and prices fallen,” which view he entertained on the bases of government reports. But all such arguments “have been shown in the article ‘Wages’ of Enc. of Soc. Reform, to be false.”[116] And Prof. Mayo Smith has disproved all attempts of these men to show that the wages have risen, on the whole, by showing the falsehood of the averages such men represented in their arguments.[117] Further, the fundamental doctrine of wages in economics is that the rates of wages depend principally on the efficiency of labor and [SN: THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF THE RATE OF WAGES.] on supply and demand of labor. That is, if the efficiency of the laborers is high, the wages can be high, and if the demand is great and the number of the laborers small, the wages are again high; but if the demand for laborers is small, and the supply is large, the wages must naturally be low, whether the efficiency of the laborers is high or low. The wages in the United States since 1873, on the whole, have gradually fallen, but not so low as they ought to have done. For, as [SN: WAGES WOULD BE TWICE AS LOW.] the propertyless people have increased in numbers up to tens of millions, the wages should have fallen twice as low, otherwise only half the employees at a time should have employment, because of the over-supply of laborers. But, since the trade-unions have been organized, the wages have artificially been kept up (for the employed) by these organizations, and by the employers themselves to some extent.