Another item of similar losses is represented by the 350,000 miners whose wages since 1890 have fallen “exceptionally low.”[143] So that it would be perfectly safe to regard [SN: SPECIAL LOSSES OF THE MINERS.] the average fall in their daily wages at 15 cents, and the labor year at 266 days, allowing again for a possible unemployment. This being so, they have lost about $13,965,000 in one year. And as their average wages did not really rise again during the period under consideration, they must, therefore, have lost about $97,755,000 worth of their labor energy in favor of the mining trusts and monopolies. While the profits of these monopolies in 1890 amounted to $80,000,000,[143] when the total income was $210,000,000 which we leave out of further consideration. [SN: PROFITS OF THE MINING MONOPOLIES.] The $80,000,000 profits must naturally have increased with these monopolies. But even if repeated as they were in that year, they must have amounted to $560,000,000 during the seven years. Considering the excess of selling price over the cost of production here at the rate of 12.95 per cent, this amount of net profits includes $72,520,000 worth of the public losses, of unjustifiable extortion. Beside all this, I find the telephone and telegraph monopolies[144] had an increase of $229,624,566, and the railroad monopolies[144] of $80,377,053 in their net earnings over and above the amount on pp. 101, 150. The same course is true of many other monopolies and combinations. And as Henry B. Brown, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in an address at the Yale Law School, June 24, 1895, said: “If no student can light his lamp without paying to one company; if no housekeeper can buy a pound of meat or of sugar without [SN: ALL PRODUCTS ABSORBED BY COMBINATIONS.] swelling the receipts of two or three all pervading trusts, what is to prevent the entire productive industry of the country becoming ultimately absorbed by a hundred gigantic corporations?”[145] The foregoing facts clearly show that the corporations, whether under boards of trustees or under directors of monopolies, with the principle of dividogenesure do, not only absorb the entire mass of products of the people, but absorb even the wealth that was formerly produced and now being gradually lost. But let us now turn to the meaning of the increase of the population in connection with the preceding facts and estimates for the seven years. The table on the next page shows it. Increase of Population.