Now what does this mean? Why, simply this, that at a time when wealth was rolling up as never before (this country increased its wealth between 1900 and 1904 by about twenty billions of dollars), a vast number of hard-working people in this country were really having a more difficult time making ends meet than they have ever had before. It also means that in a great number of other hard-working families the increase in wages had been so little in excess of the increase in the cost of living that it may be almost said to have been a discouragement instead of a comfort, by intensifying the common conviction of the working-man that no matter how much he earns he will still have to spend it all in the same hard struggle to get on, that there is no such thing for him as getting ahead. There is no escaping the seriousness of such a situation. The only chance of peace and of permanency in this country lies in securing for the laboring classes an increasing share of increasing wealth. It is not enough that the wages of men keep up with their forced expenditures,—they must go beyond. There must be a _growing_ margin between the two—a margin wide enough for the laborer to see it, and to be able to draw hope and encouragement from it. When the margin has shrunk or not visibly increased, unrest and discouragement must follow. There is no doubt that a great number of employers in this country recognize this principle, and thousands of them are struggling to meet it by increasing wages. But there is another duty for us, and that is to keep down the cost of living. And it is this duty which the makers of tariff bills have always refused to face squarely and, as far as the tariff had any relation to it, honestly to discharge. That the Dingley Bill had not been the only cause of the increasing burden which the consumer bore is true, but it was a real cause, and in the case of certain essential common articles, almost the only cause. Take for illustration the case of the tariff and spool cotton. Spool cotton is as necessary an article of daily consumption in the household as fuel or cloth. Many women with families, on $500 a year, many shop and factory girls on $6.00 or $8.00 a week, make their own clothes. Not infrequently these women in their work are obliged, when not protected by a Union, to furnish their own thread. For many years the price of the ordinary 200–yard spool cotton was 5 cents, twelve spools for 50 cents, when suddenly in 1900 it was advanced to 6 cents, about double the price it was selling for in England. The cause of the advance offers one of the nicest studies we have of the beneficent effects on prices of a tariff combined with a trust.