cial antipathy that so often leads a white mob of the South, incensed at negro brutality, to acts of inhumanity that make civilization a mockery, is only an index of the cancerous nature of the race problem in our Southern States.

III. Capitalistic consolidation and class antagonism. At the close of the Civil War, in 1865, the remaining free public lands of the West greatly facilitated the disbanding of the Northern army. But a decade later, by the time that the Southern States were again represented in Congress, and the war's results had been embodied in constitutional amendments, the available land of the West was practically exhausted, and the frontier of settlement had disappeared. New public issues of a progressively economic character emerged, and were to be canvassed often with rancor, now that free lands served no longer as an absorbent of social discontent.

It was the beginning of a period of recoil and readjustment. Population was losing some of its fluidity, and friction was developing. The center of population was no longer shifted rapidly towards the Pacific, moving tardily in the last census decade (1890-1900) only fourteen miles to the westward. Tendencies that heralded the approaching industrial maturity of the country multiplied. The urban population gained steadily on that of the rural districts, and by 1900 towns of 8000 or over contained fully one-third of all the inhabitants. The first manifestation of unrest centered about financial and monetary heresies, such as the agitation for the permanent inflation of the currency; and the agrarian communities of the newer sections rallied to the support of this and kindred proposals. The so-called Granger or anti-railroad legislation, prevalent in the same section, was an index of a newly awakened hostility to the rapidly growing transportation interest. By 1880 the phenomenon of industrial consolidation began to attract attention. In cotton, woolen, and iron manufactures, the number of plants either diminished absolutely from decade to decade, or showed an inconsiderable

increase by no means proportionate to the growth of population. Concurrently with this check in the increase of the number of establishments, the average capital investment, the annual output per plant, and the average number of employees per factory, grew prodigiously. The dearth of profits which vigorous competition had brought about had given rise to attempts at consolidation in certain industries; and the virtual monopoly of refining sugar and petroleum, originally under the trust form of organization, was evident as early as 1880. Both the organization of industry upon a grand scale, and the ampler means at the disposal of master manufacturers, quickened the pace and multiplied the economies of production.

On the other hand, labor associations after the Civil War grew in number, and took on a radically different character. Instead of transitory quasi-social guilds of local craftsmen, they became permanent unions, militant in aim, and confederated with hundreds of similar organizations pursuing a common purpose. Beginning first in 1877, strikes of such magnitude and violence occurred as to simulate territorial insurrections and to require the intervention of the Federal army.

The legislative mill began to grind out statutes of a significant and far-reaching economic purport. In Congress the Chinese Exclusion Act came in 1882. The law prohibiting the importation of laborers under contract for hire followed in 1885. Federal regulation of railroads by the Interstate Commerce Commission began in 1887, and the Sherman AntiTrust Act followed in 1890. Even after the tardy resumption of specie payments in 1879, the forces of discontent, especially among the agrarian communities of the West, battled persistently until 1896 for inflation, under the guise of free silver coinage.

The growth of colossal private fortunes began to excite formidable unrest. . . . [Omitted here is the discussion of the then current political issues and policies].

I have tried to indicate, first, how the prevalence of natural economic opportunities created for a time in the belt-line of our expanding national power a fiercely equalitarian society, and how this society wrested political control from an older hereditary aristocracy and deposited it in the hands of the masses. The cost of this progress was registered in a fluctuating civil service, and in a permanent and costly political organization which has too often succumbed to corrupting influences. Second, I have sought to show how slavery stamped indelibly its economic character upon the South, until the clash of the two opposed industrial systems in the border States of the West precipitated civil war and led to the eventual abolition of slavery. This undoubted gain was purchased only at the cost of the acute race-antagonism which still agitates the South. Lastly, I have tried to outline the results of the more systematic exploitation of wealth in a territory whose frontier has disappeared,-a process which has largely proceeded from the concentration of capitalistic control, which has issued in unprecedented opulence, diffused in some measure throughout the greater part of the population, and yet attended by the unfortunate growth of class-antagonisms and by pervasive distrust of our party organizations. Each movement has shown a temporary social loss, and no less surely there has emerged in each a correlative social gain.

GOLD PRODUCTION, 1890-1910

[THE Director of the Mint in his annual report for the year 1911, discusses the recent increase in the output of gold, the manner and extent of its absorption into monetary and industrial uses, and some of the probable changes in the future. Omitting many details of the evidence, we give here the most essential parts of the discussion. (Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances, June 30, 1911, p. 266.)]

The world's absorption of gold and the rise of prices. The enormous increase in the production of gold which has occurred in recent years, and the relationship that may exist between these enlarged supplies and the advancing prices of commodities, has awakened a world-wide interest among economists. It has seemed for this reason worth while to undertake the task of tracing the yield of the last two decades into actual use for the purpose of discovering where it has been located and how much of it has been placed where it would probably exert an influence for the expansion of credit, the stimulation of industry, and the rise of prices.

The new golden era may be said to have had its beginning with the discovery of the Transvaal deposits in South Africa and the development of the cyanide process, which was first used successfully in the treatment of the Transvaal ores, but has since contributed in an important degree to the increased production of nearly all gold-mining districts.

The production of the world for [three of] the ten years from 1890 to 1899, inclusive, and for [three of] the eleven years from 1900 to 1910, inclusive, is given in separate tables and the yield of the three principal producing countries is also shown separately. The African product is mainly from the

Transvaal but includes Rhodesia and lesser fields which alto

gether had in 1910 a production of $19,592,679. breviated].

[Tables ab

GOLD PRODUCTION-FIRST PERIOD-10 YEARS, 1890-1899, IN MILLION

GOLD PRODUCTION-SECOND PERIOD-11 YEARS, 1900-1910, IN MILLION

By way of accounting for the distribution and employment of this product, [several tables are given below].

Gold used in the arts. It is confessedly a difficult task to make a satisfactory estimate of the amount of gold consumed in the arts and industries, for the reason that only a few countries have made it the subject of official inquiry. Evidently, however, it is necessary in any consideration of the influence of the new supplies of gold upon prices to make some allowance for the portion of these supplies or of the existing monetary stock that has been diverted to industrial

uses.

[Page 272] The following is the bureau's estimate in detail for the consumption in the arts and waste of gold for the calendar year 1910, excluding Asia and Africa:

[1 Note effect of the Boer War.]