Important Notice to Organized Labor. Some time since information was received by the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company, Limited, of Minneapolis, Minn., that their flour was being boycotted by organized labor throughout the state of Illinois. Such information was received by the managing director, Mr. Charles A. Pillsbury, with great regret, from the fact that, in his twenty-five years of active business life, it had been a principle with him to so fairly deal with his employes that they might never have cause for strike or other remedial measures of coercion; and, in fact, nothing but the very kindliest feelings have ever existed between the employes and this firm. Mr. Pillsbury immediately dispatched J. P. McGaughey, their local agent, to investigate the origin of the trouble. Mr. McGaughey called the attention of the Trade and Labor Council, and other prominent representatives of organized labor, to the matter, and they immediately forwarded to Mr. Charles A. Pillsbury, managing director, the following letters: Mr. C. A. Pillsbury; MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., May 10, 1895. Dear Sir-There has never been any trouble between your firm and the Minneapolis Trades and Labor Council, within the knowledge of the undersigned; nor can anything be found in the old records of the central labor body that would even suggest such a state in the slightest degree. You are at liberty to use this letter in reparation of any wrong that may have resulted to the products of your firm, through misunderstanding. The laboring people, so far, have expressed only the kindest feelings toward your firm. Yours respectfully, W. H. HARRINGTON, of various firms to their employes. No employer of labor stands STATE OF MINNESOTA, BUREAU Of Labor, Mr. Geo. A. Schilling, Secretary Illinois Bureau of Labor Statis- Dear Sir-Permit me to call your attention to a subject that concerns one of the manufacturing establishments of this state. I refer to the flour mill of the Pillsbury-Washburn Company, of Minneapolis. I write you because I have been informed that the working people of Springfield and Peoria, Ill., have obtained the impression that a boycott has been placed upon the products of the firm referred to. This is a mistake. Trusting that you will, as a friend of organized labor, and as a lover of justice, do all you can to remove the false impression concerning the flour manufactured by the Pillsbury-Washburn Company, I am, with sincere regards, Very truly yours, L. G. POWERS, Commissioner of Labor. The original complaint having been sent in from Messrs. Horace Clark & Sons Company, of Peoria, Ill., Mr. McGaughey next went to Peoria, where he learned that the boycott was being advertised through means of a card purporting to be authorized by union labor, having a fac-simile of a number of union labor labels as a center column, and local firms' advertisements in the different cities throughout the state, where posted. From Peoria the information was received that the cards had been printed in Decatur. Mr. McGaughey, at Decatur, learned that the card was gotten up by an unauthorized agent-so far as labor organizations are concerned and printed in a rat ástablishment, having no right to the use of the union label. All the officers of the labor unions appealed to, without exception, rendered all possible assistance in correcting the wrong impression and offering every courtesy in their power to correct any bad impression that might have been caused by the unauthorized use of their labels as a means to solicit advertising. It will, no doubt, be regretted by the members of labor unions that a firm which has been so liberal with its employes, having for years divided a fair share of its profits with them, should be so unjustly injured. C. A. Pillsbury, who is the head of the firm, was the first miller to give practical encouragement to the first co-operative cooper shop in Minneapolis, organized in 1874, since when he has been their patron and friend. During the life of the Knights of Labor movement Mr. Pillsbury often corresponded with the district and focal officers, requesting their efforts in securing organization among his employes. In 1894 he was selected as the chairman of the joint committee from the commercial clubs representing the Twin Cities, and the various committees of railway employes of the Great Northern Railway, as a final board of arbitration, which committee, in final settlement, rendered a report so manifestly fair that all interests accepted without delay, and in a few hours commerce and industry were relieved. It is to be sincerely hoped that in the future no such injurious mistakes will be allowed to occur, where the effect would so seriously injure the product of a firm so loyal to home labor and organization at large. Workingmen desiring to use Pillsbury's Best, which will be the best under all circumstances, should, in ordering from their grocers, be sure and insist on receiving Pillsbury's Best, as interested parties will try and supply them with inferior grades, upon which they make a larger profit. American Federationist. DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS AND VOICING THE DEMANDS The last half century has seen an unparallelled increase in wealth, due to wonderful improvements in the processes of production, distribution and exchange. It has been distributed at haphazard "on the ancient, simple plan, that he should get who had the power, and he should keep who can." To-day the sun looks down on the most unequal and inequitable distribution of wealth that has probably ever been seen. The inflow of wealth into Rome in the early days of the empire, and its concentration, was small compared to our history during the last half-yes, quarter-century. What are the facts? Three men have recently gathered and collated these facts in a careful, serious, judicial manner. They have been entirely independent in their investigations, and have approached the subject from different sides, using different groups of statistics, and they have arrived at substantially the same conclusions. The first was Thomas G. Shearman, of Brooklyn, N. Y., in The Forum for November, 1889, and January, 1891. Mr. Shearman is an ardent advocate of the single-tax and has been a democrat in politics. He is a prominent and successful business man, and is well and favorably known as a writer on economic subjects. His conclusions were bitterly attacked at first, but not successfully, as he fully proved in the second article. They have been confirmed by later writers on the same subject. His method was to take the wealth of the very rich and he gave a list of many very wealthy men—and then, by using the total wealth as shown by the census and other statistics, to get the wealth of the middle classes and poor, and to separate the property of these two classes by the facts gathered by tax assessors and other returns. His final conclusions are embodied in the table following, and illustrated in the two diagrams: SHEARMAN'S TABLE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTHI IN THE UNITED STATES. Class. Families. Rich 182,000 Middle I,200,000 Working. 11,620,000 Total 13,002,000 Per Per Cent. Average Wealth. Aggregate Wealth. Cent. I.4 $237,143 $43,367,000,000 70 9.2 6,250 89.4 965 7,500,000,000 12 II,215,000,000 18 100. Commenting on this, Mr. Shearman says: "The United States of America are practically owned by less than 250,000 persons, constituting less than one in sixty of its adult male population. Within thirty years, the present methods of taxation being continued, the United States of America will be substantially owned by less than 50,000 persons, constituting less than one in 500 of the male population." He says that this is an underestimate, and in the second article adds: "If this system continues, the coming of the billionaire on the one hand, and of the million paupers on the other, is inevitable." man. The second witness is George K. Holmes, special census agent on mortgage statistics, and a scientific This census was taken under republican direction, with a republican chief, and Mr. Holmes is said to be a republican. He approaches the subject from a standpoint diametrically opposite to Mr. Shearman's. By means of the statistics of the last census, he carefully estimates the wealth of the poor and then gets the wealth of the rich by subtraction. Mr. Holmes' method was not practicable when Mr. Sherman wrote, because these facts were not then gathered, and he thinks that Mr. Shearman has underestimated the wealth of the millionaires. His final conclusions are embodied in the table following, and illustrated in the two diagrams: There is no undervaluation of dead persons' estates. The only element of uncertainty is the fact that the rich and the middle class, as insurance statistics show, live longer than the poor; hence, fewer die, in proportion to the population, than among the poor; therefore, the number of the rich and middle class will be But this is a very small eleslightly underestimated. ment of uncertainty, and, altogether, Mr. Spahr's method is the most accurate. I will not go through the many calculations that he gives, interesting as they are to the student, (they may be found in The Outlook for February 10, 1894), but only give the concluding table, which applies the facts established for New York state to the whole country, and the two diagrams to accompany it. SPAIR'S TABLE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN THE Per Cent. $263,040 54.8 14,180 aires 20 Rich, 51 Lower, 11 91 DIAGRAMS SHOWING, BY PERCENTAGES, THE POPULATION AND WEALTH DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES, ACCORDING TO SPAHIR'S TABLES. Mr. Holmes brings additional support to this classification by the tables of public and private debts, and their ownership, and other census statistics, in which he is an acknowledged expert. The third witness to the present distribution of wealth is Mr. Charles B. Spahr, a lecturer of law in New York City, and associate editor of The Outlook. Mr. Spahr is an independent in politics, with leanings toward the people's party; is college-bred, and a careful student of economic subjects. He uses an entirely different method from the other two, and an entirely different body of statistics, only recently gathered. In 1892, the New York legislature passed a law making it the duty of all executors and administrators to file with the clerks of surrogate exact records of the estates of deceased persons, whether small or large, and whether subject to any charge or not. Rich men die as well as poor men, and their estates are accurately inventoried. If a long enough time is taken over an area wide enough, the average of the estates of the rich, middle class and poor who die, will correspond very closely with the distribution of wealth in this country. This method excels that of using assessments of property and income for taxation where the student has to guess at the amount of undervaluation. It excels personal knowledge, as it is almost impossible for personal knowledge to cover accurately a wide enough field, and some personal bias is sure to creep into the mind of the most candid man. It excels Mr. Holmes' method in that it is not necessary to estimate the farmers' personalty and other personal property. Mr. Spahr, commenting on this, says: "Whatever error there is in this table is demonstratably on the side of understating the present concentration of wealth, for in the returns made to the surrogates the debts are not yet deducted from the value of the estates, and it is the small house owners and shopkeepers and farmers whose debts cover the most considerable portion of their holdings. We must recognize, therefore, that the nation's vast wealth does not bring comfort and independence to the rank and file of the people. If the nation's wealth is to mean the nation's well-being, the rank and file of the people must reverse the policies which the rich, and the tools of the rich, have thrust upon them." Compare these three estimates by these independent investigators. One has been affiliated with the democratic party, the second was with the republican party and in the employ of the republicau chief of the census, and the third is independent in politics. But all three are students and scientific men. Their results are substantially alike and they corroborate and support each other. Noah Webster, one of the fathers of the republic, wrote over a century ago; “An equal distribution of |