A DEAL of questionable literature has been freely distributed among the shops and tenement homes of the laboring classes in this country during the past few years—literature that adds discontent to discontent, fans the flame of hatred for employers, and leads directly to desperation and lawlessness. If now some real friend of the working classes, with no selfish ends to gain, would circulate that part of the report of Carroll D. Wright, Chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Massachusetts, which refers to strikes, they would learn something to their advantage, as the advertisers say. Mr. Wright, who is distinguished down East for his zeal and success in gathering statistical information, has the trouble to prepare a summary of strikes in Massachusetts since 1830. During these fifty years there are recorded 159, or one strike every four months. Of this large number only eighteen ended successfully for the workmen, 110 entirely failed, sixteen were compromised, and six were partly successful, the result of the other nine being unknown. That is, in the light of experience, a Massachusetts laborer who undertakes to force his employer to advance his wages, stands only one-eighth of a chance of succeeding. These figures are just as trustworthy as those on which insurance companies invest their capital, and cannot be wisely neglected. The disastrous strike of the Fall River operatives last year cost them in wages $1,400,000 during an idleness of fifteen weeks. Had they succeeded, it would have taken full two years for them to make good their loss. But they failed, and not only have lost the million and a half, but are in debt or have reduced their savings in order to live during the strike. A strike of crispins in Marlborough cost the operatives $200,000 in wages lost; another strike of crispins at Lynn cost them $140,000, and so the record rolls on. Usually the expenses during the strike equal the wages lost, so that the balance seems largely against the strikers. One of the permanent results of labor uprisings, as noted by Mr. Wright, is the effort continually being made by mill-owners to introduce machinery wherever they can. A machine does not strike for higher wages, or get drunk, and when abandoned does not threaten other machines which take its place. Machines, therefore, can be relied upon. The question of contingencies in taking a large manufacturing order is much more serious in a factory of operatives than in a factory of machines. The tendency, then, is for the laboring classes to narrow their chances for employment by repeated strikes.—Examiner and Chronicle.