The New England magazine . the employ-ers intelligent recognition of the fact that the most profitable employee is a con-tented one. Doubtless this general policyexplains, also, the tendency of the most in-telligent mechanics coming here fromabroad to seek employment in RhodeIsland. Wages in the factories of Rhode Island WHAT S THE MATTER WITH RHODE ISLAND ? 141 compare favorably with those in like linesin the rest of New England. They are nothigh, as compared with wages in the West,but the West has few cotton or woollenmills, and none comparable in size withthose of New England. As for the co
The New England magazine . the employ-ers intelligent recognition of the fact that the most profitable employee is a con-tented one. Doubtless this general policyexplains, also, the tendency of the most in-telligent mechanics coming here fromabroad to seek employment in RhodeIsland. Wages in the factories of Rhode Island WHAT S THE MATTER WITH RHODE ISLAND ? 141 compare favorably with those in like linesin the rest of New England. They are nothigh, as compared with wages in the West,but the West has few cotton or woollenmills, and none comparable in size withthose of New England. As for the cotton-mills in the South, labor conditions thereare far worse than in New England, as arule. the wage-earners quite as much as upon theaccumulated surplus of the mill and factoryproprietors. There has been in Rhode Island evenmore than in other States a marked tend-ency toward concentration of rubber trade is controlled by theUnited States Rubber Company, the trust;woollen and cotton manufacturing is chiefly. City Hall, Providence (on the right), where a public business of seven millions a year is transacted,as against two millions done at the State-house The State Is Very Prosperous Considered as a whole, the manufac-tures of Rhode Island show a slow butconstant tendency toward the reductionof hours of labor and increased State is highly prosperous, especiallyat the top. It has developed a very largenumber of huge private fortunes, and itswage-earners hold in the aggregate a verylarge amount of savings. Indeed, it maytruthfully be said that the three great trustcompanies that dominate Rhode Islandsfinancial affairs —the Industrial, the Union,and the Rhode Island Hospital trusts —have been built upon the small savings of in the hands of a few families and corpora-tions; some of these proprietors own anc|operate many mills in other New EnglandStates. For example, Robert Knight, thelargest individual owner of cotton-millsin the world, controls over twe
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