The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1909-11-16
WHERE ARE A G. BEST?
Samuel Gompers Gives Results of His Study OF Wages
and Conditios ofWage Farmers in
European Countries

covers the VARYING scales for all wage
workers occupations. Further quo
tations would carry but the repetltlon
of a general fact. Earnings IN Eng
land. however a no be baseo on
weekly wage scales; unemployment,
varying as to the individuals involved,
is now so bad as to be spoken OF as
a. settled national feature in indus
try. The Inspector General OF the
army was quoted at Ipswich as men
tioning in his last annual report that
ninety out of every one hundred men
enlisting in the army had give I'M
employment as their reason Tor De-
coming soldiers.
A general urvey Of wages in Ger
many is to be had in the tables CIV
ing the average yearly earnings as re-
| ported under the workingmen's in
! surance laws. The Correspondents
blatt'' of the Trade Union Genera
| Commission for Germany, April Is,
1908, page SIS, has one of these tables.
Only three or four of the trades aver
age over 1900 marks $4,000, at which
sum according to the law, begins the
excess reckoned at o%ne-third the act
ual amount. Most of the averages
run less than 10000 ark t$25O.
These general insurance statistics of
wages may be verified by union scales.
For instance, the Berlin saddlers' or
SdHlLdl1OH Calls LII "CIIIy-oCNCh ~
twenty-eight marks a week; the Ham
burg ship builders, "a to SO marks;
the Berlin plumbers, 60 to 70 pfen-
nigs an hour for a nine-hour day., be
It IS to 50 a week. These are among
the highest wages. The lowest are
for day laborers rarely go above 3
marks a day and sometims below
2 IL in a list compiled by the local
authorities in three cities in accord
anon with tho insurance laws
In Austria Hungary wages run
as seen by the American eye, accuS-
toned to dollars, at about equal Levels
for the two countries, high in big
cities and low in agricultural districts.
The industry Of Hungary is flour
milling. Budapest millers boasted to
me that their mills were hetter than
those Of Minneapolis. A few years
ago, before the were organ
lied. mill Wag varied, one giving but
so cents a day for work that in other
mills brought so. The pay for skilled
millers while more nearly uniform,
averages now less than the latter
figure. In Budapest bricklayers,
among the best paid in the
building trades, get 81 to $40 a day.
In the winter they find unskilled
work at 60 cents. First-class carpen-
ter j~oiners earn $3.50 to $3.50. Buda-
pSoI 4oo " SAl1A A6C
makers, working In the government
factories, at so cents to 40 cents a
day. Miners In North Hungary some
times attain to the level Of 60 cents.
The wages in Italy reach their high
est point in Milan. the great modern,
commercial and industrial city Of the
kingdom. In 1907 the following were
some Of the demands of the unions:
The painters and paperhangers, a
minimum Of 50 cents, 80 cents and
500 a day (American money!, eight
and a half hours in the winter and
ten the rest Of the year.; stationary
firemen, 9 cents an hour; goldleaf
workers, $1.2O; assistants, Is cents,
nine hours; bookbinders, ten per cent
advance for the men making 80 cents
a day, Is per cent for hands making
SO cents to 50, 20 per CEN for those
making so to so; and assist
ants in the building trades, minimum
per hour, 9 cents; apprentices, Z 3-5;
laborers, 6; boys, 4; photographers,
graded, $40, $3.50. $500: street
cleaners, graded, 10. II, 81, 60, As
cents a day.
The trade unions are much stron-
ger in Milan than elsewhere in Italy.
Wages taper off southwark, the unions
also diminish in number and import
ance The building trades in the
south have wages only so to 70 per
cent. Of those paid in Milan, as re-
corded at the union national head
quarters.
Quotations from my notes on union
wage scales for the smaller countries,
such as Belgium, Switzerland and Bo-
hemia (the latter having it's own ma
tional labor movement) would give
slight variations of wages, somewhat
W the Italian and English or
German levels. AS I have said, the
American mind, accustomed to MAXI
estimates in dollars, can not easily ap-
preciate differences that to the Euro
pean workman may appear consider
able. To be told that the policemen
in London get Sc to 50 a week; in
Paris, IS to So; in Vienna or Rome,
IS to 81: leaves the man who has ac-
quaintances on the New York force