Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-12-29

r TERE are some of the wages paid in
/ Germany in 1907: Hard-coal miners,
1894 year; soft-coal miners, $2o7; copper
mine workers, $500; iron-mine workers,
$3.50; masons, $1.26 to $16l day; carpen-
tiers, $1.24 to $161; plumbers, gashtters and
steamftters, $l.13 to $l.39; stonecutters,
$162 to $1.72; average wages at Krupp
plant, $1-27; journeyman printers, $6.55 to
E44 week; skilled railway shop workers,
86 cents to $1.02 day; state railway en-
gineers and conductors, 20 cents day;
state railway artisans and mechanics, 90
cents to $1.0o; employees on PrussianHesse
state railway, 76 cents; able-bodied seamen,
Baltic and North seas, $15.lS month
The average weekly earnings of adult
male joiners, turner's, brush and basket
makers, wheelwrights, wooden-shoe max
ers, box and toy makers, working fifty
seven hours week, were $500 weekly.
Statistics gathered by the German gov
eminent in 1908 showed an average family
expenditure for food, clothing, rent, heat,
light and miscellaneous needs of $53l.70 a
year, and the average earnings of unskilled
workers were $50, and of skilled workers
1878.
How did the German workingmen
make both ends meet?" By putting the
women and children to work. In 1913, &C
cording to an American consular report,
there were 9,500000 wage-earning women in
Germany, or nearly every second adult
woman Up to 1910 the women worked
eleven hours a day, and in that year the
government reduced their hours to ten, and
eight on Saturdays.
hEUCH of the work of the women was
IVA carried on in the home, in the worst
of "sweat-shop" conditions. The Berlin
Chamber of Commerce Investigated the
condition of 2051 municipal employees and
found that the wives of 4l6, or 202. per cent,
worked for wages, 40, at choring; 161, as
home workers"-on sweat-shop jobs-17,
in factories, and 68, in other ways, at wages
of from IS cents to $1.50 week. Only
twenty-five of the wives received more than
$3.50 weekly.
Figures compiled in Nuremberg give a
line on the wages of minors. They were, in
1914, between sixteen and twenty-one years
of age, male, M cents; female, IS cents;
under sixteen years, male, 43 cents; female,
81 cents. And these wages sHcfc about y
per cent higher than in 1910
Women's wages in March, 1914, were
as follows in specified industries: Metal,
4o cents day; engineering, IS cents; cleo
trical, IS cents; paper, IS cents; woodwork
ing, AZ cents; chemical, 81 cents; stone
working and pottery, Al cents; food, drink
and tobacco, 81 cents; leather and rubber,
81 cents.
THE war brought some amelioration
Wages in certain of the industries
were raised, but not enough to meet the
very great increase in living costs. By Sep
TENDER, 1916, the war wages had risen by
IS per cent for men and 81 per cent for
women, but the prices of foodstuffs had
risen in the same period by at least 100
per cent.
In 1911 there were 518,821 children at
work in mills, mines and factories in Ger
many, and during the war the number
greatly increased.
One result of these conditions was that
many strikes occurred, despite imperfect
organization. From 1904 to 1908 there was
an annual average of 279,87 striking and
locked-out workers. In 1914 there were
Ills strikes, of which only II per cent were
wholly successful At least 38.5 per cent
were failures. This is one of the lowest
averages of success in all Europe.