CHART OF THE WEEKLY EARNINGS OF ONE OF THE TWENTY-ONE SOUTHERN FAMILIES
CHART OF THE WEEKLY EARNINGS OF ONE OF THE TWENTY-ONE SOUTHERN FAMILIES
CHART OF THE WEEKLY EARNINGS OF ONE OF THE TWENTY-ONE SOUTHERN FAMILIES
A series of novel diagrams is presented showing, for each family, their earnings from week to week, their average earnings for the year and a comparison of this with the minimum and fair standards.
An additional study was made of the wages of seventy-five families for a year, the figures being secured from the mill pay roll. The income of fifteen families fell below even the minimum; twenty-two had more than the fair standard, and thirty-eight between the two. Of the seventy-five families, fifty had fathers working in the mill and only two of these fifty fathers, both overseers, earned enough to support a wife and three young children according to the fair standard, and four according to the minimum. A decent home life for the families of these men would be impossible were it not for the wages of the children or the income from boarders. The great variations in incomes from week to week would increase the difficulty of planning household expenditures even when the average indicates a living wage.
The results of this low standard of living on physical vitality are shown by the fact that each of the twenty-one families studied spent some money for medicine or doctor. As illustrating the amount of sickness in these families, with its resulting loss of income and added expense we may quote from the description of one family which has suffered extensively: “The father was injured in the mill twice during the year and lost six weeks. The mother is ill with lung trouble. The boy has tuberculosis, and the fourteen-year-old girl is very frail and is constantly taking patent medicines. During the year they spent $108.25 on medicines and doctor’s bills. The year before the fourteen-year-old girl, whose earnings were a large share of the family income, lost twenty-four weeks because of sickness.” Another family, though in good general health, suffered as a result of bad sanitary conditions: “The members of the family appear to be in good health. The daughter, aged eighteen, had typhoid fever during the year and was unable to work for eight weeks. The son, aged sixteen, had malaria and lost from one to two weeks at different times.”
This is the picture of southern cotton mill life—a family living in a four-room mill-owned house without running water and indoor toilets, with but one room heated; a meager diet of pork and beans, biscuit, coffee and syrup; an irregular income, not allowing on an average enough for a fair standard of living for most of the families, yet tempting often to extravagance in those weeks when it is high; a twelve-year limit permitted by the child labor law, and adult wages that necessitate the children’s going to work as soon as that law allows; the father rarely earning much more, and sometimes even less, than the younger members of the family; scant amusement, usually only the moving picture show, possible on the meager income; poor health with the doctor often an impossible luxury.
The campaign for safety is taking firm root in Detroit. The Detroit Manufacturers’ Association has in its employ two safety inspectors who are at the call of members for work in their plants at any time. They are constantly hunting for danger points and suggesting methods of eliminating them.
More recently, following the enactment of the Workmen’s Compensation Law, there has been organized the Detroit Accident Prevention Conference. There have been three meetings so far, with such men as John Calder of the Cadillac Motor Car Company and W. H. Bradshaw, safety director of the New York Central lines as speakers and papers by those members who were equipped by reason of experience to give instructive information. The meetings are held in the evening in a down town hotel where a moderatepriced dinner is served, the addresses and discussions following. The average attendance has been about one hundred. As no membership fee is charged and as great enthusiasm is displayed it is hoped that shortly the attendance will be double this number.
InPrinting Trade Newsthe recently established School for Printers’ Apprentices in New York is described by A. L. Blue, director of the school. The school is co-operative in the extreme; it is managed by a joint committee of employers (The Printers’ League), workmen (the New York Typographical Union) and the public (the Hudson Guild). Its headquarters are at the guild. The courses, which are for working apprentices, are so planned as to develop individuality. Afternoon classes are held for boys employed on the morning papers, evening classes for others. The present enrolment is ninety-six.
A bill marking the initial step towards the establishment of state accident and sick benefit insurance is pending in the Legislature of Wisconsin. This is one of the first proposals of the kind submitted in any state. Its insurance features are modelled after the English act. The bill applies solely to vocational diseases. Both employer and employe are to contribute toward the premiums. Single employes earning less than $600 a year, who have someone dependent upon them, are eligible to protection under the provisions of the bill; no person may come under its terms who earns over $900. Persons earning $800 a year must have two dependent upon them, and those earning $900 annually must have four persons dependent upon them in order to come within the proposed statute.
Employers are to be allowed to deduct 1 per cent of the wages of employes and they must add to this sum one-half of 1 per cent of the pay roll, the entire sum to be paid into a state insurance fund. When ill, the employe is to receive 65 per cent of his wages during the period of his illness, but for not more than twenty-six consecutive weeks nor more than thirty-nine weeks in a single year. If the employe is sent to a hospital, his regular wages are to be paid to him weekly. The State Industrial Commission is empowered to enforce the provisions of the act in the event of its passage.
A minimum wage of 25s. ($6.08) a week for all able-bodied men will henceforth rule, saysLife and Labor, in the municipal service in Glasgow. It is now many years since the corporation of Glasgow acknowledged the principle of a minimum wage, the rate then introduced being 21s. ($5.11). Since that time improvements have brought the wages up to an average minimum of about 23s. ($5.60). so that the proposal for a minimum of 25s., which was carried in the town council, means an advance of about 2s. ($0.48 2–3) weekly to many of the lower-paid workmen. To give effect to the proposal an additional expenditure of $41,365 will, it is estimated, be involved.
The position in Manchester is better, from the workers’ point of view, than it will be in Glasgow even when the minimum weekly wage is raised to 25s. ($6.08). Seven years ago the Manchester city council raised the minimum wage to 25s. Early in the present year there was an agitation for an increase of 2s. ($0.48 2–3) a week in view of the increased cost of living. A special committee reported in favor of an advance to 26s. ($6.33) a week, and this the council agreed to. This sum is paid to all the laborers (as distinct from skilled workers in the several departments) throughout the city.
An unusual publicity campaign on the part of railroads has resulted from the passage by the state Legislatures of the so-called Full Crew Bills in New Jersey and New York, regulating the number of employes on trains. In the New York newspapers for several days in succession the railroads used three-quarter page advertisements for a joint statement of their opposition. In this space they urged the governor to veto the bill, and the public to protest against its enactment. It is claimed by the railroads that the law will cost them $2,000,000 annually in the state of New York without bringing any increase in efficiency or safety. They point out that Governors Hughes and Dix both refused to approve similar measures on the ground that such questions should logically be decided by the Public Service Commission.
In their advertisements the railroads urged that the matter be left to the state Public Service Commissions, and promised to abide by their decisions.
The Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, which is urging such legislation all over the country, insists that it is necessary to promote safety.The Railroad Trainman, organ of the brotherhood says:
“Today our men are asking for legislation that is no more of a departure from the beaten path than the safety device legislation of twenty years ago was. They have tried to regulate the car limit of trains and the number of men to be employed on them through their contracts. They have failed in the first instance altogether and for the most part in the other. They realize that, operated as trains are, freight train service is often performed under unsafe conditions. Two men for an unlimited number of cars is the rule for the most part. Because of it there are freight trains running today averaging between fifty and one hundred and thirty-five cars and two men are in charge with the conductor.
“There will be trains, perhaps, on which the extra man will not be needed, but if the companies had been forehanded enough to put men where they were needed they could have saved the ones not needed, but they did not and legislation does not find a way to discriminate as readily as the exercise of common sense does.”
The bills have been signed and have become laws in both New Jersey and New York.