Wmm ieVr^^i zJm rr ' ...,/ jy** Columbia (Bnibersito intbe(£upiifJlrt»|>iJrtt LIBRARY THE SELIGMAN LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS PURCHASED BY THE UNIVERSITY 1 9 2 9 JPHILADELPHI . — Social Science Association. The Social Condition —OF THE— Industrial Classes of Philadelphia (Read at a Meeting of the Association, NOVEMBER 8TJi, 1883, - BY - LORIN BLODGET. Published by the PHILADELPHIA SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION , J20 Locust Street , Philadelphia. THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF PAPERS READ BE$ THE ASSOCIATION. print. Compulsory Education. By Lorin Bloclget. Out of print. Arbitration as a Remedy for Strikes. By Eckly B. Coxe. Out of j The Revised StatutewL Penns >il^ania. By R. C. McMurtrie. Local Taxatiinr/’^Sy Thorn#* Out ot print. Infant mortality. By Dr. S. Parry. StatMt Law and Common Law, and the Proposed “eVrffon in Pennsylvania. ,^By E. Spencer Miller. Out of print. •‘Apprenticeship. By James S. Whitney. Out of Print. The Proposed Admendments to the Constitution of Pennsylvania. By F. Jordan. Vaccination. By Dr. J. S. Parry. Out of print. The Census. By Lorin Blodget. The Tax System of Pennsylvania. By Cyrus Elder. Out of print. The work of the Constitutional Convention. By A. Sydney Biddle. What shall Philadelphia do with its Paupers? By Dr. Isaac Ray. Proportional Representation. By S. Dana Horton. Statistics Relating to Births , Deaths, Marriages , etc., in Philadelphia. By John Stockton-IIougb, M. D. On the Value of Original Scientific Research. By Dr. Ruschenberger. On the Relative Influence of City and Country Life on Morality, Health, Fecun¬ dity, Longevity, and Morality. By John Stockton-Hough, 31. D. The Public School System of Philadelphia. By James S. Whitney. The Utility of Government Geological Surveys. By Prof. J. P. Lesley. The Law of Partnership. By J. G. Rosengarten. Methods of Valuation of Real Estate for Taxation. By Thomas Cochran. The Merits of Cremation. By Persifor Frazer, Jr. Outlines of Penology. By Joseph R. Chandler. Brain Disease, and Modern Living. By Dr. Isaac Ray. Out of print. Hygiene of the Eye, Considered with Reference to the children in our Schools. By Dr. F. D. Castle. The Relative Morals of City and Country. By William S. Pierce. Silk Culture and Home Industry. By Dr. Samuel Chamberlaine. Mind Reading, etc. By Persifor Frazer, Jr. Legal Status of Married Women in Pennsylvania. By N. D. 3Iiller. The Revised Statutes of the United States. By Lorin Blodget. Training of Nurses for the Sick. By John H. Packard, 31. D. The Advantages of the Co-operative Feature of Building Associations. By E. Wrigley. The Operations of our Building Associations. By Joseph I. Doran. Wisdom in Charity. By Rev. Charles G. Ames.* Out of print. Free Coinage and a Self-Adjusting Ratio. By Thomas Balch. Building Systems for Great Cities. By Lorin Blodget. Metric System. By Persifor Frazer, Jr. Cause and Cure of Hard Times. By R. J. Wright. House-Drainage and Sewerage. By GeergeE. Waring, Jr. A Plea for a State Board of Health. By Benjamin Lee, 31. D. The Germ-lheory of Disease , and its Present Bearing upon Public and Personal Hygiene. By Joseph G. Richardson, 31. D. Delusive Methods of Municipal Financiering. By Win. F. Ford. Not printed. Technical Education. By A. C. Rembaugh, 31. D. The English Methods of Legislation Compared with the American. By S. Sterne. Thoughts on the Labor Question. By Rev. D. O. Kellogg. On the Isolation of Persons in Hospitals for the Insane. By Dr. Isaac Ray. Notes on Reform Schools. By J. G. Rosengarten. Out of print. Philadelphia Charity Organization. By Rev. Win. H. Hodge. Public Schools m their Relations to the Community. By Janies S. Whitney. Industrial and Decorative Art in Public Schools. By Charles G. Leland. Penal and Ref ormatory Institutions. By J. G. Rosengarten. Nominations for Public Office. By Mayer Sulzberger. Municipal Government. By John C. Bullitt. Apprenticeship as it Was and Is. By Addison B. Burk. Religious and Political Aspect of the Indian Question. By Herbert Welsh lhe American Aristocracy. By Lincoln L. Eyre. A Plea for a New City Hospital. By Thomas W. Barlow. Some Practical Aims in School Hygiene. By Dr. D. F. Lincoln. The Pending School Problems. By Prof M B Snyder Municipal Government. By Wm. Righter Fisher. Social Condition of the Industrial Classes. By Lorin Blodget. THE SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE INDUS¬ TRIAL CLASSES OF PHILADELPHIA. T HE actual experience of this city of a million inhabitants, one-fourth of whom are directly engaged in productive industries, should enable us to solve the social problems which agitate and distress all other countries than our own. These problems scarcely exist as subjects of concern here, but they have sometimes given trouble to other cities and localities of this country, thus proving that it is not an exemption due to mere locality. Is it the fate of the dense society of the cities to become more oppressive to its less fortunate members, as it increases in numbers and in wealth, and passes through the transitions which characterize a metropolitan city, or may not such a com¬ munity become more rather than less liberal in its distribution of benefits, and more just in awarding their share of earnings to those who labor, as its organization becomes perfected ? In fact, a well organized city may do more than merely pay better wages ; it may greatly enlarge the range or classification of persons employed, making it possible for a greater number to receive direct benefits, at the same time that a wider range of articles or products of value is made, and a more liberal distri¬ bution to its members is made of articles so produced, to be consumed by themselves. We are not discussing either general plans or specific acts of charity or benevolence, but the regular operations of business, only, in which nothing is done or proposed to be done that does not pay commercially; that is, that does not reward the busi¬ ness man who invests his money in it, as well as it does the workman or workwoman who invests his or her labor for the consideration afforded by remunerative wages. It is not worth while to speculate on the possibilities of such a problem when we have the whole body of facts belonging to the experience of a great city before us and around us; and 4 have only to grasp them intelligently to comprehend the laws relating to the whole c ise 1''he questions are not new ones, nor are the answers to them new, except that for us the prac¬ tical facts which make up an answer are now complete and overwhelming. YVe see that a city may exist with increasing benefits to all its population as it enlarges,—seeing daily as we do, the crowding thousands steadily added to the prosperous thousands who came before them, it is idle to deny that the people who are here are not unlike the people who have given other cities trouble, and that they are intensely occupied with the industries they have in hand, and give no trouble because they are so occupied. The proportion engaged in strictly pro¬ ductive industries is obviously greater year by year ; the range of such employments daily widens, both in diversity of indus¬ tries and in diversity of the working forces, — the force of per¬ sons employed and that of the machinery used. And we have had ten years, at least, as represented by the decade from 1870 to 1880, in which to measure the progress made under purely normal conditions. I had the honor to state in a hurried way the leading facts existing on this point in an address before this Association in 1872, and I am deeply interested to observe what changes of direction have taken place, if there have been any changes, during the period which has since elapsed. The conditions which surround the really vast population employed in productive industries in Philadelphia have now assumed a fixed and permanent character. They differ vitally from those which attach to the like classes in European cities, and this difference, in part an incident and in part the result of effort and direction, has become positive and controling, an ab¬ solute force, that moulds the immigrant from any other or less fortunate situation, and very soon assimilates him to the new citizenship. In this way the solution of the great central diffi¬ culty existing elsewhere appears to be reached, and all that is painful and embarrassing to thoughtful men, and to responsible administration in other countries, disappears here at the outset. It makes little or no difference from what source the sepa¬ rate or separable portions of our population have been derived ; on coming here they merge without difficulty, and very soon become substantially the same. 5 Several striking illustrations of the danger existing in other countries, and of the solicitude felt, have recently been brought to the public attention, one of which is the proposition just made to de-populate certain districts of London, and to remove, by authority of the Government, a portion of its dense and im¬ poverished people to a newly organized suburb, with open streets and ample, breathing space, in the hope that the moral and physical health of these victims of social oppression may be restored, and that they may be taught a new and better method of earning the necessaries of life. Few, if any of the great cities of either the old or the new world are free from constant constraint and great social danger from this cause : namely, the want of adequate employment and of adequate compensation for labor in productive industries. The natural growth of pop¬ ulation there is but an increase of poverty and an accumulation of dangers, from which the mis-directed social forces and gov¬ erning powers are powerless to afford relief. It is gravely proposed to build up a suburb of London, with “ Laborers and Artizans’ Dwellings,” at the cost of the Government, in the hope of drawing the poor and virtuous from the dense mass of irredeemable social suffering into which much of London proper has been compressed. Nor is this misfortune of the laboring classes confined to European cities ; it is severely felt in some of the cities of New England, and especially in Fall River, where even a rela¬ tively small population of 48,960 is subject to much constraint and practical oppression. Still worse in New York City there are large districts that are, and long have been, the shame of civilization. The tenement house system that has been for twenty years the scourge of the laboring classes there, and has been exposed and denounced with vehemence by social students and sanitary authorities, is still at the height of its supremacy, and apparently irremovable because there is no room for a suburb to which the denizens of these houses with a hundred families each could go. They merely build higher in the nar¬ row streets, and put a greater number of layers of humanity, or the semblance.of humanity, one above the other as the years go by. Knowing every street and quarter of that city as I do, and 6 the squalor of these piled up cigar makers, clothing makers, and laborers at pauper wages in many classes of even productive industries, I deny the claim of that city to rank as the chief and typical city of American Industries. It embodies already many of the most dangerous habits, and reproduces the most dangerous slums of London, and it also has renewed many of the worst plague spots of Italian and Spanish cities. It is an example to be avoided by other American cities, and not one to be followed. It is not true that the wrongs and misfortunes represented in these social oppressions of labor are inherent in the struc¬ ture of modern society, or a necessary consequence of the growth of a city as reaches a million inhabitants. It is not a necessity of the creation of great wealth, that there should follow great poverty to the creators of that wealth. The large cities are themselves the accumulations of productive industry, created in some form, or at some place, and it is a shocking abuse of the power to produce rich fabrics, fine house furnish¬ ings and noble structures in these cities to assume that their very accumulation will be a cause of oppression to the indus¬ trial classes. So much by way of protest against the half formed imputa¬ tion that the good we know to exist here is exceptional and unnatural, a temporary prosperity that will at some time fall back into the old experience of cities, and a frail structure of happiness that cannot remain long. We do not believe in this possibility, and we need not be oppressed by any fear of it. I had the honor, as I have said, to present, in April, 1872, to this association a paper on the social condition of productive industry, the numerical results and deductions being based on the Industrial Census returns for 1870. In referring now to the text of that paper, for the first time in several years, I am struck by the applicability of what was then said to the present condition of these industries. Indeed, I might take many entire paragraphs from it for use now, only changing the numerical quantities ; the points of direction and the principles claimed are the same now as then. Every word then uttered of hope and confidence in the social progress of this great com- ,7 munity has been more than verified, and every estimate of future progress fully sustained. The Industrial force in per¬ sons employed, then numbering 140,000, has in twelve years increased to 242,000, and the aids to production in steam and machinery have increased in the same proportion. While at that time the nominal prices or values were somewhat greater than now, and the percentage of reduction in prices on some articles has been considerable, the total of exchangeable values is one-half greater now, or $480,000,000, as compared with $320,000,000 in 1870. And while this cumulative growth of the industrial forces and production has been going on, the less rapid increase of population has gone from 674,000 to fully 1,000,000, in this current year 1883. I admit that this is a cal¬ culated number, but it is not possible that the enormous num¬ ber of occupied dwellings here, now more than 176,000, contain less than an average of 6 persons each, which would give 1,056,000 inhabitants, safely assuming a million, as I have said. With these outlines as to population, let us see what the industrial proportion is. It may first be propor to estimate the occupancy of dwellings, or to refer to the single household sys¬ tem that is universal here, as the key to much of the better conditions in other respects. Having several times made very thorough examinations of the proportion of houses owned by industrial occupants, I have had the opinion of two or three of the most capable bouse agents at the present time, who agree in stating that the proportion of working people who own their own dwellings is fully one-half of the whole industrial popula¬ tion. An experienced and intelligent gentleman in the extreme northeastern section*- which is wholly devoted to manufacturing, and densely populous, reports the proportion of renters as less than one-half for these classes alone, the other half owning their own houses, and having obtained them chiefly through the aid of the Building Associations. Careful personal exami¬ nation of 3,500 to 4,000 comparatively new dwellings in the southern part of the city, recently gave me a somewhat larger proportion of resident owners, and the superintendent of a mill employing 800 persons reported in 1877 that all the adults em¬ ployed in those mills were members of families who owned their own houses. 8 The wages paid to industrial labor in Europe have been the subject of much recent discussion, and are now more fully reported than at any former time. The rates paid per week or daily are usually quoted and taken as the basis of comparison, yet a better exhibit is made when the actual earnings of all the persons employed in any industry are defined, an average for all employed in each establishment being the best measure- Thus the Baldwin Locomotive Works actually paid in wages $1,750,000 to 2,900 employees in 1882, which is an average of more than two dollars per day for each person, and a total of earnings by each person for the year of $605. For thirty-eight of the leading iron works of Philadelphia, reported to the State Bureau of Statistics for 1882, the whole number of men em¬ ployed was 8 ,o 3 o, and the whole amount of wages paid them $4,755,50°, an average of $529.55 earned by each one during the year. Several reports to the State for the three years, 1880, 1881 and 1882, confirm this average rate, which has not changed materially for several years, and may be stated at $600 for the highest and $450 for the lowest rate earned in the iron and steel industries, the average being $525. The actual em¬ ployment reported in these iron and steel works in Philadelphia during the year 1882 was 31,917 persons, and their earnings in wages were $15,160,575 ; but this included many minors, and also embraced returns from several establishments working less than one full year, and consequently the average earnings fall slightly below $500 for each person. Comparing this rate of wages with that reported to be paid at Krupp s works at Essen, Germany, where the average, as stated in a recent letter, as “ not often exceeding 5 marks, or a little over one dollar in American money,” daily, it appears to be practically double the amount paid there. " Krupp’s works are the most efficient and powerful of their class, comparing with the larger Steel works, Rolling mills and Locomotive works here; in all of which the average wages are fully two dollars per day. The qualification is also made in Porter’s letter, that no men (at Krupp s works) are now paid less than 3 marks,” (74 cents) and that “ skilled labor is paid from 3$ marks (88 cents) to as high as 7,” ($1.76), but no averages are 9 named. The same writer states that the Krupp firm own 3,250 dwellings, built for and occupied exclusively by these work people and their families, 16,000 persons in all, the single men being provided with a boarding house containing 1800 boarders, only moderate expenses or costs being incurred for their main¬ tenance. It is obvious that no comparison can be instituted between the dependent and isolated condition of the German workman, here seen at his best, and the entire freedom and full citizenship enjoyed by the worker in iron here. A large share of the iron workers here, probably fully half, own the dwellings in which they live, and have a free choice of residence and of employment; a condition incomparably superior to that of the workmen of any iron district in England, as well as to the com¬ paratively liberal and benevolent policy of the Krupp works in Germany. It is, in fact, almost a burlesque upon social illustration to compare the practically independent iron worker in any one of the Philadelphia establishments with an English or German example. The workmen here would resent even a question as to his comfort or choice of residence, and would never solicit or accept a favor that he did not earn. He would not even admit the existence of a condition calling for intervention or even discussion apart from the general condition of his asso¬ ciates ; a position he is fortunately able to maintain, although he does not sufficiently see and feel that the creators of this better general condition are the employers themselves, through the policy of protection to labor which they have established. The new great industry, and really much the largest in aggre¬ gate numbers, is the textile class ; and in this the conditions of employment, the wages paid, and the social ameliorations intro¬ duced here are superior to those of the iron and steel works. The range of employment is so great as to include females and young persons to an extent without precedent in any other form of productive industry, and in this city alone the census of 1882 shows that 60,897 persons were so engaged at wages ; 23,367 men, 28,909 women and girls, and 8,621 youths, mostly boys, although in many cases the younger girls are reported in this class. 10 These 61,000 persons received in wages 2m average of about #350 each, or §21,350,000 in all, a sum almost incredible as the earnings of one class of industries in a single city, but certainly below rather than above the full report. Wages in the several divisions of this class vary widely, but in no one fall below $220 yearly, which is the well determined minimum average paid in the knit goods industry. The best measure of the so< ial value of wages is the average actually received by th persons employed, and not the wages per day 01 \ ik of any one person or class of workmen. This is especially true of the industries which employ females and young - reater the range or diversity of employments the greater the opportunity to earn wages by persons lan full men in strength. Women and young persons of w find ten oppor¬ tunities to earn remunerative Acre one was open to them thirty years ago, and in computing the actual receipts for wages by the numbers now employed, we find new elements altogether, and a remarkable change resulting from the intro¬ duction of large numbers of fem young persons, whose earnings are necessarily less than those of men. They receive quite adequate and ample \\ ss, and they always use these wages as a part of the family resources. The change within a comparatively recent period may be illustrated by citing the “Labor Troubles” of 1S35 in Phila¬ delphia, when a revolt occurred aga.nst the inadequate wages paid to all classes of labor. The first reform then effected was to limit the number of hours of labor to ten, the working time having previously been quite irregular, and the old firm of Cornelius & Son are credited with being the first to fix the hours of beginning at 7 A. M. and of closing M., hours which are now universal. At that time female labor of all classes received less than §3 per week on the average, and the book folders, binders, seamstresses and many others combined to secure an advance, which was gained to the extent of only about fifty cents, making the average $3.50 per week. In 1839 seamstresses on shirts and drawers in Philadelphia were able to earn only 94 cents per week, whereas now, or for the week II ending November 3rd, one house on Chestnut Street paid to 45 persons employed in shirt making the sum of $350 for the week’s work. Two of these were men, at $10 and $13 each, but the average earned by the women was $7.55 each. And for the same week an honorable house at Ninth and Market Streets paid to fifty “ mantua makers,” as they were called in 1839, b ut now better described as intelligent and respectable young ladies engaged in cloak making, an average of $7.50 each for the week’s work. In none of these cases is there any suggestion of charity, or effort of benevolence, but the employment and payment are matters of business in the strictest sense, requiring full hours, and accepting only the most faithful work. Nor is there, on the other hand, any need for employment that cannot be obtained, and none are wanting opportunities to work. It is remarked by all employers that they would be glad to give work to almost any additional num¬ ber that may offer. As far as the inquiry has been extended it appears that rea¬ sonably skillful female labor in the average of large establish¬ ments of productive industry now receives compensation at a rate more nearly represented by seven dollars per week than any other sum, or double the wages paid for the like classes in 1839; although in the least difficult, such as paper box making, the compensation is less, and the rate would not exceed five dol¬ lars per week. The year’s receipts, also, interrupted as these lighter employments often are, range from $175 to $225 only. These light but most desirable classes of employment have greatly multiplied in recent years, that of paper boxes and bags now employing 2,400 persons, mostly young girls and boys, and that of artificial flowers 560 persons, &c. Confectioners, book¬ binders, straw braiders, hat and fur dealers and manufacturers, and many other classes now employ large numbers of girls and young persons whose earnings are less than those of adults. Practically, the solution of this otherwise incomprehensible problem lies in the social distribution of Industries, and in the larger proportion of actually productive labor here placed in such position as to exchange its products with the smallest loss for all that the producer himself needs. If there is no material 12 waste, there must necessarily be an accumulation of substantial wealth. In large sections of this city of Philadelphia more than half the entire population of all ages employ their time and strength in actual and effective labor, and as a necessary result the individual, the family, and the community, accumu- late the wealth that productive industry creates. In the social order, or disorder rather, of much of the city of London, there is no opportunity for such employment. The whole world crowds its fabrics into that market to sell, and no one comes to it to buy, except at the minimum rate. Its laws, social as well as commercial, are the laws of trade alone, and its profits are only the profits of mere exchange. I here is no out¬ let or income to such a system adequate to meet the strain of ceaseless waste imposed on the community by the idle, the vicious, and the wasteful of all ranks. Those who trade on a large scale realize profits derived from the outside, but those who trade on a small scale constantly draw wealth from the unproductive classes about them, if they gain wealth at all. There is no relief for “ Outcast London ” but in the inaugu¬ ration of systems of productive industry, which are irreconcila¬ ble with the all consuming laws of trade. We have here in Philadelphia fragments of industrial wreck from Macclesfield in silk, from Nottingham and Kidderminster, and a dozen other towns of England, yet every one of them is prosperous here. The population is not so large as that of London, but it is already equal to that of three of the largest cities in central England put together, and fully capable of illustrating the losses of a badly organized social state if its habits and methods were the same. It is the presence of an un¬ usual, if not an unprecedented number of distinct industries rea¬ sonably suited to the wants of the people themselves in actual consumption, and adapted to the readiest exchange for what¬ ever they require to consume, which they cannot themselves pro¬ duce, which gives to the newly created social condition in Phila¬ delphia so much prosperity, at the same time that the greater city of London, whose life counts by centuries almost as that of Philadelphia does by years, is struggling with the deadly and desperate poverty which constrain all labor in the greater cities of England. 13 Philadelphia: Actual Receipts for Wages. The following are the actual earnings of the whole number of persons employed in the several classes of works reported on, obtained by dividing the whole sum paid out as wages, by the whole number employed ; which number undoubtedly represents interrupted employment to a certain extent, but to what extent cannot be definitely stated. The difference between maximum and average earnings is nearly one hundred per cent, in the same classes: that is to say, if the average earnings of all the employees of a silk mill, or a hosiery mill, or a manufacturing establishment on any industry capable of giving work to females and young persons, is $7 per week, the highest earnings will be $14 per week. There are large numbers of females, young women, trained to the use of sewing or embroidering machines, who regularly earn two dollars per day. Cases are frequent in which a higher sum is earned, but not continuously; such large earnings being always on piece work, however. Philadelphia Industries for 1882. Locomotives,. 1 estab. , 2,889 persons, av. wages, $605.00. Steel Works,. 5 tt 815 a ti 587-3 0 - Rolling Mills,. 9 “ i>5 2 9 a tt 569.OO. Iron Machinery,. 6 I > 2 59 a a 556.0°. Morocco and Leather, a 1.965 a a 55*-9°- Woolen Machinery,.. 1 tt 160 a a 540.00. Hat Factory,. 1 ft 68l a a 499.20. Dye Works,. ti 1,077 a a 439.20. Glass Works,.... 8 ft LI55 a a 346.70. Carpet Mill,. 1 t< L347 a a 405-35- Carpet Mills,. 109 “ 10,398 tt tt 335-°3- Wool & Worsted Mills 16 n 4,269 tt tt 330.90. Cotton Weaving Mills, 43 t( 4,966 tt a 3 I2 -3°- Cotton & Woolen do 2 3 tt 4,3*5 t ft 311.20. Silk Mills,. Cotton & Woolen Spin¬ 27 tt 3,424 ti tt 300.20. ning Mills. 65 tt 4,288 it tt 297.70. Hosiery & Knit Goods 83 tt 9»5°3 tt ft 221.40. The last item, knit goods, represents the greatest proportion of minors or young persons, and also one or two months of interrupted work during almost every year. In 1881 this in- '4 dustry was reported from 91 establishments, employing 10,372 persons, and paying them $2,304*668 in the aggregate or an av¬ erage of $222.20 each person. The average paid for mills of this class working full time is $300 per year to each person. An important distinction in regard to these industries is that in the Iron and Steel works but one person for each family is usually employed, while in the textile industries, as they actu¬ ally exist in Philadelphia, the average is fully two persons earn¬ ing wages for each family. The aggregate of family earnings is quite as great, and in most cases better applied, in the textile industries. The State returns for 1881 give almost identical results with those above quoted for 1882, and they are substantially the same as reported in the City census for 1882. Specific reports for payments made at the date of this paper, or for November, 1883, give some interesting results. A house making ladies’ cloaks, as part of a very large general business in dry goods,paid to 50 persons, all but one being women, $375.00 for one week’s wages, or $7.50 to each person. A manufacturer of fine shirts paid to 47 persons $350.00 for one week’s wages, or $7.45 to each person,—one man, and others females. The average of many weekly payments in these industries proves to be $7.00 to $8.00 per week, while skilled women sewing with machines often earned $10.00 to $12.00, and even $14.00 in a week. The largest wages are earned on shirt making by expert women, paid as piece work. In the printing and publishing industries the wages paid in November, 1883, were, in certain instances as follows : A large printing and publishing house for serial publications, paid to 98 persons $1,285.00 in one week, or $13.11 to each person, all being men. Another publishing house of books, paid to 40 book folders $280.00, or $7.00 per week each. The time in most cases was paid at 12 cts. per hour, but in a few cases 10 cts. only; the day being 10 hours. These prices are everywhere the rule. A large book-bindery paid in one week to 98 persons $744.00 or $7.50 per week each ; and at another week paid to 105 per¬ sons $839.00, or $8.00 per week each. 15 In contrast with these prices the actual wages for book-folding paid to book-folders in 1835, were ij to 2\ cts. per 100 sheets, or $2.50 to $3.25 per week only,—an average of $3.00 per week, nearly. A statement of the wages then paid in twelve pub¬ lishing establishments of Philadelphia was then made up, and made the subjeet of an earnest agitation for an advance in wages, which is reproduced in the Report of the State Bureau of statistics for 1881. At that time $3.00 per week was the highest sum realized for female labor, and in shirt making and clothing manufacture scarcely half this sum was paid. At a public meet¬ ing held June 16, 1839, by the Society for the Relief of Industri¬ ous Females, a report of the earnings of makers of shirts and drawers gave the total earnings as 95 cents per week only. The lowest present earnings of women in the shirt making and cloth¬ ing trades is $6.00 per week, and the average $7.00 and over. No suffering for want of work or from insufficient wages is known or reported in any quarter; on the contrary the demand for female labor in the wide range of similar employments, has been steadily greater than the supply. The actual wages paid weekly for labor by Parke, Read & Co., a large shirt making establishment, Nov. 1, 1883, were as follows : Two Cutters, $21.00 and $15.00 respectively. Six Forewomen, $12.00, $10.00, $8.00, two $7.50, and one $7.00. Sixty Operators, average $7.00 each. Fifty Ironers, average $8.00 each. Seven Starchers, average $7.00 each. One Engineer, $13.00, one apprentice $9.00, three assistants in office $6.00 each ; three boys, $2.50 to $5.50; porter, $7.00. The whole number paid was 134, and the sum was $1,014,50^ or an average of $9.57 each. The most active Ironers received $13.75 an d $10.45 each; the six most active and efficient oper¬ ators received $10.75, $10.67, $10.60, $9.85, $9.80 and $9.50 re¬ spectively. John B. Stetson & Co., Hat manufacturers, write Nov. 8th : “ In answer to yours of the 6th instant, our permission is freely given to cite our reports made to the State, in your address.— Your estimate of actual working time at 50 weeks is correct, 16 making $10.00 the average weekly wages.” kor the year 1882 the number of persons employed by this firm was 681, and the total wages paid, $340,019-82 ; for the year 1881, J02 persons were employed, and $340,378-29 P a id * n wa S es - This establish¬ ment has several beneficial associations, a library,a special school, and many advantages made available to its employees. In De¬ cember, 1882, the number of these was 335 men, 132 women and 223 youths ; 690 in all. C. N. Thorpe & Co., gold watch case makers, write Nov. 5th. “ We have at present emplo>ed 335 hands, and their wages paid during the year were about $175,000, making an average per week of about $10.00 each person.” I he proportion of females and youths, as returned for their establishment in the city cen¬ sus for 1882 was nearly the same for each class, or 164 men, 162 females, and 142 youths. The Baldwin Locomotive Works, Burnham, Parry, Williams & Co., write Nov. 6th. " Our average weekly pay-roll is about $36,800.00, and the number of men employed about 2,930/' The total payment of wages in 1881 was $1,747,530 to 2,889 person* ; and in 1882 $1,760,000 to 2,943 persons. The general average is $12.00 per week, but the increased skill of workmen at piece work enables them to earn more now than at any previous time, and to make a great number of locomotives with the same num¬ ber of men employed in the present year, 1883, than in any former year. The James Smith Woolen Machinery Company paid $86,- 225.00 in wages to 160 men, the average of actual earnings be¬ ing $11.20 per week of 60 hours. The Hosiery Mill of Wilson & Co., paid for two weeks ending June 30, 1883, the sum of $1,203.42 to 98 persons, distributed as follows : 16 men, various duties, 8 girls, embroiderers, 26 “ sewers, 8 iC menders, 5 “ folders and pressers, 35 girls and boys, small, $ 3 0 3 - 46 , per week $ 9.48. 207.97, I2.99. 342.76, 6.34. 130.50, “ 7 - 15 - 43 - 73 > “ 4 - 37 - C-n O O “ 2.50, 1,203.42, “ $6.14. 98 17 The low rate per annum of earnings in these Hosiery Mills for 1881 and 1882 before referred to, is due to the usual suspensions characteristic of this industry, of four to five weeks of each year. In 1882 the actual working time was 45^ weeks only. Philadelphia House Occupancy. The actual statistics of House Occupancy are few, and it can only be stated from the best information of persons familiar with the several localities where crowding might be found, if it existed at all. In the manufacturing wards there is absolutely no crowding attempted, and of the average of houses occupied by those so employed, one half are owned by those who live in them. In the 31st Ward, the Northeastern part of the city, and almost exclusively a manufacturing district, the estimate of Frank P. Beal, long in business as Conveyancer and House Agent at 2303 Frankford Road, is clear, that half the occupants of workingmen’s dwellings own their houses. In most cases this ownership has been secured through the agency of Building Associations. Many young persons, females as well as young men, are share-holders in these Associations, and secure the property for the common benefit of the family. Agents and officers of Building Associations in many parts of the city, sustain this statement of the proportion of houses owned by those who reside in them. It is emphatically asserted to be true of the southern and south-western sections, although manufacturing establishments are less numerous there than in the north-eastern section. Extensive examinations, made by myself personally in 1876 and 1877, some of them in the pre¬ sence of distinguished visitors from England and Germany, showed invariably occupancy by single families, as contrasted with the piling in of several families in one house, which is uni¬ versal in Europe, and a full proportion of personal ownership. The superintendent of a group of mills at Eighth and Tasker Streets, asserted that every adult, man or woman, of the several hundred employed in those mills, resided in a dwelling owned by the family of which such person was a member. This very general ownership of dwellings, and the single occupancy which is absolutely universal, are due to the productive industries so long existing in Philadelphia ; to the small number of paupers and criminals, and to the admirable building associations, next to the good character of the working classes themselves. Paupers and Vicious Classes of Philadelphia. A census of police station lodgers, vagrants, beggars, occu¬ pants of cheap lodging houses and of cheap eating houses, was taken in March, 1883, at the instance of the Society for Orga¬ nizing Charity, by the police officers of Philadelphia, the results of which are remarkable as showing the absence of pauperism and vagrancy in all the industrial wards and sections of the city. The larger numbers reported as inhabiting “cheap lodg¬ ing houses ” and “ cheap eating houses ” are not paupers, al¬ though they may be classified as poor—they neither ask nor receive charity in any form. Nearly all police station lodgers, vagrants and professional beggars are found in seven police dis¬ tricts of the old city, the other seventeen districts having very few, four or five to each district only. The entire return gives : Police station lodgers, . . Men Women Children Total . 333 27 0 360 Vagrants,. 210 51 879 Professional beggars, . 25 19 65 Totals, . . 972 262 70 I 3°4 Cheap lodging houses. . . 394 1 5 7 2189 Cheap eating houses,. 223 261 i 5 2 4 These last are not disorderly, nor are they recipients of charity, F01 the most part they do not belong to any absolute class ; they may be in such places at one time and not at another. About 1200 of these are Italians, and, although poor, they are neither disorderly nor in any distress, but earn an ample support in their own way. I he poor at the Almshouse numbered at the same date, namely, March 19, 1883, 2,841, and in poorhouses at German¬ town, Holmesburg, Roxborough and other Homes there were 200 more , also in the House of Correction 1,221 persons, and in the County Prison 811 persons. The total receiving charity was therefore 3,041 in institutions, and 1,304 outside ; those in 19 penal institutions, 2,032 ; total, of paupers and criminals, 5,073. This is but one-half of one per cent, in a population estimated at more than 1,000,000. A rigid administration of the laws re¬ pressing mendicity would much reduce the number in the Alms¬ house, and the number of vagrants. If required to work, as they should be, they would soon take care of themselves. The force of these simple figures can scarcely be exceeded in the history of the great cities of the world. There is no prece¬ dent to the proportion these dependent classes hold to the whole population, and the solution is found in the great numbers en¬ gaged at wages in productive industries. This number is shown by the City Census of 1882, to be 242,000 in an estimated total population of one million, or 24.2 per cent. Social Condition of other Great Cities. It is a striking fact that the greater commercial and metro¬ politan cities generally do not favor the development of produc¬ tive industries, and as a consequence, do not afford compensating employment to their most densely crowded districts. The most wealthy cities of Europe have the largest proportion of persons on the verge of helplessness from poverty, as well as the greater number of the incurably vicious, and no accession of mere wealth, however profusely expended, appears to reach or to per¬ manently relieve these classes. The labor which creates ex¬ changeable property, is incomparably more valuable in social benefits than that which is a mere personal service, or is given to mere buying and selling. If twenty per centum of the work¬ ing population of London could be continuously occupied in converting raw material into finished fabrics or articles available for exchange or conversion, into other values, the dependent and vicious classes would Speedily diminish in numbers. No mere provision for better dwellings can accomplish the desired relief, because the people cannot earn enough to live in them. These points are most forcibly stated in Lord Salisbury’s review of the condition of these classes, and much of the great Peabody charity fails in meeting the most urgently needed requirements of benefiting the almost helpless among the poor. It is not easy to obtain trustworthy statistics of the number 20 of the poor and vicious of the greater cities, and the notes here appended are given only as illustrations of what should be more definitely known. Some fragments of information in regard to wages, or earnings, can be obtained for London, but for Paris, St & Petersburg, Berlin, &c M scarcely anything is known. For our own cities, and especially for New York and Philadelphia, the census returns for 1880, are approximately correct, but not trustworthy in detail. The best materials at hand are the Phila¬ delphia reports made to the State Bureau of Statistics, because they represent the fullest range of employment, and the total sums paid as wages during the year to all the persons emplo\ed. Quotations of the rate of wages, daily or weekly, are of little social value, because they do not represent those who earn the lowest rates, nor those who work irregularly, both very impor¬ tant as parts of the whole society. LONDON. The greatest city of modern times is unfortunately very little known through the current official publications of the British Government. No history of the productive industries of its enormous population has yet appeared, which enables us to com¬ pare it with other cities of Europe, or with those of the United States. It contains great numbers of persons gathered from almost every country of the world, simply for residence or refuge* and having no interests in common with the English people, and therefore exhibiting no public spirit or patriotism of feeling. In fact the leading element even of English activity, is simply trade and commerce, as distinguished from production. This phase of activity is really vast in its proportions, and conducted with a degree of ability and energy unprecedented in the history of commercial nations. If the result of such energy could possibly be to furnish remunerative employment to the whole body of the people, or if a reasonable distribution of the wealth accumu¬ lated by trade could possibly occur in a city distinctively com¬ mercial, the population of London should be free from con¬ straint. On the contrary, the social condition of London is one of very great distress and poverty to a large body of the people. 21 a result, evidently, of the absence of employment at wages in productive industries. Mere service is apparently the largest employment in London, and next come the furnishers and arti- zans, whose function ends when a specific thing is done, or some material put in shape. A large portion of this is productive in¬ dustry in some degree, but not in the highest degree. Of the vast quantities of raw material received and sold in London, the merest fragment only is retained there for manufacture. None of the wool, or cotton, or silk, hemp or flax, iron, steel, or other metals, remains in London to be completely manufactured. So little is known of what its industries really are, that it is easier to say what they are not; or, that they scarcely embrace any¬ thing common to the other great cities of England. They must, however, be very large in some of the arts and elegant articles, the more costly appliances of wealth and luxury. But these in¬ dustries are not sufficient in their range to furnish employment to the whole people, and the enormous wealth of the unproduc¬ tive classes, is lost by the maintainance of others in mere service, without being a stimulus to production and saving on the part of the great body of those who waver between the scanty employment possible to them on the one hand, and open vice and crime on the other. The shocking aggregations of poverty and vice that now astonish England, are the direct result of the want of employ¬ ment in productive industries. The growing wealth of the richer quarters gives no relief to the poor and dangerous quar¬ ters ; they have no' interests in common, and no exchange of products. “ Outcast London ” is the human waste of a falsely organized society, thrown away because wealthy London has no use for it, and helpless in its poverty because none of its wretched members have ever been taught the practice or even the ex¬ istence of productive forms of industry. It may be said that such industries are incompatable with the social state of Lon¬ don, and its great distinction as a metropolitan city. It is claimed and believed that it is the business of London to trade, and the business of Manchester and other cities to manufacture ^ yet the error of this assumption is apparent in the result that almost a quarter of a million of people of these great English 22 cities have become paupers or incurably vicious out-casts in fact, and almost in justice, if their present worthlessness was the result of their own choice. London has a population of 3,814,5 7 1 b Y the census of 1881 ; estimated to be 4,000,000 at the present time. The vicious and the paupers are fully five per cent, of this number, although no statistics worthy of attention appear to have been made up as to the number of persons requiring charitable or public support, cither as paupers, vagrants, or criminals of all grades. The National Review , for Nov., 1883, has a remarkable article entitled “ Laborers and Artizans Dwellings, by the Marquis of Salisbury,” from which I take the following extract: “The condition of the dwellings of the wage-earning classes has occupied public attention for many years, and many efforts have been made to improve them. It excites more general at¬ tention now than has ever been drawn to it before, and the grave injury, both to morality and health, caused by over¬ crowding, is more generally recognized. . . . The housing of the poor in our great towns, especially in London, is a much more difficult, much more urgent question, for the increase of prosperity tends rather to aggravate the difficulty than to lighten it. . . . Thousands of families have only a single room to dwell in, where they sleep, eat, multiply and die. For this miserable lodging they pay a price ranging from two shillings to five shillings a week. It is difficult to exaggerate the misery which such conditions of life must cause, or the impulse which they must give to vice. The depression of body and mind which they create to an almost insufferable obstacle to the action of any elevating or refining agencies. A report made by the chairman of the London School Board, illustrates the terrible character of this struggle for house-room. Three schools were taken, and the condition of the children was ascertained. They came from 1,129 families; of these, 871 families had only one room to live in. In the majority of these cases the families living in one room contained five or six per¬ sons, in some cases as many as nine.” (He recommends aid to the purchase of unhealthy blocks, and their removal—to be done by way of loan, as was done by Sir Robert Peel, for extension of drainage and improvement of lands,) and cites the Peabody buildings, which earn 3 per cent. only. These, and other aids, “ do house some 60,000 souls.” The Pea- 23 body tenement is of two rooms, with a share of the wash-house, average rent 4s. 4d. . . . “ They have not been able to re¬ duce their rents sufficiently to meet the wants of the classes for whom help is most needed. The average earnings of the head of a family, in each of their tenements, is jQi. 3s. 4d., and as the average rent is 4s. 4d., “ it bears a high proportion, even to this rate of wages.” “ The other proposal is to build the im¬ proved lodgings in country districts, near London, and to organ¬ ize a system of cheap trains, by which the workmen could come in daily to their work. ... In Glasgow, and other provin¬ cial towns, the removal of the workmens’ dwellings to the sub¬ urbs, has answered very well, but in London, so far as the actual experiment has gone, it is disappointing. Cites Beckenham, seven miles out of town, with five-roomed cottages, at 7s. and 8s. per week, with 2s. per week for their season ticket by the railway. . . . “ They must be men with an income of over ;£ioo per year.” “ It would be a fairly satisfactory state of things if the mass of our burban population were earning j£i. 3s. per week. We know little, far too little, of the material condition of the vast masses who are congregated into modern towns. There are multitudes whose nominal wages fall short of this sum. . . . To be able to pay the Peabody rent, without spending more than a fifth of his income upon his lodging, a workman must earn £55. per year. “The difficulty is greatly aggravated by the singular absence of accurate information on the subject. Statis¬ tics are absolutely silent. That London is over-crowded, we know, and that the ill effects of over-crowding, both on health and character, are very terrible. But we do not know even ap¬ proximately, the number of the sufferers, or where they live, or what they earn. How are we to judge of the measures required to remove this evil, if we have no notion of its extent or of how far it is the off-spring of mere poverty ? ” Cites Miss Octavia Hill and other benevolent ladies who “ have solved the problem, over which the great corporations have failed. They have not been deterred by high priced land ; they have reached the poorest classes, and they have made the opera¬ tion pay.” “ She is convinced that for. the poorest class, with whom she chiefly has to do, it is of the utmost consequence that they should live near the place where they obtain employment. 24 “Miss Hill repudiates the idea that any class of people are not impossible, or that there can be “dens of iniquity which make it necessary that the population should be removed and scat¬ tered.” . . . “ In one way or another, by public or private action, a remedy is possible for very much of this misery and degradation which casts so terrible a shadow over our pros¬ perity.” PARIS. The social condition of the working people of Paris is gener¬ ally understood to be one of great constraint and, often of bitter poverty, but employment differs so widely there from that of American cities, whether in productive industry or in mere service, that it is not easy to make a comparison. The lately pub¬ lished report of the French Statistical Bureau, on the professions of Paris, is quoted by a recent correspondent as follows: “ The recently published report of the Statistical Bureau, on “ the Professions of Paris, conveys a meaning which is of deep “interest. Joseph Prudhomme cares nothing about the number “ of lawyers, of doctors, of property-owners, of tradesmen, or of “ newspaper men, which that great city contains, but when he “ reads that within its walls there are 84,506 persons whose pro- “ fession is to have none—that is to say, none which is avowable “ or legitimate—he reflects. . . . These 84,506 are an army; “ they are about the equivalent, numerically, of four army corps, “of the present French military establishment; and alas! they “ form the legion of evil, of vice, and misery, and rebellion and “ hatred.” “ Parisian pauperism is the burning question of the day, and “ the late Mr. Isaac Periere offered a prize of $20,000 for the best “ methods for its extinction, but though some 800 manuscripts “were sent on to the Examining Committee, I have not heard “ that any practical remedy was suggested for this, the greatest “ and most alarming of all social evils. Go along the boulevards “ at any time about midnight, and you will remark every bench “and step along their line occupied by squalid wretches, hud¬ dled together, seemingly asleep. Evidently they are waiting “ for something. The next day’s newspaper will give you an “ answer, when you read in them that some benighted pedestrian “ has been garroted and robbed, and left for dead on the pave- “ ment. ” ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA. An official return of the social condition of the population of St. Petersburg, was made at the census of 1881, the leading facts of which are reported by Consul General Stanton as fol¬ lows : The area covered by the city is 25,758 acres ; on which there are 10,920 stone buildings, and 10,226 of wood, 21,146 in all, and 131,005 apartments in these buildings, an average of 62 to each. The total population is 861,920, an average of 4of- persons to each house. “ The conditions of life in St. Petersburg, in addition to the swampy ground on which it stands, are most unfavorable. A fourth of all the houses have their cellars, and one-third of them their garrets inhabited. The greatest poverty and squalor abound in the suburbs. Apartments of one and two rooms form the third part of the lodgings existing in the capital. The physical condition of the young men of St. Petersburg is very poor; half, only, of those liable to military service come up to the standard required. The illegitimate births have greatly in¬ creased, rising from 4,143 in 1868, to 6,774 in 1880, that is, from 23 to 27 per cent, of the total number of births in each case. “ The total attendance at the hospital is 110,000, so that every eighth person may be said to be a hospital patient. Typhoid and scarlet fevers, and diphtheria, may be said to be endemic. “The annual rental calculated on 64,424 lodgings in 1869 has risen from $4,350,000 in that year, to $15,500,000, from 74,462 lodgings in 1881. The average rental per lodging has risen from $153 to $207, although it is estimated that more than 17,- 000 lodgings are now vacant, and business generally is in a most depressed condition. “ But scanty and disconnected data exist of the trade and in¬ dustry of St. Petersburg. In 1881 there were 22,139 trading establishments and workshops, of which 6,675 were artizans shops, and 386 were large mercantile establishments. Of the latter, 368 were private establishments, employing 64,698 hands, 9.2 per cent, being minors; and 18 were government works, employing 9,428 hands, 7.8 per cent, being minors. Classified according to their number and the number of their employees, come first the brass foundries and mechanical hands, numbering 62 shops, and 16,708 hands ; then cotton mills, number 30, with 16,418 hands; then tobacco mills, 21, with 7,573 hands; then ollow breweries and distilleries. Among the important branches should also be mentioned the chemical industry, the tanneries, 19 ; the India rubber works, metal works, brick-works, and tex¬ tile works, other than cotton mills.” M m&mM