PART II. OCCUPATIONS AND EARNINGS OF MEN, AT TWO PERIODS, TEN YEARS APART. The following tables are based on data collected by the United States Department of Labor, in accordance with a joint resolution of the Fifty-third Congress, which directed the Commissioner of Labor to investigate and report on the conditions attending the employment of women and children, their wages, earnings, the sanitary conditions surrounding their employment and the effect of their competition on the employment and wages of men. The results of the investigation, which was extended over every manufacturing State in the Union, are set forth in seven general tables in the report of the Department of Labor for 1896. So much of Table No. 1 of that report as relates to the manufacturing establishments of New Jersey is drawn on for this presentation, and the principal table is supplemented by four summaries, in which their main features of interest are clearly displayed. The number of establishments considered is seventy-seven, and the occupations and earnings of men, women and children are given for each of them at two periods of time, ten years apart; also extended information as to the sex and age of the employes-first, for what has been designated as the "former period," and, second, for what has been designated as the "present period." By "present period" is meant some time during which the canvass was made—that is, the year 1896; and by "former period" is meant some week antedating that time by at least ten years. In the general tables the nature of each industry is given, the number of employes, male and female, over and under eighteen years of age, and the average weekly earnings per employe. In the summary tables the aggregates for these several headings are given in absolute figures and also in percentages, to permit of more ready comparison. Much light is shed by this investigation on the question of the tendency of wages, whether upward or downward, and the degree, if any, to which the labor of women and children is supplanting that of men. TABLE 1. Persons Employed at the Two Periods, 1886-1896-By Establishments. SEVENTY-SEVEN ESTABLISHMENTS INVOLVED. 30 40 +3 +25 +8,10 TABLE 1-Concluded. Persons Employed at the Two Periods, 1886-1896-By Establishments. SEVENTY-SEVEN ESTABLISHMENTS INVOLVED. Silk mufflers, handkerchiefs Sportsman's goods........... Suspenders. Saws Tiles Wall paper.... Shoe gores........................................................... Misses', children's shoes.. Women's, misses' and children's shoes. Trunk and bag trimmings.. Vegetable ivory buttons............................................................ Woolen and outing shirts................. ................. Watch-case materials. |