Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/489

Rh, at least for transportation agencies, showing the classified incomes of the men higher up.

There seems to be no very good reason why clerks should be classed among "salaried employees" rather than among "wage-earners," except that they are paid by the month, Nevertheless, they are so classed in virtually all of the reports, including the Census reports. For that reason they are so treated in this study.

The railroad industry may be passed by with a word of comment, since its figures take the undesirable form of "averages." The general office clerks (30,613 in all) receive average daily compensations of $3.49. The uniformity of their compensation throughout the country is astonishing, in view of the usual variation in wages between the east and the west. In the Eastern District they received $2.56; Southern, $2.39, and Western, $2.44. The other two groups of railway employees whose services might be classed as clerical are station agents (15,309 in 1911), and telegraph operators and dispatchers (14,857 in 1911). Their daily compensation is very uniform with that of the clerks. The average for the United States was: station agents, $2.17, and operators and dispatchers, $2.44. As in the ease of the clerks, the rate of compensation varies only slightly from one part of the country to another. Apparently the salary rates of men doing clerical work in the railroad industry lie somewhere between $650 and $900 per year.

The statistics furnished from the telephone industry are worthy of some attention. The total number of male clerks employed by the Bell system was 2,650. Of this number, one tenth received less than $40 per month, one third received less than $60, seven tenths received less than $80, and 52, or about 5 per cent., were paid more than $125. For the 257 male bookkeepers the facts show a slightly lower range. Only three received over $125, while four fifths received less than $80. Apparently in the telephone industry, as represented by the Bell interests, the bulk of the male clerical force is paid from $600 to $1,000 per year.

The female employees of the Bell system who were engaged in the work of clerical grades are compensated at a rate much lower than that for males. A little more than half (1,015) of the 1,862 female clerks were paid less than $40 per month, while nineteen twentieths were paid less than $50. The female "operators," who comprise the great bulk of telephone employees, report similar wages. The telephone company, employing 16,229 operators, paid seven eighths of them less