Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/500

496 actual earnings, as well as the wage rates. Thus far, in the course of this study, wage rates have been considered almost exclusively, and the yearly rate has been derived by multiplying the weekly wage rate by fifty-two, and the monthly wage rate by twelve. Under these circumstance, no allowance is made for loss of time due to sickness, shortage of orders, and other causes of unemployment. The following table for the glass industry makes the contrast in excellent form:

The wage scale shown by this table for the glass industry would lead one to conclude that two fifths of the women were receiving less than $250 per year. As a matter of fact, the proportion of women whose earnings were less than $350 per year was nearly three fifths. Deductions in one form or another nearly always drag a wage scale considerably below its face value.

The wages actually paid in the Chicago slaughtering and meat packing industry are given in a most satisfactory way by J. C. Kennedy in a recent study. Mr. Kennedy obtained access to the pay rolls, and was thus able to discover the wages actually paid during a long period. The figures are peculiarly interesting, relating, as they do, to one of the chief centers in which one of the great industries in the country is carried on. It is, indeed, difficult to overemphasize their importance as portraying the present income situation in a leading industry.

A quarter of the women and a tenth of the men are paid less than a $250 rate; two fifths of the men and nine tenths of the women fall under $500. These figures would be further modified if they made allowances for unemployment throughout the year. As they stand they are the result of a simple process of multiplication.