Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/98

84 telephones, etc. In other things, with equal certainty, it has decreased, e.g., railway equipment and fabrications for house building. The construction of railways and houses has been at a diminishing rate.

It is difficult to determine the comparative manufacturing activity in 1913 and 1922 in the aggregate. In mining, railway transportation and building we have positive evidence of diminished efficiency of labor, which in the aggregate is not offset by the improvements of management, or but barely. There remains but manufacturing as the other great branch of producing industry, apart from agriculture. We have available the census figures of manufactures for 1914 and 1921, but these are expressed in terms of value, with no quantitative indication, and there is apt to be confusion in such census studies anyhow. However, we may put some reliance upon the census reports of the number of wage earners, which show the following:

It appears therefore that the wage earners in 1921 were a little fewer than in 1914, while the total number of employees (including the salaried men) was a little greater. Both 1914 and 1921 were years of industrial depression, which was far more serious in 1921 than in 1914. Allowance must be made for these conditions.