Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/37

Rh approximation of the labor power and its distribution among major occupations:

Farmers................00.0006 Lecce ceeeeaue 7,000,000 Farm laborers................0 0000 cc eeee ec eeeee 7,000,000 Lumbermen........... 00.0 c cece tenes enees 200,000 Coal miners......... 0.00 cece ccc eee teaes 750,000 Metal miners and quarrymen.................... 200,000 Petroleum producers..................-2ee sere 50,000 General laborers...........0.0. 0.00 cc cece eeceees 4,000,000 Builders......... 0.0... c ccc cece eee eeen 2,800,000 Factories... 0.00... ccc cece een tee et erenes 7,200,000 Transportation...........0.-0.0 ccc cence ee eens 2,800,000 os (<r 4,000,000 Public service.........0... 0.0.0 cece cece we eeeee 500,000 Private servants........ 0.00. ccee cece eens eeaes 4,000,000 Clerks (not elsewhere included)................. 500,000

Total... . cece ccc eect eeseneees 41,000,000

This was an industrial classification rather than an occupational. Thus, the clerical class is distributed among the industries in which employed instead of being segregated as a class. The total number of persons engaged in clerical work is given at 2,000,000 in one estimate, but that figure would manifestly duplicate persons entered under other classifications in the above table, and I used the figure of 500,000 as a conjectural allowance for those not elsewhere included, arriving at an estimate of the total number of workers that was a little larger than that of the Department of Labor and a little smaller than that of the Provost Marshal General.

The total population of the United States at the middle of 1916 is estimated at 101,722,000. The num- ber of workers estimated for that period was conse- quently about 40 per cent of the total population. At