< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu
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578
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the two-roomed houses is rarely less than $2.38 and is usually about $3.57 a month. The chief food is potatoes and salt, bread, and a pepper soup made of water, bread, a little fat, and plenty of pepper. Meat is rarely eaten, and when indulged in is usually in the form of soup meat or sausage.

Operatives generally eat five times a day, and rye bread is nearly always taken. The first breakfast consists of coffee, made chiefly of roasted grain, and a piece of bread or roll. Sometimes a bowl of hot water with a little flour stirred in is taken instead of coffee. The dinner is at midday. The morning, afternoon and evening meals are much lighter, and in them beer often occupies a place.

A spinning master, in the woolen mills at Aix-la-Chapelle, receives $9 to $14 per week; operatives, $5 to $6; other help, mostly girls, $4.50 to $5; weaving master, $9 to $14; regulators or setters, $7 to $10.50; weavers, $6 to $8.40; head darner, $8 to $10; head darner's assistants, $5 to $7. Prices of food, clothing and fuel in Aix-la-Chapelle are: beefsteak, per pound, 27 to 30 cents; other beef, 20 to 25 cents; ham, 40 to 55 cents; sausage, 10 to 30 cents; pork, 20 to 25 cents; horse, 10 to 12 cents; flour, 3 to 6 cents; potatoes, 1 to 2 cents; dried Bosian prunes, 6 to 8 cents; California prunes, 15 to 18 cents; cheese, 10 to 30 cents; butter, 10 to 40 cents; white bread, 4 to 6 cents; black rye bread (4 lbs.), 12 to 14 cents; workmen's shoes, $1.25 to $2.25; workmen's suits, $1.50 to $2.00; workmen's dress suit, $3.00 to $8.00; coal (per 100 lbs.), 40 to 55 cents.

More than 25 per cent, of the factory operatives of Aix-la-Chapelle have their homes in Holland, whence they come each morning (some as far as thirty miles) and return each evening. For this they pay 75 cents a week for the "workmen's railroad ticket." They mostly own little houses with one fourth to one acre of garden or field. They have a cow and a few pigs or keep some goats, and bake their own bread. They are allowed a few days off each year to till their fields. They manage to live very cheaply; a family of father, mother and four children will live on 60 cents a day. Flour is 20 per cent, and meat 25 per cent, cheaper in Holland than in Aix-la-Chapelle. Most of these country home dwellers have a savings-bank account or deposit of a few hundred dollars.

Another 15 per cent, of the workers live in adjoining German villages where they either own little fields or pay $12 to $14 rent per year. In the city a two-room house rents at $4 to $6 per month.

Twenty-five per cent, of the glass grinders in Bavaria work more than eleven hours per day. In the Breslau district 58 per cent, of the glass-grinders work from ten to eleven hours per day. Japan has become such a keen competitor in the glass industry that Germany fears opposition if a law limiting the hours of labor be passed.

The manufacture of dolls is a business of no small dimensions in Germany. In the doll factories the minimum weekly wages are: Male adults, $2.85; male minors, 95 cents; female adults, $1.80; female minors, 85 cents and the maximum wages are less than double these, being $4.75, $1.45, $3.60 and $1.55, respectively.

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