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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Twelfth Census are given to show the contrast between the two industries with respect to this point.
WAGES IN COTTON MILLS AND BOOT AND SHOE FACTORIES IN
NEW ENGLAND
Median Wage*
QDARTttES*
Men
Women
Men
Women
Cotton mills
Boots and shoes
$ 8.50 12.00
$6.00 7.00
$6.50-11.99 9.00-15.49
$5.00-7.99 6 . 00-9 . 49
- These data are taken from Professor Dewey's Report on Employees and Wages (1903). The median
wage together with the two quartiies is considered less misleading than the average wage alone. The "median" is the wage of the operative who stands exactly half way up the wage scale, i. e., half of the operatives are paid less and half are paid more; the first "quartUe" is the wage of the employee who stands one-fourth of the way up the scale and the second quartile that of the employee who is three-fourths of -the way up. To illustrate with the data given above, one-fourth of the men employed in the cotton industry do not get more than $6 . 50 a week, or half do not get more than $8 . 50, and three-fourths do not get above $1 1 . 99. These data therefore make possible a comparison of the wage-scale at three points.
It is, of course, quite obvious that by the payment of high wages, the boot and shoe industry has been able to hold its American working people as the cotton industry has not. There is, however, another possible explanation of this point in the fact that the shoe manufacture is one of the industries in which America has pioneered. In the cotton industry, immigrant operatives were quite likely to be equal and even superior to the native-born in skill and training, but American methods in the making of shoes have been unique, and immigrant labor there- fore has meant for this industry unskilled labor, only a limited amount of which could be utilized.
chines, for girls. Their wages in the mill are very low — some ten to sixteen dollars a month — and as soon as the children are old enough they leave ; the girls going to the stitching machines, the boys to shoemaking." — Report for 1872, p. 389.
