At the Works a Study of a Manufacturing Town
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE EXPENDITURE OF THE WORKMAN In considering the pecuniary circumstances of the ironworkers we are describing, we should not expect to find many of them in absolute poverty, since we are dealing only with those who are employed at the ironworks, and assumed, therefore, all to be at woik and in receipt of regular wages. The dire need of the people who cannot find employment has been so ever-present to our minds in recent days that we are apt to believe that once employment is secured, once what seems like regular work is obtained, all must be well, so long as the workman is steady and knows how to manage his money. But when we take this rosy view we postulate a great deal, and we forget how terribly near the margin of disaster the man, even the thrifty man, walks, who has, in ordinary normal co
...nditions, but just enough to keep himself on. The spectre of illness and disability is always confronting the working-man ; the possibility of being frcm one day to the other plunged into actual want is always confronting his family. The wages of the ironworkers, broadly speaking, range from 18s. to 8os. per week. There are some boys, not many, employed at the works who receive less. Out of 1,270 people paid in a given week, 23 (these were boys only) received under I0s. per week, 50 more boys received under 20s., 96 men, mostly labourers, received under 20s., 398 received from between 2os. and 30s., 410 between 303. and 40s., 235 between 40s. and 6os., 58 between 6os. and 8os., and 4 over 8os. When a man first begins work, he is not paid until 4he end of the second week, instead of being paid at the end of the first. The employers, therefore, always owe him a week's wages, which is practically a surety for them that he will not disappear at a moment's notice. ...
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