CONDITIONS AFFECTING EMIGRATION 573 



and wife work alternately eighteen hours a day. Some button makers 

 receive 60 cents per week. 



Weavers who make at home silk and Jacquard and art work earn $1.40 to 

 $4 a week. The straw and bast matters earn from 20 to 40 cents a day, but 

 after the "season" the wages are lowered. Wood carvers earn $1.20 to $2.80 

 a week, and the brush makers at Gabel from $1.60 to $2 a week. The wood 

 carvers at the Wittigtal earn $1.60 to $3.60 a week, and the wood and mat 

 makers at Niemes from $1.20 to $1.60 a week. 



People take work home with them from some of the lace factories. 



Around perhaps the only table in the only room, in a little house, the 

 family assemble, the man, his wife, the grandparents and children with other 

 members of the family, if there be any. When evening comes on, an oil lamp, 

 a candle, or even chips of wood are the only lights by which they can work. 

 On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays the finished articles are taken to the 

 factories and paid for. 



"It is very hard now," said one of the lace exporters from Neudek the 

 other day, " to get people in summer to make laces. They prefer to go to work 

 in fields or picking hops, for which they get higher wages than by making laces. 

 Children get 8 cents a day at that time and adults from 25 cents to even 40 cents, 

 and of course we can not afford to pay such high wages for lace making." 



Austria-Hungary's housing problem becomes acute in her city and 

 factory districts. In 1900, 43 per cent. (592,134 persons) of the in- 

 habitants of Vienna lived in houses of one room, exclusive of kitchen. 

 In Eeichenberg, a decade earlier, 57.5 per cent, of the dwellings, and 

 in the suburbs 79.2 per cent., were without kitchens. In many of these 

 houses the inmates did their manufacturing work. Similar conditions 

 were found throughout the empire. Conditions in Eeichenberg have 

 not materially changed since 1890, but lately in other parts of Austria 

 and Hungary a strong movement has set in for the erection of suitable 

 dwellings for the poorer classes. The chief improvements are in the 

 size of rooms, lighting, ventilation and rate of rent rather than in the 

 number of rooms. Many of the model flats have but one room and an 

 attic or one room and a kitchen. In some places tenants are forbidden 

 to take lodgers. The government encourages the building of homes of 

 a certain specified desirable type by exempting the builders from cer- 

 tain forms of taxation. In several cases model houses are rented at 

 such a figure as to yield but 3 per cent, on the investment. 



Italy 

 Italy has more than 650 mills for the manufacture of cotton fab- 

 rics. By far the larger part are in northern Italy, but the government 

 is trying to increase the number of mills in southern Italy. 



To this end land has been offered free of cost for mill sites, taxes will be 

 remitted for ten years, and textile machinery for mills so locating will be 

 admitted free of duty. 



Labor is cheaper in the south, but it is also less efficient and mills 

 are there farther from their sources of supply. The number of mills 

 in the south may, however, be expected to increase. Wages in the 



