434 History of Inland Transport 



The range of employment, from unskilled to highly skilled, 

 is so great in the railway world that to lump together all 

 the different grades, and then strike a so-called " average," 

 which gives too high a figure for one large body of men and 

 too low a figure for another, must needs be far from satis- 

 factory. 



General averages are further reduced by the inclusion 

 therein of a large number of boys. The table given on pages 

 405-6 shows that the total number of railway servants employed 

 on December 31, 1910, was 608,750 ; but in this total there 

 are no fewer than 43,584 boys (including signal-box lads), 

 and their wages, as boys, must needs reduce the average 

 of the wages paid to the adults. If, for example, we add 

 together the six shillings a week paid to a boy of fourteen 

 or fifteen employed as engine-cleaner and the thirty shillings 

 a week paid to a certain grade of signalmen, we get an " aver- 

 age " of eighteen shillings a week for the two ; but no one 

 could argue that this result would give a real idea of actual 

 conditions. 



Then the average for the United Kingdom is below the 

 average for England and Wales because of the inclusion in 

 the former of the wages paid in Ireland, where the scale is 

 distinctly lower than is the case of England and Wales ; 

 whilst the inclusion in the figures for England and Wales of 

 the wages for numerous small and none too prosperous lines 

 gives a general average below what would be the actual 

 average on the lines of the leading English companies. 



Subject to these considerations, I reproduce from the Board 

 of Trade " Report on Changes in Rates and Wages and Hours 

 of Labour in the United Kingdom, in 1910," two tables which 

 give the average weekly earnings of railwaymen in (i) the 

 United Kingdom, and (2) various parts of the United King- 

 dom separately. The figures are based on information supplied 

 by twenty-seven railway companies, employing over 90 per 

 cent of the total number of railway servants in the United 

 Kingdom ; they relate to workpeople employed in the coach- 

 ing, goods, locomotive and engineers' departments, exclusive 

 of clerical staff and salaried officers ; and they refer to actual 

 earnings (including overtime), and not simply to rates of 

 wages. The tables are as follows : 



