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INDIANA UNIVERSITY 



ation, one of the workmen's motives for such changes is re- 

 moved; but the practice has by no means ceased. 



Individual operators, through their personal relations with 

 employees, often secure a much greater stability of employment. 

 Several companies have a number of employees who have been in 

 their service continuously for a term of years. One firm offers a 

 reward for continuous service by contracting with its workmen 

 to pay them five per cent of their annual earnings after the 

 completion of the first year's service. The payment is made at 

 Christmas time, and has proved an effective device for securing 

 continuity of service. 



The Workmen. The workers in the Indiana oolitic stone in- 

 dustry are for the most part men who were reared in the stone 

 district or in the counties adjacent thereto and whose ancestors 

 were immigrants into this portion of the State from some of the 

 Southern States, especially North Carolina, Tennessee and Ken- 

 tucky. Some of the first quarrymen appear to have come from 

 the quarries in the neighborhood of Madison, Indiana, and from 

 Pennsylvania, but the quarryman's trade is not highly skilled, 

 and was readily taken up by the young farmers in the vicinity 

 of the quarries. It is probable that the tenant farmers furnished 

 the great majority of this class of workmen, though no data on 

 this point could be had; they drifted here in considerable num- 

 bers from the surrounding counties when the industry began to 

 assume large proportions. 



Until comparatively recent years the proportion of foreign 

 labor in the industry was very small. But of late the industry 

 has expanded much more rapidly than the local supply of labor 

 has increased, and the consequent normal scarcit}^ of labor has 

 resulted in the employment of foreigners, sometimes brought 

 into Indiana expressly for the purpose, sometimes taken on when 

 they chanced to apply. So far as is known, the first employ- 

 ment of foreigTiers in quarries was by David Reed, who employed 

 about twenty Italians in his quarry and mill near Bedford about 

 1882. Of recent years railway construction in the oolitic belt 

 has brought into the region considerable numbers of foreigners, 

 many of whom have been given employment in the quarries. 

 The total number of foreigners in the industry is as yet not 

 great, though it seems to be growing. The greater part of them 

 are Italians, but there are also some Hungarians and Greeks. 



Most of these foreigners are employed in the loAvest grades 

 of labor as shovelers, and the native workmen have sometimes 



