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TXDIANA UXITEESITY 



save a little money, or buy provisions for the idle season during 

 the months of employment, but the great majority use their 

 income as they get it. The native laborers live rather better 

 than the foreigners, many of whom are said to save and send 

 money home. 



During the weeks of severe winter weather, however, when 

 the extreme cold makes work in the cpiarries impossible and often 

 prevents work in the mills, the men are frequently sore pressed. 

 ]\Iany have not the instinct of saving and live from hand to 

 mouth, and those who have saved at all have rarely sufficient 

 to carry them through this period of trial. When out of funds, 

 they do not, except in rare cases of continued sickness, have re- 

 course to charity, as might be supposed. The records of the 

 charity society of Bloomington in two years shoAV but two cases 

 of relief to men whose regular work is in the stone industr;^^ 

 and in these cases the amoimts were small and the cause pro- 

 longed sickness of the wage earner. 



Credit in the stores is the chief source of support to these 

 people during the idle season. Merchants quite generally give 

 credit to the workmen in the stone industry from pay-day to pay- 

 day during the term of employment, and the workmen usually 

 pay such accounts promptly. Hence it is quite natural that the 

 merchants should feel inclined to extend credit to such cus- 

 tomers when they are out of work. 



These conditions would seem to favor such an institution as 

 company stores. There are, hoAvever, no such stores in the oolitic 

 district. The nearest approach to such a system is found in 

 those cases where an employer in the stone industry is also en- 

 gaged in the mercantile business, and gives credit rather freely 

 to the quarrymen in his employ, expecting to take his pay di- 

 rectly from the wages of his employees. Usually xhe workmen 

 give the merchant orders upon the stone producing company and 

 these orders may be based upon wages actually earned or merely 

 anticipated. Such merchants are usually quite willing to 

 "carry" the Avorkmen employed in their quarries through the 

 idle winter season, since their ultimate payment is secured by 

 the prospective earnings of the men. But in these cases the 

 temptation to evade payment by changing the place of employ- 

 ment is correspondingly increased, for the amount of indebted- 

 ness thus accumulated sometimes reaches a hundred dollars or 

 more — an amount which the average Avorkman finds it A^erA^ hard 



