‘Vol. VIII. No. 91. 
IMPERIAL INSTITUTE JOURNAL. 
[July, 1902.] 179 
prevail in American iron and steel works generally. Here we have an 
extremely influential factor in the determination of profits. The recent ten- 
dency in the United States has been to reduce the percentage of skilled 
labour employed as far as possible, and substitute unskilled labour, this 
operation being facilitated by the increasing use of automatic machinery. It 
is clear that if one firm employs 10 or 15 per cent, more skilled labour than 
another, the wages bill of that firm will be higher than that of its rival, without 
any necessarily corresponding gain. As a matter of fact, the concerns that 
employ higher percentages of skilled labour do usually consider that they 
gain thereby, either in a higher quality of work, in fewer wastes, in a larger 
output, or otherwise. Hence it is desirable that each case in which the ques- 
tion of skilled versus unskilled labour arises should be judged on its own 
merits. The most important fact disclosed is that, over an area sufficiently 
large and varied to be absolutely typical and representative of the great 
iron and steel industry of the United States, the average wages paid over 
the two periods named were ios. id. for skilled and 6s. 7d. for unskilled or 
common labour, which every employer at home may compare with his own 
rates, and thereby satisfy himself as to the extent of the real difference 
between the two countries. 
Colonies. — The question of the settlement in South Africa of time- 
expired soldiers and reservists is receiving considerable attention in view of 
the demand for labour which is accompanying the resumption of industry. 
The mine-owners and other large employers of labour are appealed to to 
give a preference to the soldier, who, after fighting their battle, is anxious to 
settle down in the country where he has made their interests secure. The 
disciplinary training which soldiers receive, without doubt makes them good 
overseers of native labour and good steady workers themselves. A supply 
of men with good characters can always be assured from the National 
Association for the Employment of Ex-Soldiers, and during the next six 
months some 40,000 to 50,000 Reservists would be ready to return to their 
normal occupations. In order to assist both those who want work and those 
who want workers, branches of this Association have been established at 
Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Cape Town and Newcastle. An unofficial 
view of labour conditions in Johannesburg is given by a correspondent of 
South Africa . He says that from every coast town train-loads of returning 
refugees arrive daily. These men, for the most part, are labourers, 
artisans, and miners anxious to get back to their old employment and their 
old rate of pay. Durban and Cape Town, and Port Elizabeth, have had 
work to offer, but the work has been mostly of a make-shift character, and 
wages have been relatively low, excepting, perhaps, in Cape Town, but so 
far, at any rate, wages remain at their former level. Hundreds of working 
men are coming back every week, and there is a continuous demand for 
labour on all sides. On the mines the rock-drill men are making as much 
as before, and the drill sharpener draws his ^7 or ^7. ios. per week. 
Engineers’ wages range from ^4 to according to ability and the 
responsibility of the post. Storekeepers’ billets are worth about ^35 a 
month. Practically there is no change in wages for white men working 
in and about the mines. The pages of the Star well nigh overflow with 
advertisements offering employment to painters, masons, bricklayers, paper- 
hangers, glaziers, and shop-hands of every description. Of course, there 
is another side. Living expenses are undoubtedly more onerous than 
formerly, but this is due to causes of a purely temporary character. The 
working man, if he were single, could formerly live at a boarding house for 
25s. to 30s. a week. His fare was rough, but it was wholesome and 
substantial. To five in the same way to-day will cost him £2. 5s. or 
£ 2 . ios. Foodstuffs are scarcer, owing to the denudation of the country 
and the enormous demand made upon the imported supplies by the army. 
Nevertheless, now that the railway service is becoming practically un- 
interrupted, goods are coming up rapidly, and prices in the course of a few 
weeks must inevitably fall. It is fair to suppose that in a couple of months 
the working man will not be paying much more for his food than he did 
before the war. The demand for house accommodation is enormous and the 
supply limited. The result is that small houses that were letting before the 
war at ^6 and ^7 a month are now being let for £9 or £10. There 
are all the premonitory symptoms of a building boom, and the score or so 
of trades immediately interested should be beneficially affected. 
Regarding the attractions offered by the Dominion of Canada to 
intending British settlers, and the practical assistance which the Department 
of Agriculture is prepared to afford them, an official statement was recently 
issued. The Department of Agriculture and Dairying endeavours by every 
means in its power to make the agriculturist and the dairyman succeed. The 
cool Transatlantic transportation problem was solved by it last season, by 
the introduction of cooled air accommodation on ocean steamers, and now 
cheese of softer and richer body than heretofore is being placed on the 
British markets. To further improve the quality of Canadian cheese the 
Government are now erecting consolidated model cheese-curing rooms in 
certain convenient centres. To-day in Canada there are some 3,000 cheese 
factories, with an annual aggregate output of 180,000,000 pounds of cheese, 
or an average of about 60,000 pounds per factory per annum ; the new 
curing rooms will increase the value of the same quantity by $1,000 per 
factory annually. To encourage improvement in farming, for the last six 
years upwards of 30,000 Canadian farmers have participated annually in a 
free distribution of grain seeds, 60 tons of seed being yearly distributed for 
the systematic testing of promising varieties of agricultural crops. The 
Government do not wait, for instance, for the development of “ smut ” 
in wheat, but just before seeding time send out to every known farmer 
and newspaper in the Dominion an article showing how to prevent 
the disease by treating the seed in a solution and so ensuring sound 
crops. Experts are periodically sent to Great Britain and Ireland to 
ascertain how readily to extend those markets for Canadian products, 
and when they return home they give the results of their investigations 
through the same media to flour- and oatmeal-millers who have a hand 
in preparing the products of grains for the home and foreign markets ■ 
to the curers and packers of meats and the manufacturers of cheese and 
butter ; to those engaged in the transportation and commerce on grain, hay, 
live stock, meats, butter and cheese, poultry and fruit, as well as the canners 
of fruit and vegetables, and the raisers of poultry and eggs ; orchard 
cultivation, potato culture, how to rotate crops so as to secure the utmost 
grain from the soil without depleting its virtue, the analyses of soils and 
advice as to the best crops to sow to ensure the most profitable yield and to 
restore to the ground by natural means those chemicals of which the soil has 
been despoiled by a former crop ; how to detect and destroy noxious grasses 
and weeds. These and a thousand-and-one other wants of a farmer, the 
dairyman, the orchardist, and every one else concerned are the constant care 
and solicitude of the Canadian Government, and are supplied freely for the 
asking to everybody interested throughout this vast country, without even 
the cost of postage, letters addressed to the department passing through the 
mails in Canada free. 
India. — An interesting account of the manufacturing industries of India 
is given in Mr. O’Conor’s Moral and Material Progress for the past financial 
year. The domestic industries of India, such as weaving and spinning, 
pottery, brasswork, ironwork, and art work of many kinds, continue to be 
practised after ancient methods all over the continent of India, but Indian 
fabrics and products, made on a small scale by workers at their homes, have 
for years past been giving way before the cheaper cotton yarns and fabrics, 
and the iron or steel products of British factories. Meanwhile, without any 
protection, favour, or advantage other than is afforded by cheap Indian labour 
and by production of raw materials in India, an important manufacturing 
industry has been growing up, and steam-power factories are at work, among 
which those for spinning and weaving cotton, for spinning and weaving jute, 
for making paper, for husking and cleaning rice, for sawing timber, and for 
brewing beer, are the most important. Steam power is also largely employed 
in factories, on tea gardens and indigo estates. There were at the end of the 
year 1 900-1 in British India and Native States 190 cotton mills (of which 16 
did not work during the year), containing 40,542 looms and 4,932,600 spindles, 
and giving employment on an average to 156,000 persons every day. The 
capital invested is said to be more than -£1 1, 000,000. The industry dates 
from 1851, when the first mill was started. The 16 mills which were not 
worked during the year contained 690 looms and 240,000 spindles ; and there 
were other mills in which no work was done for considerable fractions of 
the year, owing to the depressed state of industry. Eighty-four of the mills 
were in Bombay city and 54 elsewhere in the Bombay Presidency, which 
possesses 73 per cent, of the mills, 78 per cent, of the looms, and 72 per cent, 
of the spindles in all India. The number of jute mills in 1900-01 was 35, 
containing 15,242 looms and 315,264 spindles, and employing a daily average 
of 110,462 persons. All the mills, with the exception of one at Cawnpore, 
are in the province of Bengal, and most of them are in the vicinity of 
Calcutta. There were four woollen mills at work at the end of 1900, con- 
taining 22,986 spindles and 594 looms, and producing goods valued at 
^202,000 in the year ; only two of the mills, those at Cawnpore and at 
Dhariwal, in the Punjab, are of great importance. There were eight paper 
mills at work in India, employing a da ly average of 4,871 hands, and pro- 
ducing in 1900 about 46 millions pounds of paper, valued at ^416,800. In 
1900 there were 28 breweries at work, which produced during the year 
4,951,700 gallons of beer and porter, 618,600 gallons less than they produced 
in the previous year. The largest brewery was at Murree, in the Punjab 
Himalayas, and the output of that concern was over 718,000 gallons in 1900. 
Among other large industries which are shown in the Indian returns for 1899, 
may be mentioned Bone-crushing factories, 19; coffee works, 23 ; cotton 
and woollen spinning and weaving establishments, not classed as mills, 27; 
dairy farms, 72; dye works, 6; jute presses, 142; lac factories, 15 1; oil 
mills, 208 ; pottery and tile factories, 146 ; printing presses, 928 ; rice 
mills, 256 ; rope factories, 21 ; silk filatures, 66 ; silk mills or factories, 33 ; 
soap factories, 31; sugar factories, 193; tanneries, 147; tobacco and cigar 
factories, 24 ; timber mills, 94. The total number of persons employed in 
the above industries was 695,895, distributed as follows : — Cotton mills, 
156,039; jute mills, 110,462; woollen mills, 2,874; paper mills, 4,871; 
other industries, 421,649. 
Foreign Countries. — In the German colonies in Africa, as in our own 
colonies, the labour supply is an important problem, and the regulation 
of this question, says a Foreign Office Report, is being gradually 
advanced. Some districts, which were formerly dependent on imported 
labour, are now, it is said, able to find a sufficient supply of native 
labourers, and in the East African plantations near the coast Chinese 
and Malay labourers are being superseded by Wanyamwesi natives. On 
the plantations in the Cameroons natives are now being employed instead 
of the blacks formerly imported from Togoland and other places, and 
attempts are being made to introduce the system of piece-work labour 
in the Cameroons and German East Africa. In Samoa and German 
South Sea Protectorates the solution of the labour problem is found 
more difficult. The British Consul at Munich reports that the new regula- 
tions for the German Empire for the shortening of Sunday labour are 
generally carried out, except in the case of some large breweries, flour mills 
and brick works. In Bavaria the hours of labour have remained the same, 
except in the case of some textile industries, when they have been shortened. 
There exist three labour colonies in Bavaria, Simonshof, Herzogsagmiihle, 
and Schernau, each for 100 persons. These colonies furnish agricultural 
or industrial labour to the unemployed, without distinction of class or religion, 
and are especially adapted to persons who have been in prison. The wages 
are lower than the rate of the district, and for the first fortnight no wages 
are given. Only Bavarians are eligible to work in these colonies, and, on 
entering, they are obliged to sign an agreement to obey the rules of the 
establishment. The founding of a fourth colony in Southern Bavaria is 
under consideration. 
In the United States, the strike in the anthracite coal-fields continues, 
and the consequent interruption of work increases. The owners met with 
great difficulty in their attempts to reopen the mines, owing to the engineers 
and pump-hands going on strike as well. In well-informed circles, however, 
the idea prevails that the strike will not gain further ground. 
