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. 
“Tt 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 Reichenberg, 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 Reichenberg 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 
