578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
the two-roomed houses is rarely less than $2.38 and is usually about 
$3.57 a month. The chief food is potatoes and salt, bread, and a pepper 
soup made of water, bread, a little fat, and plenty of pepper. Meat is 
rarely eaten, and when indulged in is usually in the form of soup meat 
or sausage. 
Uperatives generally eat five times a day, and rye bread is nearly always 
taken. The first breakfast consists of coffee, made chiefly of roasted grain, and 
a piece of bread or roll. Sometimes a bowl of hot water with a little flour 
stirred in is taken instead of coffee. The dinner is at midday. The morning, 
afternoon and evening meals are much lighter, and in them beer often occupies 
a place. 
A spinning master, in the woolen mills at Aix-la-Chapelle, receives 
$9 to $14 per week; operatives, $5 to $6; other help, mostly girls, $4.50 
to $5; weaving master, $9 to $14; regulators or setters, $7 to $10.50; 
weavers, $6 to $8.40; head darner, $8 to $10; head darner’s assistants, 
$5 to $7. Prices of food, clothing and fuel in Aix-la-Chapelle are: 
beefsteak, per pound, 27 to 30 cents; other beef, 20 to 25 cents; ham, 
40 to 55 cents; sausage, 10 to 30 cents; pork, 20 to 25 cents; horse, 
10 to 12 cents; flour, 3 to 6 cents; potatoes, 1 to 2 cents; dried Bosian 
prunes, 6 to 8 cents; California prunes, 15 to 18 cents; cheese, 10 to 
30 cents; butter, 10 to 40 cents; white bread, 4 to 6 cents; black rye 
bread (4 lbs.), 12 to 14 cents; workmen’s shoes, $1.25 to $2.25; work- 
men’s suits, $1.50 to $2.00; workmen’s dress suit, $3.00 to $8.00; coal 
(per 100 lbs.), 40 to 55 cents. 
More than 25 per cent. of the factory operatives of Aix-la-Chapelle have 
their homes in Holland, whence they come each morning (some as far as 
thirty miles) and return each evening. For this they pay 75 cents a week for 
the “workmen’s railroad ticket.” They mostly own little houses with one 
fourth to one acre of garden or field. They have a cow and a few pigs or keep 
some goats, and bake their own bread. They are allowed a few days off each 
year to till their fields. They manage to live very cheaply; a family of father, 
mother and four children will live on 60 cents a day. Flour is 20 per cent. and 
meat 25 per cent. cheaper in Holland than in Aix-la-Chapelle. Most of these 
country home dwellers have a savings-bank account or deposit of a few hundred 
dollars. 
Another 15 per cent. of the workers live in adjoining German vil- 
lages where they either own little fields or pay $12 to $14 rent per 
year. In the city a two-room house rents at $4 to $6 per month. 
Twenty-five per cent. of the glass grinders in Bavaria work more 
than eleven hours per day. In the Breslau district 58 per cent. of the 
glass-grinders work from ten to eleven hours per day. Japan has be- 
come such a keen competitor in the glass industry that Germany fears 
opposition if a law limiting the hours of labor be passed. 
The manufacture of dolls is a business of no small dimensions in 
Germany. In the doll factories the minimum weekly wages are: Male 
adults, $2.85; male minors, 95 cents; female adults, $1.80; female 
minors, 85 cents and the maximum wages are less than double these, 
being $4.75, $1.45, $3.60 and $1.55, respectively. 
