CHAPTER V

Wages and Efficiency of Wage-earners

The question of wages and working efficiency are so
closely related that they can be better treated together than
separately. The material for this part of the monograph
has been gathered from three sources, namely: a personal
canvass, the records of employment agencies for personal
and domestic help, and the statement of union rates pub¬
lished by the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. It has
not been possible to calculate the time loss by the worker,
and therefore any estimate of annual income based upon
the figures given must be made on the assumption of a full
year of work. This, of course, is not the actual case, es¬
pecially with many wage-earners in domestic and per¬
sonal service.

I.   WAGES  IN  DOMESTIC  AND  PERSONAL  SERVICE

The Employment Agencies' Law of New York City re¬
quires that each agency keep a careful and accurate record
of the wages of those for whom they secure situations, as
well as written references from former employers of each
applicant. Since inspectors from the Bureau of Licenses
have access to these records at any time, they are probably
carefully kept. The material on wages which has been
taken largely from these sources has been arranged to show
the number of individuals who receive a specified wage, be¬
ginning at less than $4.00 and running by $1.00 groups up
to $9.00 and over. There follows (p. 80) a table covering
682 males in twenty-four occupations and 2,138 females in
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