DETAILED STATEMENT BY NATIONALITIES. DETAILED STATEMENT BY NATIONALITIES. HOURS OF LABOR AND PREVAILING WAGE RATE IN THE BUILDING TRADES. It is proposed in this chapter of the report to make comparisons of the hours of labor and rate of wages in the building trades which prevailed in Connecticut in the year 1893, with the scale of hours and wages which obtain in the current year of 1905. For purposes of comparison the figures as presented in the ninth annual (1893) report of the bureau are used and explanatory of those figures the following is reproduced from that report. "In recent years the men employed in the building trades have persistently fought for fewer daily hours of labor, even resorting in frequent instances to strikes, in a determined endeavor to accomplish their purpose. The struggle, tentatively successful in some localities, is continued in other places, notably in the larger cities and towns where numbers give strength to the opposing forces-the contractors and the trade unions. The inquiry instituted by the Bureau into this subject was confined to the cities and towns of Connecticut having a population, according to the last census, of 5,000 or over. There are thirty such towns in the state, and as there are not sufficient building trades people in one of the thirty to warrant a report, the returns are confined to twenty-nine towns." "The information sought was the prevailing hours in each or the building trades, the average wages paid in each. The information was obtained in a general way from both contractors and employes, but the inquiry was sufficiently extensive and searching to secure accuracy of results."* From the ninth annual (1893) report of the Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics. In this connection it might properly be said at this time as it was very succinctly stated in 1893, that "the returns show an intimate connection between short hours and organization." "The short day is found in towns and trades where the trade organization is not reported, but in the majority of cases, the ten-hour towns are the non-union towns." For obvious reasons comparisons should be made regarding the towns in which trade organizations existed, or did not exist in 1893, with the union or non-union towns in 1905. It is interesting to note that of the twenty-nine towns from which reports were received in the trade of bricklayers in 1893, and with which comparisons are made in 1905, fifteen were classified as nine-hour towns in 1893, of which two were "all union," ten "part union" and three "non-union," while the remaining fourteen towns wherein the ten-hour day prevailed all were classified as "non-union." In the carpenters' trade a like condition is shown in the report for 1893, the twelve nine-hour towns consisted of one “all union," eight "part union" and three "non-union." Of the sixteen ten-hour towns fourteen were "non-union" and two "part union." In the lathers' trade in 1893, of the nine-hour towns one was "all union," two "part union" and eleven "non-union." The ten-hour towns consisted of eleven, which were classified as "non-union." In the masons' trade fourteen towns were reported as being nine-hour towns, of which two were classified as "all union," ten "part union" and two "non-union." All of the ten-hour towns, fourteen in number were classified as "non-union." In the trades of masons' tenders, painters, plumbers, slaters, tin and sheet-iron workers, the ratio of all union, part union and non-union towns were approximately the same in 1893 as outlined in the comparisons made with the trades in the paragraph preceding. In passing it should be stated that the figures concerning the prevailing hours of labor and wage rates in 1905 are based entirely upon the minimum union scale which obtains in the various trades and several towns with which comparisons are |