Cost of living in German towns

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 866449027

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93831

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Cost of living in German towns

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stat. Off.

Year of publication:: 1908

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (LXI, 548 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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MAGDEBURG. 31 7 Modern Magdeburg has grown up outside the lines formerly occupied by the fortifications on the north, south and west, while the presence of the Elbe and of the large island already referred to, seems to have checked the growth of the town in an easterly direction, especially owing to the fact that the greater part of the island has always been used as a public park. The more modern parts of Magdeburg have one feature in common with the old town, viz., that the space behind the houses which face any given street has as a rule been used for the erection of further blocks of what are called back and side houses (Hinterhäuser and Seitenhäuser) for the accommodation of people of smaller means than those who occupy the tenements of the front houses. (The back houses, for instance, are largely inhabited by workpeople.) As in most German towns where this system of building prevails, the back house is reached from the street through the main doorway of the corresponding front house, this doorway being, as a rule, wide enough to admit a fire engine in case of need. In other respects the contrasts between modern Magdeburg and the old town are considerable, the distinctive features of the former being the scarcity of the shops, the uniform width of the streets, the existence in many places of special tracks for cyclists, the paving of the roadways with stone setts instead of asphalt, and the extensive use of trees and shrubs for ornamental purposes. The principal factories and works are on the extreme northern and southern margins of the town, the Buckau and Sudenburg districts in the south (where most of the great engineering works and sugar refineries are situated) being the most characteristically industrial and working-class parts of the town. The chief municipal undertaking in Magdeburg, apart from such usual public services as street and sewer cleaning, the care of parks and open spaces, and the gas and water supply, consists in providing the greater part of the dock, quay and warehouse accommodation, including the use of electric cranes and other facilities for the transfer of goods from the river to the railways and vice versa. The municipality also owns or administers a large amount of land. Besides 674 acres occupied by its undertakings in Magdeburg, and 1,467 acres administered on behalf of endowments, the town owns 2,760 acres of extra- urban land. About one-half of that land is irrigated with the town sewage. Of the remaining half the town itself farms 714 acres, a further 714 acres (including 267 acres of the sewage land) being let in small allotments on which the holders produce large quantities of fodder-turnips and market produce. The workpeople in the direct employment of the municipality number some 1,650, of whom 1,420 are men and 230 women. Of the men, the largest group, numbering 350, are employed in the parks and open spaces service ; after these come the municipal dock and warehouse service, with 270 men, the workshops of the gas and water supply with 155, and the gas works proper with 140 men. Of the women the principal groups are employed as unskilled labourers in the parks and gardens or on the irrigation land outside the town. Occupations, Wages, and Hours of Labour. In the absence of any statistics of occupations of more recent date than those of June, 1895, no precise statement of the present distribution of the manual labour classes of Magdeburg according to their occupations is possible ; nor has any classification of the workpeople employed in the factories and workshops of Magdeburg at a recent date been procurable. So far as the relative importance of the chief local sources of industrial employment are concerned, the results of the occupation census of June 14th, 1895, may however, still be accepted as approximately correct. Excluding the ‘‘ liberal professions,” the military and naval forces, and domestic service, there were altogether 65,161 occupied persons in Magdeburg on June 14th, 1895. Of these, 41,767 were employed in industry, 21,700 in commerce and transport, and 1,694 in agriculture and allied occupations. Of those employed in industry, 30,347, and ofthose employed in commerce and transport, 11,283, were classed as “workpeople,” making a total of 41,630 persons of the class with whom the present report is concerned. Assuming that number to have grown at the same rate as the population, there would have been about 47,000 occupied workpeople in Magdeburg in 1905. Among the 30,347 industrial workers enumerated in

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