MANNHEIM.
385
A large number of working men live at a distance from their employment,
and in the interest of these the municipal authorities issue cheap “ workmen’s
tickets ” available on certain of the tramway routes. Books of 50 coupons, each
available for one journey, are sold for 2s. 6d., so that the holder can for less than
1 id. a day travel to and from his work, however far away his home may be.
These tickets are issued only to bona-fide workpeople with an income not
exceeding £60 a year, and they may not be used on Sundays and festivals.
During 1905 nearly nine-and-a-half million persons were carried on the three
principal industrial routes.
Labour organisations are numerous, powerful, and active in Mannheim.
They are of three kinds, the so-called “ Free” organisations, which are Social
Democratic, and which claim to have an aggregate membership of 12,000 ; the
“ Christian ” organisations, which are in the main Roman Catholic ; and the
Hirsch-Duncker organisations, which here carry on a vigorous propaganda.
One effect of persistent organisation is seen in the multiplicity of the wages
agreements which have been concluded in Mannheim during the past decade,
especially in the building trades, which are now entirely regulated by formal
wages compacts extending over a series of years. The earliest agreements of
the kind were those of the printers, bookbinders, and a section of the corn-
millers, concluded in 1896. Then followed the carpenters’ agreement in 1897 ;
the glaziers, warehouse labourers, and potters obtained “tariffs” in 1898, and
the shoemakers in 1899. With the beginning of the new century the “ tariff”
movement made immediate and rapid progress, and by the year 1905 no fewer
than 19 trade unions, representing 1,459 separate undertakings, both large and
small, and 5,902 workpeople had secured agreements fixing wages, hours, and
other conditions of employment, while a minimum wage had been obtained in
1,387 concerns having 5,330 workpeople. Many of these wages agreements
were only concluded after a struggle conducted with great tenacity on both
sides, and so recently as 1905 of 27 strikes of all kinds which occurred at
Mannheim, nine had for their object the conclusion of wages agreements,
though the object sought was only obtained in six cases.
While a comparatively small proportion of the industrial workpeople of
Mannheim are women (about 15 per cent.), employment is offered to a very
large number of women and girls by miscellaneous occupations, some of them
followed in the home. Amongst these are the sorting of coffee beans and wool,
tobacco stripping, saffron plucking, sack mending, cardboard box making,
the plaiting of horsehair work, corset sewing, the painting and putting together
of dolls, &c. The earnings thus gained are small in comparison to the time
occupied, for the home worker often sits at her task until far into the night,
since the time spared from domestic duty is all she can give to this extra task, but
they are a welcome addition to her husband’s wages. Mannheim may be counted
as one of the most thriving of German industrial towns, and the standard of wages
is in some trades relatively high, yet even here may be observed on a large scale
the competition of women of the poorer class for the unconsidered odds and ends
of employment which factory returns do not recognise and factory laws do not
regulate. Sack mending is one of the meaner home occupations of poor women
in Mannheim. The women fetch the torn sacks from the warehouses in
perambulators or light handcarts, with scraps of material for patching, and by
renovating 150 to 250 a week can earn, at the rate of three or four pfennige
(§(/. to 4d ) per sack, from 45. 6<i. to 10s. As a rule, it is the wives of outdoor
workers, coal carriers, and other seasonal labourers who are so employed.
The delivery of the daily newspapers from house to house is another
occupation that falls almost exclusively to women and big girls, not merely in
Mannheim, but in German towns generally, for the employment of children on
the streets is severely restricted. The German newspaper is virtually published
by subscription, for the sale in shops and public places is comparatively small.
The copies subscribed for—by the week, month, or quarter, as the case may be—
are delivered in town at an inclusive subscription price, and for distributing the
two editions each day the “ newspaper-woman ” (Zeitungsfrau) receives 15 to
20 pfennige (1§<Y. to 2£d.) per copy and month. Should she carry out
150 copies each day, her earnings may amount to from 22s. 6d. to 30s. per
month.
