DANTZIG. 
169 
Weekly Wages. 
Weekly Hours 
of Labour. 
Steam baking :— 
Journeymen bakers 
Ovenmen 
Machinemen 
Municipal Workmen :— 
Street maintenance and cleaning 
Paviors 
Paviors’ helpers 
Roadmakers 
Roadsweepers and Carters 
Gasworks : 
Stokers 
Labourers 
Waterworks : 
Labourers 
Electric Supply and Lighting : 
Enginemen 
Stokers 
Erectors and Installators 
Fitters 
24s. 
26s. 
26s. 
28s. KM. 
21s. 
21s. 
17 s. 3d. 
24 s. 
17s. 6<7. 
17s. 6(7. 
27 s. Gd. 
25s. 2d. 
24s. 
24s. 
60 
60 
60 
60 
60 
60 
60 
72' 
60 
60 
72 
72 
60 
60 
Including intervals for meals, rest, &c. 
With regard to the large body of labourers employed in the loading and 
unloading of merchandize no satisfactory data could be obtained for calculating 
weekly wages and hours of labour. A statement based on the pay sheets of 
15 master-stevedores for October, 1905, showed the wages per day of 10 hours 
to be from 4s. Gd. to 5s. Gd. for stevedores. It was added that “ the men work 
only three to four days per week and are therefore unemployed about six months 
in the year.” The wages of quay labourers are given as 3s. Gd. per day, or 
with overtime, 4s. 
Wages at Dantzig are comparatively low. On the basis of figures given in 
the above table the following index numbers have been constructed, wages at 
Berlin being represented by 100. Building trades, skilled men, 74 ; labourers, 
72 ; engineering trades, skilled men, 67 ; labourers, 85 ; printing trades, 88. 
Housing and Rents. 
Among the large cities of Germany, Dantzig has long had an evil reputa 
tion for defective housing. Until the year 1896 the city was completely 
surrounded by a line of ramparts and moats similar to those remaining until 
the present day around Königsberg. A constantly growing. population with 
no room on which to build further dwellings inside the fortifications and the 
maintenance of prohibitive restrictions by the military authorities in respect 
to building for a considerable distance outside the fortifications made increased 
overcrowding inevitable. The first step towards removing the cause of this 
evil was taken in 1896, when the municipality purchased from the military 
authorities a portion of the land occupied by the ramparts on the western and 
northern side of the town. Much of the land set free in this way has, however, 
been used in providing a number of ornamental open spaces, and in particular a 
stretch of wide promenade along which the best hotels and modem buildings of 
Dantzig have been built. Little of the new land has so far been used for the 
erection of houses containing the kind of tenement (two oi three rooms) which 
the working classes could afford to rent. The absence until recently of traffic 
facilities to suburbs sufficiently far out to permit of building unhampered by the 
War Office restrictions applicable to fortress towns (these restrictions are still 
enforced round the greater part of Dantzig) has also delayed the relief which 
might otherwise have followed from the razing of part of the walls.. By the year 
1900 the housing question had become acute, and the town council appointed a 
committee consisting of members of the executive of the council, and of working 
men, to inquire whether any dearth of working-class dwellings really existed, 
and if so, what remedial measures should be taken by the municipal authority. 
Y 
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