AACHEN.
• 41
further east. The Roman Catholic organisations are the strongest, but no
prominence is given to the militant aspect of trade unionism. Here as in the
French districts adjoining Belgium on the west, the unskilled Belgian workman
offers considerable competition in the labour market, and it is held that his
willingness to accept low wages is prejudicial to the native workers. As a rule
the Belgians live in villages within a few miles of the frontier, and do not settle
in Aachen. Many Dutch workmen are also engaged in the building trades.
Occupations, Wages and Hours of Labour.
The textile industry is the principal source of employment at Aachen,
and in its various branches about a third of the entire manual working
classes are engaged. At the beginning of the year 1906 the industrial and
trade sickness insurance funds had 41,563 contributing members, and of these
13,393 were engaged in the textile industry, chiefly in the many cloth manufactories
for which Aachen is famous. The manufacture of needles is also one
of Aachen’s staple industries, and employs several thousands of persons, a far
larger majority being here males than in the case of the textile industry. Other
important occupations are the machine and card-making industries, while, smaller
numbers of workpeople are engaged in the chemical, soap, and tobacco manufactures,
the last employing women almost exclusively. At a short distance
from the town are the iron and steel works of the Rothe Erde Company. A
considerable proportion of the women who work in the cloth mills are married ;
of a total of 5,383 female workers in the cloth industry, on December 31, 1902,
1,198, or 22'2 per cent, were married.
The following is a classification of the industrial workpeople employed
in 1905 in the district of the Aachen Factory Inspector, which includes,
besides the town itself, the adjacent villages of Eupen, Malmedy and Montjoie,
though about four-fifths of the workpeople belong to Aachen :—
Groups of Trades.
N urn her
of
Establishments.
Metal-working
Machine, implement, and apparatus
making.
Textile
Clothing and cleaning
Printing, lithography, bookbinding,
&c.
Paper
Woodworking and carving
Chemicals ... « ••*
Begins, varnishes, oil, soap,
candles, &c.
Stone and earth
Food, drink, and tobacco ...
Leather ... ... ••• •••
Miscellaneous
Total
95
68
211
248
23
10
57
8
22
52
•251
65
4
1,114
Number of Workpeople.
Males
over 16
years.
Females I Juveniles, | Children
over 16 14 to 16 under 14
years. years. ¡ years.
2,967
3,196
8,788
117
341
569
712
96
296
784
750
654
23
19,293
1,543
83
6,898
786
79
225
74
18
43
19
1,562
7
11,337
869
230
1,082
238
84
101
58
6
8
56
261
16
2
3,014
27
Total.
5,383
3,512
16,776
1,143
505
899
844
120
347
859
2,581
677
25
33,6,1
Of 33,671 industrial workpeople of all ages, 20,868, or 62 per cent., were
males. Of a total of 12.803 female workers, 7,215, or 56'3 per cent., were over
the ao-e of 21 years ; of the remainder, 4,122, or 32*2 per cent., were between
16 and 21 years ; 1,454, or 11*3 per cent., were between 14 and 16 years ; and
12 were under 14 years. Only 27 children under 14 years were engaged in
industrial occupations, and 8 of these were employed in the textile factories.
The hours of labour are generally 10 per day, or 57 to 60 per week. In the
cloth industry the usual division of the day is as follows :—7 to 8 ; pause to
8.15 ; 8.15 to 12 ; pause till 1.30 ; 1.30 to 4 ; pause till 4.15 ; 4.15 to 7. On
Monday morning work begins at 8, and on Saturday it ends at 5.30. Several
mills work one or two hours less, but others work from 64 to 68 hours. In the
iron and metal trades a 10 hours day is also fairly general. Although virtually
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