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GENERAL REPORT. 
The number of towns visited by the investigators of the Board of Trade in 
the course of the Enquiry, of which the results are summarised in this General 
Report, was 33 : of these 19, or more than one-half, are in the Kingdom of 
Prussia, five in Saxony, three in Bavaria, and the remaining six in other states of 
the Empire ; the map given as a frontispiece to this volume shows their wide 
geographical distribution. The populations of the towns range from 2,040,000 in 
Berlin and 803,000 in Hamburg to 25,000 in Aschaffenburg, 18,000 in Stassfurt 
and 13,000 in Oschersleben ; but it must be pointed out that the inhabitants of the 
33 towns do not constitute the whole industrial population to which the results of 
the present investigation apply, for Charlottenburg and other urban areas 
surrounding Berlin are dealt with in the report upon that city, Altona (168,000 
inhabitants) is included with Hamburg and Leopoldshall with Stassfurt, and in 
other cases—of which Königshütte is a notable example—the particular town 
forming the subject of a report is only the centre of a district throughout which 
almost identical conditions prevail. 
The range of industrial occupations covered by the reports is very 
wide—it includes coal-mining, the metal industries, engineering and ship 
building, the hardware and cutlery trades, the textile trades (cotton, wool 
and silk), paper-making, brewing, printing, the chemical trades, sugar-refining, the 
various branches of the building trades, dock labour, a number of miscellaneous 
trades, and the municipal services. 
One of the purposes of the Enquiry being to obtain, so far as possible, 
information comparable with that given for the towns of the United Kingdom in 
the Report on the Cost of laving of the Working Classes (Cd. 3864), issued by 
the Board of Trade in January, 1908, the information collected for the present 
volume relates mainly to the same date (October, 1905) as the information 
contained in that Report ; but some additional data relating to later dates are 
included in the separate town reports, and also in this General Report 
(pp. xxxvii-xxxix). These also include much information as to the general 
conditions of industrial life and labour in Germany, including such matters as 
the distribution of occupations and organisation of industry, wages agreements 
and hours of labour, factory rules, workmen’s societies and institutions, 
housing, public health administration, vital statistics, municipal enterprise and 
local taxation. 
The purpose of this General Report is, first, to summarise the results 
arrived at in respect of the three main heads of the Enquiry—rents, prices and 
wages, and to compare the German towns among themselves in regard to 
these matters ; and, secondly, to endeavour to make such comparisons as may 
be possible between these results and those arrived at for the English towns 
in the report already mentioned. 
PART I.—REPORT ON GERMAN CONDITIONS. 
(i) Housing and Rents. 
In order to ascertain the rents paid for the kind of dwellings usually 
occupied by the German working classes, information was obtained from the 
municipal authorities, from individual house-owners, and from large numbers of 
tenants through the trade unions. In each town a number of houses were 
visited by the Board of Trade investigators, partly for the purpose of verifying 
the information obtained as to rents, and partly that some account might be 
given in each case of the general character and standard of housing 
accommodation. 
The prevalent type of working-class dwelling in Germany is a flat in a 
large house containing a minimum of six or seven tenements. This may fairly 
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