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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 shipbuilding,
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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