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 reputation
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.
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