194
DRESDEN.
inasmuch as they have served an apprenticeship, earn little more than many
day labourers employed by the same firm ; thus, one of the principal steam
bakeries had 10 millers who received 25s. for 60 hours’ labour, and 10 day
labourers whose wages for an identical week were 21s. 4d.
The preparation of condensed milk and other dairy produce is also carried
on in Dresden on a large scale, and affords employment to many women and
girls, but only to a few male workpeople.
Earthenware and Cement ware Industries.—The manufacture of the renowned
porcelain ware known as " Dresden China,” though carried on not in Dresden itself,
but in Meissen, some 14 miles distant, may nevertheless be said to be indirectly
a source of employment to workpeople in Dresden where it has stimulated the
manufacture of high-class earthenware goods.
Municipal Workmen. —Reference has already been made to the importance
of the Dresden Municipality as an employer of labour. The question of the
wages paid to such workmen has recently occupied the attention of the
Municipal Council, and has led to the publication of a report on the subject by
the City Statistical Office. The report deals with 3,505 out of a total of about
5,500 workpeople, the bulk of the tramway servants, who were taken over in
the course of 1905 when the tramways were municipalized, being omitted. Of
the 3,505 workpeople covered by the report 2,714, or 77 per cent, were unskilled,
and 791, or 23 per cent, skilled.
The following are the rates of wages of the unskilled male labourers in a
lull week of 60 hours in the principal branches of municipal service on
February 1st, 1906 :—
Branch of Service.
Rate of Wages per week
(Unskilled Labourers).
Tramways ...
Road and sewer construction and repair
Gasworks :—
Men at furnaces
Other workmen
Street cleaning ...
Electrical power generation and distribution
Waterworks
Parks and gardens
d.
21 3
21 7 to 23
27
21 0
20
21
21
20 11
From the above it will be seen that the most highly paid of the unskilled
labourers employed by the municipality are the furnacemen in the gas works,
whose predominant wages are 27s. Id. per week, and that if this special body of
men be left out of consideration, the wages of unskilled labour range from say
20s. to 22s. 6d. in the 60 hours constituting the regular working week. It
should be added that practically the whole of the unskilled labourers are on
time-wage.
The relatively small number of skilled workmen employed by the
municipality is mainly made up of fitters (Schlosser), smiths, masons and
carpenters working on time-wages. For fitters and smiths the predominant
weekly rates of wages range from 23s. 2d. in the electrical, to 25s. lOd. in the
road and sewer making service. For masons and bricklayers the predominant
rates range from 26s. Ilf/, in the former to 30s. in the latter, and for carpenters,
from 24s. in the gas and waterworks to 30s. in the road and sewer making
service.
Housing and Rents.
As regards the distribution of its working-class population, Dresden
resembles Düsseldorf in so far as the whole of the factories and the greater part
of the people who work in them are to be found on the outskirts of the town.
Dresden, however, has none of the characteristics associated with an industrial
town, and there is a more even distribution of the different social strata all over
the urban area than one usually finds in such a town. The central and older
part of Dresden is indeed declining steadily in populousness owing to migration
to the suburbs and the conversion of dwellings into offices, but the process of
