TABLE V: TIME OF PAYMENT IN ESTABLISHMENTS HAV- In the first, third, and fifth columns of this table are included those establishments having a majority of piece hands; in the second, fourth, and sixth, those having a majority of day hands. NOTES ON THE RETURNS OF MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN. Some of the returns which have been included in the foregoing table were made out in such a manner that it is not always possible to distinguish between men, women, and children. The total rumber of employees, included in the tables which follow, is therefore less by several hundred than those which have been already given. In many of the returns, the number of children below sixteen, or even eighteen, was given, instead of the number below fifteen. In some cases, such returns have been thrown out altogether. In other cases, the error involved in such a procedure would have been greater than the error involved in a somewhat arbitrary division. There are, therefore, a few instances in which the latter course has been adopted. In explanation of the apparent discrepancy between these returns and those of the State Board of Education, it may be stated that there are some lines of industry, like woolen mills, where the number of children below fourteen is very small, but the number just above that age very large. The returns of the Board of Education, though nominally including some children fourteen years of age, practically do not go above thirteen. Hence the proportion of children employed in woolen mills, as compared with those in cotton mills, is very much larger in these returns than in those of the Board of Education. On the other hand, the returns of the United States Census draw the line, for boys at least, at sixteen years, and practically, in a great many instances, the blanks on which the census compilations were based counted all hands under eighteen. as children. Of the eight thousand children reported in the U. S. Census of 1880, probably only about five thousand were under fifteen. Perhaps two thousand more were between fifteen and sixteen, while the remainder crept in through carelessness. Those who filled out the returns read the general heading of the column "Children and Youth," and did not notice at what age the line was drawn. |