Table 3. Average Basic Wage Rates on Railroad Electrification Improvements Financed by P. W. A. Loans, by Occupations, 1934 and 1935 1

Not all occupations are shown in the table; occupations omitted are chiefly supervisory, technical, and administrative.

Expenditures for Materials

THE value of material orders placed for use on the project was $12,160,000. It is estimated that in fabricating these materials nearly 4,500,000 man-hours of labor were required. This estimate of man-hours is only for the labor required in final fabrication and does not include labor created in mining, transportation, or in prefabrication plants.

The value of material orders placed and the number of man-hours of labor created in fabricating the materials used on the electrification program are presented in table 4.

Table 4.-Work Created in Fabrication of Materials Used in Railroad Electrification Improvements, by Type of Material

Electrical apparatus, fixtures, and supplies accounted for $8,367,000, or 69 percent of the total expenditures of $12,160,000 for materials. In the fabrication of this material more than 2,664,000 man-hours of labor were required. In this classification are such materials as circuit breakers and switches; conduit, fittings, and lighting devices; frequency-changer sets, generators, and motors; switchboards, relay and control equipment, measuring instruments and meters; transformers and current-limiting reactors; wire, cable, and potheads; and wiring devices and assemblies. The above figures include expenditures for wire, cable, and potheads in excess of $3,000,000 and in the fabrication of this material more than 1,000,000 hours of labor were required in manufacturing plants.

Purchases of steel-works and rolling-mill products required expenditures of $1,641,000; cement, $174,000; lumber and timber products, $169,000; tools, other than machine tools, $106,000; bolts, nuts, rivets, washers, etc., $125,000; foundry and machine-shop products, $530,000; and sand and gravel products $104,000. In fabricating these materials 1,374,000 man-hours of labor were needed.

All other materials used on the program accounted for approximately $945,000 of total expenditures and required over 455,000 hours of labor in fabrication plants. Among the more important materials included in this classification were cast-iron pipe and fittings, concrete products, copper products, cordage and twine, crushed stone, miscellaneous hardware, marble, granite, and other stone products, automobiles and trucks, nonferrous metal alloys, paints and varnishes, petroleum products, rubber goods, and wrought pipe.

PRODUCTIVITY OF LABOR AND INDUSTRY

Mechanization in British Coal Mines

OAL cut, transported, and treated by mechanical processes rather than hand labor has increased considerably in proportion to the total product of mines in Great Britain since 1929. Output cut by machine in 1929 represented 28 percent, and in 1934, 47 percent of the total tonnage; the proportion of total output conveyed by mechanical means both at the coal face and elsewhere increased from 14 to 37 percent in the same period; and coal-cleaning plants handled 40 percent of the tonnage in 1934 as compared with 28 percent in 1929. These and other basic statistics of mine mechanization are included in recent reports of the Mines Department.' Commenting on mechanization, a private British research agency 2 concludes that technical improvement has been the chief factor in making possible a decrease in the cost of coal production in recent years. The authors of the study state that in an industry such as coal mining, where labor costs comprise 70 percent of the total outlay, productivity must obviously be the greatest influence in determining total costs, and that in this case the output of workers has been raised to such a point by use of machinery as to make possible financial savings in total production costs in spite of the. fact that wage rates have remained constant and that there has been a decrease in hours worked since 1930.

The table following shows statistics of mines in operation, total production, and the total product mined by mechanical means in 1929 and 1934.

Progress of Mechanization of Coal Mines in Great Britain, 1929 and 1934

* PEP (Political and Economic Planning). Report on British coal industry. London, 1936.

The figures relating to coal cut by machine, showing an increase from 28 to 47 percent of the total, in 5 years in a period when the total number of mines and the number using mechanized methods decreased, indicate that mechanized mines have succeeded in mining an increasing proportion of the market requirement, and that the change is due not so much to the installation of a large number of machines as to the decline in output of unmechanized mines. While practically the same volume of coal was cleaned mechanically as was cut in 1929, mechanized cleaning in 1934 did not show quite so large an increase as mechanized cutting, the percentages of the total being 40 and 47 respectively. Coal mechanically conveyed made up 37 percent of the total product in 1934, but the increase from 1929, when the percentage was 14, has been more rapid than that of either coal cutting or cleaning.

Use of mechanical picks and drills in producing coal has been a long-established practice in European mines. In 1927 there were in Great Britain 5,679 pneumatic picks and drills, increasing to 8,881 in 1929 and 13,789 in 1934. The use of coal cutters was fairly evenly divided between the compressed-air type (1,590) and the electrical type (1,305) in 1913; by 1929 the relationship was reversed, there being then 3,574 compressed-air cutters and 3,787 electrically driven cutters; and in 1934 electrical cutters were in the decided majority, the total for that year being 4,451 as compared with 2,955 compressedair cutters. Use of electrical equipment for conveying coal has likewise superseded that of compressed-air conveyors. At the coal face there were 1,534 compressed-air and 1,064 electric conveyors in 1929, as compared with 1,942 and 2,148, respectively, in 1934.

COOPERATION

Cooperative Societies Under the Rural Electrification

WH

Program1

ITH the purpose of providing for a higher standard of living for rural people, Congress, in its work-relief program, provided that 100 million dollars might be spent for electrifying farms, and on May 11, 1935, President Roosevelt by Executive order created the Rural Electrification Administration as an independent agency to "initiate, formulate, administer, and supervise a program of approved projects with respect to the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric energy in rural areas." A permanent agency with the same name was created by the Rural Electrification Act (Public, No. 605, 74th Cong.), approved May 20, 1936, the President being authorized to transfer to the newly created agency the property and personnel of the agency created by Executive order.

Policies of the R. E. A.

THE Controlling objective of the R. E. A. has been "to take electricity to as many farms as possible in the shortest possible time, and to have it used in quantities sufficient to affect rural life." To this end it has granted loans for self-liquidating projects for the extension of distribution lines into rural areas, to carry light and power to farm homes and other farm buildings, and also for the wiring of such homes and buildings. The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 also authorizes loans for the purchase and installation of electrical and plumbing appliances and equipment. If necessary to protect the loans, the Administrator is authorized, in the event of foreclosure, to bid for and purchase property pledged or mortgaged as security, and to operate or lease such property for not over 5 years, or to sell it.

Under the procedure as first established, loans could be made for the entire cost of the project; they were normally for 20 years, with

'Data in this article are from Rural Electrification Administration, Rural Electrification News, Washington, October, November, and December 1935, January-February and May 1936; Light and Power for the Farm, Washington, 1935; What Every Farm Leader Should Know about Rural Electrification, Washington, 1935; and unpublished data supplied to the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Rural Electrification Administration.

? Prior to that act funds for installation of electric pumps and the purchase of electric appliances and equipment were obtainable from the Electric Home and Farm Authority, and loans for pressure water systems, including modern kitchens and inside bathrooms, could be secured from the Federal Housing Administration. 593

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