and are perfectly content to jog along from day to day with not much worry for the future, or floaters, who drift from one mill to another, who will get off an exceptional week's production, but pay day will see them on the road once more, bound for some other town. Spinners are even more difficult to procure, and in brief labor conditions have reached a stage where we are forced to take any one who applies in order to keep our machinery running.

Establishment No. 3. It is more difficult to weed out the poor weavers in a mill located in a small community, as there is no waiting list to select from to fill their places, and vacancies are usually filled with learners, whereas in a larger place, having a number of weaving plants, it is practicable to insist on a maximum production, owing to the supply of experienced weavers near at hand to draw upon.

A good weaver-that is, one who can produce the maximum amount of good cloth-must be quick, with nimble fingers, good eyesight, clean and methodical, and anxious to earn and receive a good wage, and willing to pay the price by being on the job all the time. The poor weaver is sure to lack some of these qualifications.

Establishment No. 4. The weavers (and in fact all our employees) are not nearly as efficient and as steady as they were some years ago, and we do not get as good work as we used to. The new labor that we get is largely Polish, as compared with English, German, and Irish a few years since. The Polish are not nearly as good a class of help as the former, and they are not as well educated. Then, we have more changes of employees than we used to; consequently, we are continually breaking in new help, which tends greatly to reduce the efficiency.

Establishment No. 6. Under normal trade conditions there is a scarcity of good weavers, and help have to be taken on who are ignorant of our requirements, and thus more or less incompetent. Recognition of this fact has stimulated the adoption of automatic devices on looms for the prevention of

bad work. Many persons following the weaver's craft have missed their calling; nature intended them for other occupations; the deft hand and alert eye, so essential to successful weaving, are plainly lacking. They mean well, but their work gets ahead of them, and they spend their days in futile efforts to catch up; before one fault is corrected another appears, and it is from such operatives that most of the imperfect cloth comes.

Weavers in dress-goods mills, particularly where there are automatic looms, run more looms than in men's-wear mills, and when the latter are busy they draw heavily upon dress-goods organizations for their supply of weavers. In turn the dressgoods mills draw on the cotton mills for recruits, and it takes several months for a cotton-weaver to become a good worsted weaver. Meanwhile efficiency is not the highest.

The class of weavers is numerous that prefers easy, comfortable work with medium wages rather than work of higher grade and better pay. This lack of exertion and absence of ambition on their part tends to keep down efficiency.

The weavers do not all possess equal skill or physical power. In our employ are many weavers forty-five years and older, who are still producing good cloth, but whose product is being impaired by advancing years. Some of our most competent weavers are women twenty to thirty years of age, who right in the stage of their greatest efficiency relinquish their occupation and get married. In Europe weavers are more contented with their vocation and plan to remain in it all their lives. In numberless instances entire families for generations past have all been weavers, and such operatives acquire a measure of dexterity and skill which is not so fully met with in American mills. Neither is it the rule for young women to give up their mill occupation upon marriage; most of them continue their mill employment for several years after.

Establishment No. 9. As to the qualities of good weavers, it is hard to describe them. The essential qualities are alertness and dexterity, and as the work is not heavy, requir

ing no great physical strength, women are often as good weavers as men, and sometimes better. Above all things, however, a weaver must have years of training in weaving all the different kinds of fabrics before he or she can really be called a good weaver. Under the hitherto prevalent violent fluctuations in the industry such life-long training has only been possible in very exceptional cases and in such places where local conditions have been more like those in Europe. This has again been brought to our special notice during the past summer. When the mill was running part time, many of our best and most energetic and ambitious workers, whom we had with great trouble educated for our special kind of work and who were dissatisfied at not making full wages, sought other industries. Now, when we are running full time again, we find we have only the poorer help and are almost in as bad a position as when we first started. It is impossible to repeat too often the great advantage possessed by the older European centers of the woolen and worsted industry. The operatives in those towns, even if they earn less than they might do elsewhere, will not break up their associations and move away as they do here. They are attached to their work and to their homes. Here the operatives have scarcely time to become domiciled before business is subjected to a violent setback and they are forced to seek work in other towns. The disadvantages of all this for mill owners are twofold: First, we thereby lose our best people, and secondly, upon the resumption of activity we have to break in new people again.

Establishment No. 10. Weaving is much more difficult than the average person who comes from the farms and rural districts, not only in this country but from foreign countries, anticipates; and the average that makes good is one in twelve.

As you will see by the names of all our employees they are very largely made up of foreigners, and to this we attribute the constant coming and going, as they come to this country

from stories they have been told that money is easy to make in America. There also are a great many positions open for them in which as much money can be earned without the same amount of brains or skill being necessary.

Establishment No. 15. In our opinion, what will make a good weaver will make a good workman in almost any line, especially mechanical. The good weaver has a "mechanical sense, ," which is lacking in a poor one. No doubt this is one reason why men are usually more efficient in weaving than women, who usually lack the "instinct for machinery," if it may be so called. A proof of this opinion is found in the fact that weavers as a class are less efficient now than they were ten years ago. This is certainly true in our plant and, we believe, in the industry generally. The reason for this is that the best weavers go into some other line of industry where the pay is better. Many of our "stars" of past years went into the wire-fence industry. Many more, during the past three or four years, have gone into the automobile industry, of which the center for the country is only fifty miles from us. Some of our weavers who have gone into this business have made good and are now drawing several times as much as they could ever have hoped for in weaving.

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It is invariably true that the weavers who turn off the most work in a given time also turn off the best work. The extremely slow and careful weavers are the ones who turn out the poor goods. Of course, in this statement we are referring only to the honest workman, not to those who have no pride in their work and run it out as fast as they can, regardless of results.

Establishment No. 20. There are first-class weavers, good weavers, fairly good weavers, and "also rans." Distinctly poor weavers, of course, we do not keep. It is just about as difficult to account for these degrees as it is to explain the difference in artists, machinists, carpenters, bricklayers, or baseball pitchers. Natural manual skill, vitality, a quick eye,

diligence, alertness, ambition, system, temperament-are all governing factors.

The good weaver never seems to be doing anything; the poor weaver always appears to be hard at work. The good weaver is quietly on the alert for things to happen; the poor weaver is always fussing around to catch up after they happen; consequently the good weaver not only produces more work but better work than the poor one.

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