Bakers—Increase of one dollar and twenty-five cents a week asked, but employers’ offer of seventy-five cents accepted pending negotiations.
Textile Workers—Bonus for overtime work in factories doing work on army clothing.
Boot and Shoe Workers—War bonus of five to ten per cent granted in some places.
Coppersmiths—Average wage before war, nine dollars; now twelve dollars and fifty cents.
Clerks—Some increases; 180,000 grocers’ assistants have[{65}] asked a readjustment of wages; similar movements pending in other branches.
Engineering and Building-trade Workers—Some sections have secured substantial increases.
The number of unemployed in Great Britain shows a large falling off.
Reform Ousts Tiny Cripple from Stand.
“Little Georgie,” the tiny hunchback negro, who for nearly a score of years has had the privilege of conducting the bootblack stand in the basement of the war department, in Washington, D. C., has to move because of the reforms inaugurated by Colonel W. W. Harts, U. S. A., superintendent of public buildings and grounds. Georgie is heartbroken, but, with a catch in his high-pitched voice, he said:
“Well, I made out pretty well to stay as long as I did, but I can’t see how my little bootblack stand here in the dark alcove bothered anybody very much!”