er day; stationary engineers, Negro members 35, rate of
wages, $3.00-$3.50 per day, average weekly earnings, $21.00;
bricklayers, Negro members 21, rate of wages $0.70 per hour, average
daily earnings $5.60; plasterers, Negro members 19, rate of wages
$5.50 per day; printers (compositors), Negro members 8, average
weekly earnings, $24.00; coopers, Negro members 2, average daily
earnings $2.50; lathers, Negro members 7, average daily earnings
$4.50; sheet-metal workers, Negro members 1, rate of wages $4.50 per
day. It is evident that compared with the large number of Negro
workers few are engaged in the skilled trades, join the unions, and
thus enter into the more highly-paid occupations.

3. EFFICIENCY OF WAGE-EARNERS

The efficiency of wage-earners attaches itself to the question of
wages. For domestic and personal service, a rich deposit of first-hand
material was available in the written testimonials, secured by
employment agencies, from the former employers of each applicant
seeking work. This is a requirement of the Employment Agencies' Law.
The investigator found two employment agencies which had used a
printed blank for securing this testimony from former employers of
applicants. These blanks asked four questions which are pertinent to
the matter of efficiency, and an additional space was left for further
remarks. The questions called for answers on the following points: (1)
length of time employed, whether applicant was (2) capable, (3) sober
or temperate and (4) honest.

In all, 10,095 such blanks were sent out by the agencies during
1906-1909. About 3,000 were returned. Of these about 1,800 replies
were excluded from this tabulation because they were received from
employers outside of New York, because they were not completely filled
out, or were not signed by the parties replying. For this study, 1,182
cases were used. Of these 139 were returned by the Post Office
Department as unclaimed, 21 were returned unanswered, while 20 replied
that the parties were never in their employ. So there were left 902
complete cases.

These give a fair indication of the whole. The first point of
efficiency is the length of service to one's employer. The records of
100 males do not furnish a sufficient number of cases for any sweeping
generalization, yet considerable light is given by the percentages.
These show that 30 out of the 100 remained with one employer less than
five months; that 24 remained six to eleven months