x other industries earning each class of weekly wage. Black
indicates less than $8, hatching $8 to $12, and outline $12 and over]

COMPOSING ROOM WORKERS

Nearly all the workers in this department of the industry are hand or
machine compositors. Until about 30 years ago, before practical
type-setting machines were invented, all type was set by hand. Today
the hand compositor, except in very small shops, works only on jobs
requiring special type and special arrangement, such as
advertisements, title covers of books, letter heads, and so on.

In the city there are about 1,200 people employed in composing room
occupations, or about 30 per cent of the total number of workers in
the industry. This number includes some 50 women employed as
proof-readers and copy-holders. Nine-tenths of the composing room
workers are members of the International Typographical Union, although
the number of shops that employ union men exclusively, called closed
shops, approximates only one-half of the total number in the city. The
remainder, while employing union labor, observing union hours, and
paying union wages, reserve the right to hire non-union workmen.

Composing room workers are the best paid in the industry. A comparison
of average wages in newspaper and job establishments is shown in Table
27.

TABLE 27.--AVERAGE DAILY EARNINGS OF JOB AND NEWSPAPER COMPOSING-ROOM
WORKERS, 1915

-------------------------+---------------+------------+
| | Newspaper |
Workers in trade | Job offices | offices |
-------------------------+---------------+------------+
Foremen | $5.19 | $6.65 |
Linotype machinists | 4.66 | 4.84 |
Proof-readers | 4.63 | 3.98 |
Monotype operators | 4.57 | .. |
Linotypers | 4.28 | 4.65 |
Monotype casters | 3.96 | 4.30 |
Stonemen | 3.94 | 4.89 |
Hand-compositors | 3.48 | 4.58 |
Copy-holders | 2.30 | 2.93 |
Apprentices | 1.64 | 1.30 |
-------------------------+---------------+------------+

Compositors suffer most from the diseases that are common to indoor
workers. The stooping position in which much of the work is done,
together with insufficient ventilation and the presence of gases from
the molten metal