[Q. Where you have time work is not the first-class workman
placed on a level with the inferior workman?] A. No; except
that in the case of the individual workman there is a minimum
wage determined, not the maximum. The superior and better
qualified workman may and does, I think, without exception,
receive a higher wage than the minimum scale. In the printing
trade the union minimum scale is, say, $18 a week. You will
find that there are quite a number of printers who get higher
than the wage scale because of the excellence, the perfection of
their work — compositors who are known as clean compositors,
those who set their type without error or with few errors. We
know, too, of proof readers who, after proof has reached them,
when it has passed their supervision, scrutiny, and correction,
there is absolutely no typographical or grammatical error over-
looked by them, and they get very much higher salaries than
the average proof reader or the ordinary readers. So it is
among the iron molders; so it is among the hatters; so it is
among the furniture workers — all industries where there is day
labor in any branch. For instance, the bricklayers have a mini-
mum scale, I think, of $4. There are quite a number of brick-
layers who get $4,50 and $s a day. The hodcarriers' wages are,
say, $2.25 a day. There is not very much change. I think that
the minimum is paid all around. The minimum is practically the
maximum, because there is perhaps little difference in the excel-
lence of the work they perform. But where there can be ordinary
work and where there can be excellence of work there is quite a
contrast between the minimum scale and the higher scale. — From
testimony before Industrial Commission, Washington, D. C,
April 18, i8qq.
