answer to the question "What are wages?", it would be more than successful,—it would be progressive.
The available data on the subject of wages exists chiefly in the reports of State bureaus of labor, and is unfortunately of such a nature as to render comparison with data of a decade since (in the few cases where such data exists) most unsatisfactory. In consequence of this inadequacy, the present study has been confined to current wages, a step rendered even more imperative by the fact that many of the labor bureaus from which data was secured have been in existence for only one, two or three years.
Owing to the slowness of some States in publishing reports, the data is, unfortunately, not all relative to the same year: "a study of wages in the United States for 1910" would have been far more satisfying than this study for 1908-1910. The years are, however, comparable to a degree, as the worst phases of the depression following the panic of 1907 had disappeared in 1908, and industry, while not normal, was returning slowly to normality. Wherever possible the
data for 1909 has been used in preference to that
[11]
