ures for industries, and for the entire State. It is possible, from such statistics, to compare the average wages of adult women in the hosiery and in the worsted goods industries, or the wages of adult men in the anthracite and bituminous coal mines. Such average wage figures begin to have a minimum value for purposes of comparison; still they cannot be used as the basis of important conclusions regarding actual wages.
The best of the reports, like those of Massachusetts and New Jersey, give not only average wages, but a classification of wages which makes possible definite statements regarding the number of employees in each industry receiving a certain wage. The North Carolina type of report will be overlooked in the present study, which will present analyses only of those reports from which scientific deductions are possible. Since the most valuable material appears in the statistics of classified earnings, the next section will be devoted to a discussion of the collection and presentation of classified wage statistics.
III. The Massachusetts Method
The State most successful in collecting and presenting classified wage statistics is Massachusetts.
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