THE WAGE EARNERS OF CLEVELAND
In 1910 Cleveland ranked sixth among the cities of the United States
as to number of inhabitants, with a population of approximately
561,000. The city is growing rapidly. From 1900 to 1910 the increase
in the total number of inhabitants was over 46 per cent. The Census
Bureau estimate of the population in 1914 is approximately 639,000.
Of the 10 largest cities in the country only one--Detroit--had in 1910
a greater proportion of its wage earners engaged in industrial
employment than Cleveland. Relatively Cleveland has one and one-fourth
times as many industrial workers as New York, Chicago, St. Louis, or
Baltimore, and one and two-fifths times as many as Boston. On the
other hand a smaller proportion of the adult workers of the city earn
their living in professional, clerical, and commercial work, or in
domestic and personal service employments than in most large cities.
Table 1 shows by large occupational groups the distribution in 1910 of
the working population in Cleveland. The classification is that
adopted by the federal census. More than 56 per cent of the male
workers of the city and about 33 per cent of the women workers were
engaged in manufacturing and mechanical occupations. The trade group
ranks next, about 14 per cent of the men and approximately 11 per cent
of the women being engaged in commercial occupations. Of each 100
women in employment 30 are servants, laundresses, housekeepers, or are
engaged in some other form of personal service, while only five men of
each 100 earn their living in this kind of work. Railroad and street
transportation, with the telegraph and telephone and mail systems of
communication, requires the services of 11 per cent of the male
working population, but uses very few women. About seven per cent of
the men and 15 per cent of the women are employed in clerical work. A
slightly larger ratio of women to men is found in the professional
occupations, due mainly to the large number of women in the teaching
profession. The whole professional group constitutes less than five
per cent of the total working population.
TABLE 1.--OCCUPATIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE WORKING POPULATION OF
CLEVELAND, CENSUS OF OCCUPATIONS, 1910
----------------------------------------+---------+--------+---------
Occupational group | Men | Women | Total
----------------------------------------+---------+--------+---------
Manufacturing and mechanical industries | 109,644 | 18,201 | 127,845
Trade | 27,229 | 5,942 | 33,171
Domestic and personal service | 9,546 | 16,467 | 26,063
Transportation | 21,530 | 1,110 | 22,640
Clerical occupations | 14,047 | 8,100 | 22,147
Professional service | 7,204 | 4,869 | 12,073
Public service | 3,461 | 39 | 3,500
Agricultural and extraction of minerals | 1,367 | 80 | 1,447
----------------------------------------+---------+--------+---------
Total | 194,078 | 54,808 | 248,886
----------------------------------------+---------+--------+---------
From the standpoint of vocational training one of the most striking
facts about Cleveland wage-earners is that a large majority of them
are not Clevelanders. Almost exactly half of the men in gainful
employment were born outside the United States and, due to the rapid
growth of the city, there has been a considerable influx of workers
from the surrounding country in recent years, so that a large
proportion even of the American working population was born, brought
up, and educated in some other place. The number and per cent of
foreign born, of foreign or mixed parentage but born in this country,
and of native parentage is shown in Table 2.
TABLE 2.--NATIVITY OF THE WORKING POPULATION IN CLEVELAND. U.S.
CENSUS, 1910
----------------------------+-------------------+-----------------
| Men | Women
+--------+----------+--------+--------
Nativity | Number | Per cent | Number |Per cent
----------------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------
Foreign born | 96,291 | 50 | 16,673 | 31
Foreign or mixed parentage | 55,074 | 28 | 24,275 | 44
Native parentage | 42,713 | 22 | 13,860 | 25
----------------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------
Total |194,078 | 100 | 54,808 | 100
----------------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------
More than three-fourths are foreign or of foreign or mixed parentage.
The proportion of those born in this country of American parentage is
approximately the same for both sexes, but the number of women workers
of mixed parentage is relatively much larger than among the men.
Roughly, of each 10 men employed in gainful occupations, five, and of
each 10 working women, three, were born abroad.
The large proportion of foreigners in the trades has an important
bearing on the problem of vocational training. Some of the skilled
occupations are monopolized by foreign labor to such an extent that
they offer a very limited field of employment for native workmen.
Cabinet making, tailoring, molding, blacksmithing, baking, and shoe
making, are examples. Some of these trades have practically ceased to
recruit from American labor. This condition has to be constantly borne
in mind in planning training courses to prepare boys for the skilled
trades, because of the marked disparity which often exists between the
size of a trade and the field of opportunity it presents for boys of
native birth.