women, and trade in all its forms called for workers and gave almost
constant employ, save in the few occupations which have a distinct
season, and oblige those engaged in them to divide their time between
two if a living is assured.

A distinction must at once be made in the definition of earnings. In
speaking of them, there are necessarily three designations,--wages,
earnings, and income. Wages represent the actual pay per week at the
time employed, with no reference to the number of weeks' employment
during the year. Earnings are the total receipts for any year from
wages. Thus, for example, a girl is paid $5 a week wages, and works
forty weeks of her year. Her earnings would then be for the year $200,
though her wages of $5 per week would indicate that she earned $260 a
year; while in fact her average weekly earnings would be for the whole
year $3.84. Income is her total receipts for the year from all sources:
wages, extra work, help from friends or from investments; in fact, any
receipts from which expenses can be paid.

In preparing the tables of these reports, the highest, the lowest, the
average, and the general average were brought into a final comparison.
Often but one wage is given, and it then becomes naturally both highest
and lowest; but all figures are made to indicate an entire occupation or
branch of industry, and not a few high or low paid employees in that
branch. It is only with the final comparison that we are able to deal,
the reader being referred to the reports themselves for the invaluable
details given at full length and including many hundred pages.

The divisions of occupations are the same as those of the tenth census,
and the tables are made on the same system. To determine the general
conditions for the twenty thousand at work, it was necessary to have