In the smaller factories labor is usually paid by the day, but in the larger establishments every operation possible is on a piecework basis. These operations are so related in a series that a slacker feels the displeasure of those who follow him and depend upon him for a supply of material. In the smaller factories the work is regarded somewhat in the light of a summer holiday, as the tasks are simple and the operatives talk and sing at their work. This social element largely disappears, however, with the introduction of machinery. As might be expected in a labor force composed of men, women, and children, both white and black, with some engaged in manual labor and others tending complicated machines, there is little solidarity. An organized strike including any large percentage of the force in a tobacco factory is a practical impossibility. Those engaged in a particular process may strike and in consequence tie up the processes depending upon them, but any sort of industrial friction is uncommon. The general level of wages has been steadily rising, and among the negroes the tobacco workers are the aristocrats of the wage earners and are content with their situation. Since the larger factories are almost invariably in the cities, the homes of the workers are scattered and not collected in communities as around the cotton mills. Experiments have been made in employing negro operatives in the textile industry, so far with little success, though the capacity of the negro for such employment has not yet been disproved. Though several cotton mills which made the experiment failed, in every case there were difficulties which might have caused a similar failure even with white operatives. Negroes have been employed successfully in some hosiery mills and in a few small silk mills. The increasing scarcity of labor, especially during the Great War, has led to the substitution of negroes for whites in a number of knitting mills. Some successful establishments are conducted with negro labor but the labor force is either all white or all black except that white overseers are always, or nearly always employed.