An additional study was made of the wages of seventy-five families for a year, the figures being secured from the mill pay roll. The income of fifteen families fell below even the minimum; twenty-two had more than the fair standard, and thirty-eight between the two. Of the seventy-five families, fifty had fathers working in the mill and only two of these fifty fathers, both overseers, earned enough to support a wife and three young children according to the fair standard, and four according to the minimum. A decent home life for the families of these men would be impossible were it not for the wages of the children or the income from boarders. The great variations in incomes from week to week would increase the difficulty of planning household expenditures even when the average indicates a living wage. The results of this low standard of living on physical vitality are shown by the fact that each of the twenty-one families studied spent some money for medicine or doctor. As illustrating the amount of sickness in these families, with its resulting loss of income and added expense we may quote from the description of one family which has suffered extensively: “The father was injured in the mill twice during the year and lost six weeks. The mother is ill with lung trouble. The boy has tuberculosis, and the fourteen-year-old girl is very frail and is constantly taking patent medicines. During the year they spent $108.25 on medicines and doctor’s bills. The year before the fourteen-year-old girl, whose earnings were a large share of the family income, lost twenty-four weeks because of sickness.” Another family, though in good general health, suffered as a result of bad sanitary conditions: “The members of the family appear to be in good health. The daughter, aged eighteen, had typhoid fever during the year and was unable to work for eight weeks. The son, aged sixteen, had malaria and lost from one to two weeks at different times.” This is the picture of southern cotton mill life—a family living in a four-room mill-owned house without running water and indoor toilets, with but one room heated; a meager diet of pork and beans, biscuit, coffee and syrup; an irregular income, not allowing on an average enough for a fair standard of living for most of the families, yet tempting often to extravagance in those weeks when it is high; a twelve-year limit permitted by the child labor law, and adult wages that necessitate the children’s going to work as soon as that law allows; the father rarely earning much more, and sometimes even less, than the younger members of the family; scant amusement, usually only the moving picture show, possible on the meager income; poor health with the doctor often an impossible luxury. JOTTINGS DETROIT BOOSTING FOR SAFETY