With a view to supplementing or checking the details of actual earnings in a particular week, information was also sought with respect to the _total_ wages paid in an ordinary pay week in each month, and also with respect to the total wages paid in the year. From this last-mentioned body of information it is possible to deduce some tentative conclusions in regard to the extent to which the industry suffers from seasonal variations. This matter will be further considered below. It is, however, mainly the information in regard to full-time earnings in an ordinary week with which it is proposed to deal. Statistics, it may safely be assumed, are abhorred of the general reader; but they are the alphabet of social study and cannot be dispensed with, and certain tables must now be introduced showing the relative wage level for women in a number of important industries. It should be noted that the abstract "woman" who is dealt with in the statistics is a female person of eighteen years of age or over. She may be, though is not likely to be, a new recruit or learner. She may, on the other hand, be very old and infirm, though here again the probabilities are against it. In all cases, however, she works full time, which roughly we may regard as being about fifty to fifty-two hours a week. The following table shows the average weekly full-time earnings of women employed in the principal textile industries. In addition to the average, which may of course be a compound of a great many widely differing conditions, the proportion or percentage of women whose earnings fall within certain limits is also shown.[53] TABLE A +-----------------------------------------------------+ | | Percentage numbers of | | | | women working full time | | | | in the last pay-week of | | | | September 1906, whose | | | | earnings fell within the| | | Industry. | undermentioned limits. | Average | | |-------------------------|earnings for| | |Under| 10s. and |15s. and| full time. | | | 10s.|under 15s.| over. | | |--------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| | | | | | s. d. | |All textiles | 13·3| 38·8 | 47·9 | 15 5 | |--------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Cotton | 3·0| 20·9 | 76·1 | 18 8 | |Hosiery | 14·5| 44·4 | 41·1 | 14 3 | |Wool, worsted | 10·7| 55·6 | 33·7 | 13 10 | |Lace | 18·1| 49·3 | 32·6 | 13 5 | |Jute | 6·2| 66·4 | 27·4 | 13 5 | |Silk | 38·9| 47·8 | 13·3 | 11 2 | |Linen | 41·7| 49·1 | 9·2 | 10 9 | +-----------------------------------------------------+