These studied together and apart will no doubt give a correct general impression of the amount and variability of wages paid, but circumstances have made it very difficult to group them so as to give a simple bird's-eye view of the whole. These circumstances are partly due to the very great differences between the class of work done by the various firms, and the difficulty of tabulating the workers under a few definite heads; partly to the difficulty of collecting records. Our investigators were recommended:-- i. To get complete wage sheets for as many weeks as their time and the courtesy of the manager allowed, making the record as complete as possible for 1899, and extending their researches back as far as the books existed, choosing the wage sheets of one week in every month. ii. To trace individual workers through as long a period as possible, choosing workers who would best illustrate all the various conditions of employment. iii. To note any other information. As regards i., we have the wage sheets for some 470 separate weeks, in addition to the complete lists of two very small firms for one and four years respectively; ii., the complete earnings of about 130 hands for periods varying from one to fourteen years. Owing to the fact that it was impossible to get the complete lists through 1899 for many firms, and that the periods of slackness and full work were not the same in different places, it proved very difficult to handle the wage lists. At last the plan was adopted of getting complete lists of one busy week, one typical week, and one slack week in 1899, leaving the employers to choose the weeks, unless our investigators could make a complete record. In the following analysis we have endeavoured to bring out the salient features of the statistics of each firm separately, and we have then grouped together all the typical weeks, either chosen by the employer or selected by us from the series; and it is believed that this grouping gives an adequate idea of the wages at a time which the trade regards as ordinary. The earnings of the 130 individual hands is a very valuable and, it may be, almost unique record. Many interesting facts are brought out by their study, and the records should have a place in sociological literature apart from their interest in the present connection. It has been necessary to make a technical use of averages in collating and tabulating the material, and we offer the following explanations. Where the word "average" is used without qualification, it is the ordinary arithmetic average, obtained by dividing the total by the number of payees. This is the best for general quantitative measurements.