their daughters have fallen before temptation, or their sons contracted slothful or vicious habits. However, the effort to maintain and raise the moral standard is sincere and continuous. No black woman can to-day, in the town of Farmville, be concubine to a white man without losing all social position-a vast revolution in twenty years; no black girl of the town can have an illegitimate child without being shut off from the best class of people and looked at askance by ordinary folks. Usually such girls find it pleasanter to go North and work at service, leaving their children with their mothers.

Finally, it remains to be noted that the whole group life of Farmville Negroes is pervaded by a peculiar hopefulness on the part of the people themselves. No one of them doubts in the least but that one day black people will have all rights they are now striving for, and that the Negro will be recognized among the earth's great peoples. Perhaps this simple faith is, of all products of emancipation, the one of the greatest social and economic value.

CONCLUSION.

A study of a community like Farmville brings to light facts favorable and unfavorable, and conditions good, bad, and indifferent. Just how the whole should be interpreted is perhaps doubtful. One thing, however, is clear, and that is the growing differentiation of classes among Negroes, even in small communities. This most natural and encouraging result of 30 years' development has not yet been sufficiently impressed upon general students of the subject, and leads to endless contradiction and confusion. For instance, a visitor might tell us that the Negroes of Farmville are idle, unreliable, careless with their earnings, and lewd; another visitor, a month later, might say that Farmville Negroes are industrious, owners of property, and slowly but steadily advancing in education and morals. These apparently contradictory statements made continually of Negro groups all over the land are both true to a degree, and become mischievous and misleading only when stated without reservation as true of a whole community, when they are in reality true only of certain classes in the community. The question then becomes, not whether the Negro is lazy and criminal, or industrious and ambitious, but rather what, in a given community, is the proportion of lazy to industrious Negroes, of paupers to property holders, and what is the tendency of development in these classes. Bearing this in mind, it seems fair to conclude, after an impartial study of Farmville conditions, that the industrious and property accumulating class of the Negro citizens best represents, on the whole, the general tendencies of the group. At the same time, the mass of sloth and immorality is still large and threatening.

How far Farmville conditions are true elsewhere in Virginia the present investigator has no means of determining. He sought by inquiry and general study to choose a town which should in large degree typify the condition of the Virginia Negro to day. How far Farmville fulfills this wish can only be determined by further study.

INCOMES, WAGES, AND RENTS IN MONTREAL.

BY HERBERT BROWN AMES, B. A.

The commercial metropolis of Canada is the city of Montreal. Situated at the point of union between the St. Lawrence system and ocean navigation, it is naturally the center of the trading, manufacturing, and distributing interests of the Dominion. With a population of nearly 250,000 souls, Montreal exhibits therein the largest aggregation of industrial workers to be found, and affords a field for the study of the phenomena of associated human life unexcelled throughout British North America.

The national and civic authorities are just awakening to the need of accurate sociological data concerning Montreal, and information from official sources regarding incomes, wages, rents, etc., among the resi dents of this important city being but scanty, recourse is necessary to somewhat incomplete returns from private investigation.

During the autumn and winter of 1896 a private industrial census was taken of a district deemed to be of sufficient area and population to give averages fairly characteristic of the entire city. The canvassers were instructed to obtain information upon the following points: Regarding each place of employment, the number of workers and their division into men, women, and children; regarding each residence, the number of families therein, number of rooms per family, number of persons in family and the proportion thereof of adults, school children, young children, and lodgers, the rental paid, the wages earned, the sanitary accommodation, the nationality, and other similar matters. The results of this house-to-house canvass have recently been published in a monograph entitled The City Below the Hill, and as this is the first and as yet the only effort of the kind that has been made, it is permissible to utilize its results as a groundwork for the present article.

The City Below the Hill is the name given to a typical industrial district of Montreal. The locality comprises about one-sixth of the entire city, constituting its southeastern portion. To those acquainted with Montreal it will be readily recognized when described as the lower half of St. Antoine Ward and all of St. Ann's Ward except Point St. Charles. The district canvassed was divided into thirty sections, and the results of the industrial census were worked out not only for the entire district but for the several sections comprising it.

For many reasons the district chosen was especially adapted to sociological investigation. In the first place, it contained nearly equal proportions of the three nationalities, French-Canadian, British Canadian, and Irish Canadian, of which the city population is composed. The choice of any other industrial section would have confined the investigation to the study of a single race in a mixed community. Again, the district was, in the main, fairly homogeneous with regard to the social status of its inhabitants. Nearly all the families resident therein were dependent upon local industries, and at least 75 per cent of them belonged to the real industrial class. Yet, again, natural boundaries separated the district from adjoining territory. Were one to pass its western limit, he would be required to ascend a considerable hill, and in so doing would enter the exclusive habitat of the well-to do. Passing across the northern boundary, the heart of the city, with streets devoted wholly to warehouses and stores, would be reached. To the east lies what is known as Point St. Charles, a distinctly separate community gathered around the offices and workshops of the Grand Trunk Railway, the residents of which have little communication with the adjoining district. The only arbitrary limit lies to the southward, where the city line separates the district from the outlying municipality of St. Cunegonde. On the whole, however, no portion of Montreal could have been chosen for sociological study whose boundaries so naturally separated it from dissimilar localities.

In the main the district is low-lying and level. Through its center passes the Lachine Canal, while its eastern border extends to the River St. Lawrence. The two leading railways of Canada, the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Pacific, have their central stations within its bounds. In extent it is about a square mile and includes 475 acres actually utilized for purposes of business or residence. It furnishes employment for 16,237 persons and contains 7,671 families. The total number of wage earners employed exceeds that of wage earners resident by 5,384, a fact which proves that the district is capable of sustaining, by means of the industries therein operated, a much larger number of families than it now contains, and that with suitable dwellings every wage worker employed therein might live in comfort and health within easy walking distance of his place of employment.

The table following contains the results of the unofficial industrial census upon matters relating to family incomes and workers' wages in the district selected for investigation. At the bottom of the table are given general averages for the entire district, while opposite the number of each subdivision is the sectional average, showing local variations.

The composition of the family is the first subject for investigation. It was found that the 7,671 families aggregated 37,652 persons. Of these persons, 25,051 were sixteen years of age or upward, and might reasonably be regarded as adults. These 25,051 adults were again divisible into three classes, viz, the wage earners, male and female, numbering 10,853; the home tenders, numbering 11,720, and the lodgers, numbering 2,478. The children numbered 12,601, divisible into two classes, viz, children of school age, of whom there were 6,948, and young children of five years or under, of whom there were 5,653. Deducing from these figures an average, the typical family will be found to contain 4.90 persons. Of this number 1.41 work for wages and are the family's support; 1.53 remain at home and contribute more or less to its care; 1.64 represent the children, of whom 0.91 is of school age and 0.73 an infant in the house. To every third family there is assignable one lodger. With this latter element eliminated, our typical family would be reduced to 4.58 individuals. These proportions may be more graphically expressed by imagining a block to contain 30 families. In such case we would expect to find 147 persons, 42 of whom would be wage earners, 46 would be home tenders, 10 would be lodgers, 27 children of school age, and 22 infants. These figures represent the rela tive proportions of the various elements in the average family of the district under consideration.

Knowing now what proportion of the average family contributes to the common purse, an examination of the amount earned may next be taken up. As near as can be ascertained, the average aggregate income per week throughout the year for all the families under examination amounts to $84,998, equivalent to $11.08 per week for each family, or about $2.25 for each man, woman, and child resident within the district. Localities vary greatly in the family averages, which range from $15.96 in section 9 to $8.04 in section 23. The sixteen sections inhabited more especially by industrial workers exhibit a sequence as follows: $9.51, $9.87, $10.53, $10.68, $10.72, $10.79, $10.94, $10.97, $10.98, $11.03, $11.14, $11.39, $11.89, $11.95, $12.17, $12.21. From this it is evident. that a range of family incomes from $9.50 to $12.25 per week may be regarded as characteristic, when all classes are included. Adopting a somewhat different method of dealing with the figures by attempting to analyze the whole and to classify the families according to weekly incomes, we have the following: Of class A, the well-to-do, with a regular family income of $20 or more, 10 per cent; of class B, where the family income ranges from $15 regularly received to $20 irregularly received, 12 per cent; of class C, where the family income ranges from $10 regularly received to $15 irregularly received, 23 per cent; of class D, where the family income ranges from $7.50 regularly received to $10 irregularly received, 28 per cent; of class E, where the family income ranges from $5 regularly received to $7.50 irregularly received, 17 per cent; of class F, where the family income is not more than $5 irregu larly received and often even less than that amount, 10 per cent.