The moral atmosphere wherein they live and move and have their being is as noxious to the soul, as the foul and tainted air which they inhale is to their bodily constitution.... What shall we say then of a system which ... debases all who are engaged in it?... It is a wen, a fungous excrescence from the body politic.
The moral atmosphere wherein they live and move and have their being is as noxious to the soul, as the foul and tainted air which they inhale is to their bodily constitution.... What shall we say then of a system which ... debases all who are engaged in it?... It is a wen, a fungous excrescence from the body politic.
Here we may as well admit that the agitators, though possibly right in their facts, did not represent them in a true perspective. Perhaps the worst feature of working-class life at this time was the scandalous state of housing. The manufacturing towns had grown up rapidly to meet a sudden demand. The progress of enclosing, the decay of home industry, and the call of capital for labour in towns had caused a considerable displacement of population. The immigrants had to find house-room in the outskirts of what had but lately been mere villages. Sanitary science was backward, and municipal government was decadent and could not cope with the rush to the towns. The immigrant population and the existing social conditions were of a type favourable to a rapid increase in numbers, economic independence at an early age not unnaturally tending towards unduly early marriage and irresponsibility of character. Dr. Aikin writes:
As Manchester may bear comparison with the metropolis itself in the rapidity with which whole new streets have been raised, and in its extension on every side toward the surrounding country; so it unfortunately vies with, or exceeds the metropolis, in the closeness with which the poor are crowded in offensive, dark, damp, and incommodious habitations, a too fertile source of disease.[15]
As Manchester may bear comparison with the metropolis itself in the rapidity with which whole new streets have been raised, and in its extension on every side toward the surrounding country; so it unfortunately vies with, or exceeds the metropolis, in the closeness with which the poor are crowded in offensive, dark, damp, and incommodious habitations, a too fertile source of disease.[15]
There is abundant evidence of equally bad conditions in other towns. Such circumstances are inevitably demoralising, and they served to give the impression that the factory population, as such, was extraordinarily wild and wicked. But these particular evils were not specially due to the factory system. In the matter of sanitation and housing there can be little doubt that the rural population was no better, perhaps even worse cared-for than the urban or industrial, the main difference of course being that neglect of cleanliness and elementary methods of sewage disposal are less immediate and disastrous evils among a sparse and scattered population than they are in towns.
Much has been written and spoken about the evils of factory life in withdrawing the mother from the home, and causing neglect of children and infants. Yet even this, an evil which no one would desire to minimise, is not peculiar to factory towns. A report on the state of the Agricultural Population says that:
Even when they have been taught to read and write, the women of the agricultural labouring class (viz. in Wilts, Devon, and Dorset), are in a state of ignorance affecting the daily welfare and comfort of their families. Ignorance of the commonest things, needlework, cooking, and other matters of domestic economy, is described as universally prevalent.... A girl brought up in a cottage until she marries is generally ignorant of nearly everything she ought to be acquainted with for the comfortable and economic management of a cottage ... a young woman goes into the fields to labour, with which ends all chance of improving her position; she marries and brings up her daughters in the same ignorance, and their lives are a repetition of her own.
Even when they have been taught to read and write, the women of the agricultural labouring class (viz. in Wilts, Devon, and Dorset), are in a state of ignorance affecting the daily welfare and comfort of their families. Ignorance of the commonest things, needlework, cooking, and other matters of domestic economy, is described as universally prevalent.... A girl brought up in a cottage until she marries is generally ignorant of nearly everything she ought to be acquainted with for the comfortable and economic management of a cottage ... a young woman goes into the fields to labour, with which ends all chance of improving her position; she marries and brings up her daughters in the same ignorance, and their lives are a repetition of her own.
Material progress had completely outdistanced the social side of civilisation. It was easy to see thatold-fashioned restrictions on commerce needed to be swept away, as a trammel and a hindrance; but where was the constructive effort and initiative to shape the new fabric of society that should supply the people’s needs?
It was the misfortune of the factory system that it took its sudden start at a moment when the entire energies of the British legislature were preoccupied with the emergencies of the French Revolution.... The foundations on which it reposes were laid in obscurity and its early combinations developed without attracting the notice of statesmen or philosophers.... There thus crept into unnoticed existence a closely condensed population, under modifying influences the least understood, for whose education, religious wants, legislative and municipal protection, no care was taken and for whose physical necessities the more forethought was requisite, from the very rapidity with which men were attracted to these new centres. To such causes may be referred the incivilisation and immorality of the overcrowded manufacturing towns.[16]
It was the misfortune of the factory system that it took its sudden start at a moment when the entire energies of the British legislature were preoccupied with the emergencies of the French Revolution.... The foundations on which it reposes were laid in obscurity and its early combinations developed without attracting the notice of statesmen or philosophers.... There thus crept into unnoticed existence a closely condensed population, under modifying influences the least understood, for whose education, religious wants, legislative and municipal protection, no care was taken and for whose physical necessities the more forethought was requisite, from the very rapidity with which men were attracted to these new centres. To such causes may be referred the incivilisation and immorality of the overcrowded manufacturing towns.[16]
It is curious to compare the criminal neglect here indicated with the self-complacency of the governing classes of this country, and the immense claims for admiration and respect often put forth on account of their control of home and local administration. In this tremendous crisis in the social life of the country, the complex changes of the industrial revolution, the classes in power sat by, apathetic and uninterested, taking little or no pains to cope with the problem, or interfered merely with harsh or even cruel repression of the workers’ efforts to combine for self-defence. Although Dr. Percival and Dr. Ferrier had drawn attention to the disease and unhealthy conditionsexisting in factories as far back as 1784 and 1796, it was not until 1833 that a Factory Act was passed containing any administrative provisions that could be deemed effective. Public health measures came later still. Much as the industrial employers were abused by the landowners, it is a fact that reforms and ameliorative projects were started originally by the former. Sir Robert Peel, who owned cotton factories, was the pioneer of factory legislation, and Robert Owen gave the impetus to industrial reform by the humanity and ability that characterised his management of his own mill, and the generosity of his treatment of his own employees.
The Woman Wage-Earner.—The initiation of the factory system undoubtedly fixed and defined the position of the woman wage-earner. For good or for evil, the factory system transformed the nature of much industrial work, rendering it indefinitely heterogeneous, and incidentally opening up new channels for the employment, first, unfortunately, of children, afterwards of women.
In the case of spinning, the division of work between men and women was attended with considerable complications, and it appears that the masters confidently expected to employ women in greater proportions than was actually feasible. A comparison of the evidence by masters and men respectively given before the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery throws some interesting sidelights on the question, though it does not make it absolutely clear. Dunlop, a Glasgow master, had frequent disputes with the “combination” as the union was then called. He built a new mill with machinery which he hoped would make it unnecessary to employ men at all. In a few years he was, however,again employing men as before, and his account of the matter was that this change of front was due to the violence of the men’s unions. Two of the operative leaders, however, came up at a later stage to protest against Dunlop’s version. They showed that the persistent violence attributed to the men really narrowed down to a single case of assault some years before, when there was not sufficient evidence to commit the men accused. They denied the alleged opposition to women’s employment and declared that there was absolutely no connexion between the outrage complained of and the substitution of men for women, which had in fact been effected by Dunlop’s sons during his absence in America, and was due to the fact that the women could not do as much or as good work on the spinning machines as men could. Dunlop also had given an exaggerated account of the wages paid, making no allowance for stoppage and breakdown of machinery, which were frequent.
A few years later we find some interesting evidence as to the efforts of further developments in spinning machinery. A Mr. Graham told the Select Committee on Manufactures and Commerce that he was introducing self-acting mules, and did not yet know whether women could be adapted to their use, but hoped to get rid of “all the spinners who are making exorbitant wages,” and employ piecers only, giving one of the piecers a small increase in wages. He was also employing a number of women upon a different description of wheels, and others in throstle spinning. According to him the women got about 18s. a week, a statement which it would probably be wise to discount. Being asked whether the self-acting mules or the spinning by women would be cheapest, he replied that it washoped the spinning by self-acting mules would be cheapest, as even the women were combining and giving trouble. In 1838, Doherty, a labour man, showed that although women were allowed to spin in Manchester, “whole mills of them,” the number was being reduced, the physical strength of women being insufficient to work the larger wheels which had come into use. It is useful to obtain some idea of the views of the employing class at a time of such complex changes, and it seems evident that some at least were almost taken off their feet by the exciting prospects opening out to them, and hoped to dispense very largely with skilled male labour, or even with adult labour altogether.
At the present time though there have been great developments in machinery, spinning is the one large department of the cotton industry in which men still exceed women in numbers. The employment of women in ring-spinning is increasing, but there are special counts which can only be done on the mule, which is beyond the woman’s strength and skill. Between 1901 and 1911 male cotton-spinners increased in numbers 31 per cent, female 60 per cent. The totals were in 1911 respectively 84,000 and 55,000.
The introduction of the power-loom was a very important event in the history of women’s employment. Even in 1840 a woman working a power-loom could do “twice as much” as a man with a hand-loom, and the assistant commissioner who made this observation added the prophecy that in another generation women only would be employed, save a few men for the necessary superintendence and care of the machinery. “There will be no weavers as a class; the work will be done by the wives of agricultural labourers ordifferent mechanics.” Gaskell, a writer who gave much thought and consideration to the problems before his eyes, and saw a good deal more than many of his contemporaries, also thought that machinery would soon reach a point at which “automata” would have done away with the need of adult workmen.
He says, however, on another page, that “since steam-weaving became general the number of adults engaged in the mills has been progressively advancing inasmuch as very young children are not competent to take charge of steam-looms. The individuals employed at them are chiefly girls and young women, from sixteen to twenty-two.”
Gaskell attributed the employment of women in factories, not so much to their taking less wages, as to their being more docile and submissive than men.
Out of 800 weavers employed in one establishment, and which was ... composed indiscriminately, of men, women, and children—the one whose earnings were the most considerable, was a girl of sixteen.... The mode of payment ... is payment for work done—piece-work as it is called.... Thus this active child is put upon more than a par with the most robust adult; is in fact placed in a situation decidedly advantageous compared to him.... Workmen above a certain age are difficult to manage.... Men who come late into the trade, learn much more slowly than children ... and as all are paid alike, so much per pound, or yard, it follows that these men ... are not more efficient labourers than girls and boys, and much less manageable.... Adult male labour having been found difficult to manage and not more productive—its place has, in a great measure, been supplied by children and women; and hence the outcry which has been raised with regard to infant labour, in its moral and physical bearings.
Out of 800 weavers employed in one establishment, and which was ... composed indiscriminately, of men, women, and children—the one whose earnings were the most considerable, was a girl of sixteen.... The mode of payment ... is payment for work done—piece-work as it is called.... Thus this active child is put upon more than a par with the most robust adult; is in fact placed in a situation decidedly advantageous compared to him.... Workmen above a certain age are difficult to manage.... Men who come late into the trade, learn much more slowly than children ... and as all are paid alike, so much per pound, or yard, it follows that these men ... are not more efficient labourers than girls and boys, and much less manageable.... Adult male labour having been found difficult to manage and not more productive—its place has, in a great measure, been supplied by children and women; and hence the outcry which has been raised with regard to infant labour, in its moral and physical bearings.
This passage, involved as it is in thought and expression, is not without interest as a reflection of the mind of that time, painfully working out contemporary problems. Gaskell confuses women’s labour with child labour, and it is difficult to discover from this book that he has ever given any thought to the former problem at all. The family for him is the social unit, and women are classed with children as beings for whom the family as a matter of course provides. He omits from consideration the woman thrown upon her own exertions, and the grown-up girl, who, even if living at home, must earn. It is not difficult to find other instances of similarnaïveté; thus in the supplementary Report on Child Labour in Factories, it was gravely suggested that it may be wrong to be much concerned because women’s wages are low.
Nature effects her own purpose wisely and more effectually than could be done by the wisest of men. The low price of female labour makes it the most profitable as well as the most agreeable occupation for a female to superintend her own domestic establishment, and her low wages do not tempt her to abandon the care of her own children.
Nature effects her own purpose wisely and more effectually than could be done by the wisest of men. The low price of female labour makes it the most profitable as well as the most agreeable occupation for a female to superintend her own domestic establishment, and her low wages do not tempt her to abandon the care of her own children.
Here again, there is apparently no perception of the case of the woman, who, by sheer economic necessity, is forced to work, whether for herself alone, or for her children also.
It is hardly necessary to remark that the estimate quoted above, according to which the girl weaving on a power-loom could do twice as much as a man on a hand-loom, has since been enormously exceeded. Schultz-Gävernitz in 1895 thought that a power-loom weaver accomplished about as much as forty good hand-weavers, and no doubt even this estimate is now outof date. Partly for technical, partly for other reasons, the woman’s presence in the factory is now much more taken for granted.
The girl who is to be a weaver begins work usually at twelve years old, the minimum age permitted by law, and may spend six weeks with a relation or friends learning the ways. She thus becomes a “tenter” or “helper,” and fetches the weft, carries away the finished goods, sweeps and cleans. At thirteen or fourteen she may have two looms to mind, and will earn about 12s. a week. At sixteen she will be promoted to three looms, and later on to four, beyond which women seldom go; a man sometimes minds six looms, but needs a helper for this extra strain. The work needs considerable skill and attention. Often a four-loom weaver will be turning out four different kinds of cloth on the four looms. It is also fatiguing, as she is on her feet the whole ten hours of her legal day, sometimes, unfortunately, lengthened by the objectionable practice known as “time-cribbing,” which means that ten or even fifteen minutes are taken from the legal meal times, and added to the working hours. It takes some years to become an efficient weaver, and the drain on the weaver’s strength and vitality is considerable. Where steaming is used, colds and rheumatism are very prevalent. It is noticed by the weavers that the sickness rate is lower in times of bad trade, and indeed slack seasons are regarded as times for much-needed recuperation. Women, although they equal or here and there even excel men in skill and quickness, fail in staying power. Many get fagged out by three o’clock in the afternoon. The great increase in speed is also a factor in sickness. Weavers are now said to be doing as much work in a day as in a day and a half twelve orthirteen years ago, and the wages have increased, but not proportionately. The work involves not only physical, but mental strain, and many cases of nervous break-down and anaemia are known to occur among weavers. It should not be forgotten that many women and girls have domestic work to do after their day’s work in the mill is over, and the high standard of comfort and “house pride” in Lancashire makes this a considerable addition.
Another large class of women cotton operatives are the card-room workers, officially described as “card-and blowing-room operatives.” In this department men and women do different work. The men do the more dangerous, more unhealthy, and also the better paid work. Women’s work also is dangerous, and unhealthy from the dust and cotton fibre that pervade the atmosphere. An agitation is on foot to have a dust-extractor fixed to every carding-engine. The operatives suffer chiefly from excessive speed and pressure. They are continually pressed to keep the machines going, and not to stop them even for necessary cleaning, and I am assured by a card-room operative that in the card-room the highest percentage of accidents for the week occurs on Friday, when the principal weekly cleaning takes place, and the lowest on Monday, when cleaning is not required; also that the highest percentage of accidents during the day occurs on an average between 10A.M.and 12 noon, when the dirtiest parts of the machinery are usually wiped over. The chief cause of these accidents is cleaning while the machinery is in motion. The present rate of speed produces extreme exhaustion in the workers, and some consider that card-room work is altogether too hard for women, and not suitable to theirphysical capacity. It is said to be done entirely by men in America.
The male weaver is by no means extinct, as the prophets we have quoted seemed to expect. Cotton-weaving offers the very unusual, perhaps unique example of a large occupation employing both man and woman, and on equal terms. The earnings of the male weaver are, however, very inferior to those of the spinner, and he cannot unaided support a family without being considerably straitened, according to the Lancashire standard. But, in point of fact, a weaver when he marries usually marries a woman who is also working at a mill, and if she is a weaver her earnings are very likely as good as his. In this industry women attain to very nearly as great skill and dexterity as do men; in some branches even greater. In Lancashire the standard of working-class life and comfort is high, and a woman whose husband is a weaver will not brook that her next-door neighbour, whose husband may be a spinner or machine-maker, should dress their children better, or have better window-curtains than she can. She continues to work at her own trade, and the two incomes are combined until the woman is temporarily prevented working at the mill. An interval of some months may be taken off by a weaver for the birth of her baby, but she will return to the mill afterwards, and again after a second; at the third or fourth child she usually retires from industry. Later on the children begin earning. Thus the male weaver’s most difficult and troubled times are when his children are quite young, his wife temporarily incapacitated, and his earnings their sole support. When both husband and wife are earning, their means are good relatively to their standard; and again asthe young people grow up, the combined income of the family may be even ample. The young children whose mother is absent at work are looked after in the day-time by a grandmother, or by a neighbour who is paid for the work. It was stated, half-ironically, perhaps, before the Labour Commission that there was a “standard list for this sort of business.” Opinions differ as to whether the children are or are not neglected under this system. There is, however, evidence to show that many Lancashire women, at least among those who are relatively well paid, are good mothers and good housekeepers even though they work their ten hours a day. They go to work because their standard of life is high, and they cannot live up to it without working.
The Industrial Revolution in Non-Textile Trades.—This subject, though sociologically of great interest, cannot here be treated at length; it must suffice to indicate a few points in regard to women, trusting that some later writer will some day paint for England a finished picture on the scale of Miss Butler’s fine study “Women and the Trades,” of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.
The factory system has now invaded one manufacturing industry after another, and the use of power and division of work in numerous processes have opened a considerable amount of employment to women. There have been two lines of development; on the one hand, occupations have been opened for women in trades with which previously they had nothing, or very little to do; on the other hand, industries hitherto almost entirely in the hands of women, and carried on chiefly in homes or small workrooms or shops, such as dressmaking, the making of underclothing, laundry work and so on, have been to some extent changed incharacter, and have in part become factory industries of the modern type.
In 1843 the sub-commissioner who investigated Birmingham industries for the Children’s Employment Commission, was struck by the extent of women’s and children’s employment. Very large numbers of children were employed in a great variety of manufacturing processes, and women’s labour was being substituted for men’s in many branches. In all trades there were at the same time complaints of want of employment and urgent distress, involving large numbers of mechanics. Mr. Grainger saw women employed in laborious work, such as stamping buttons and brass nails, and notching the heads of screws, and considered these to be unfit occupations for women. In screw manufactories the women and girls constituted 80 to 90 per cent of the whole number employed. A considerable number of girls, fourteen and upwards, were employed in warehouses packing the goods, giving in and taking out work. Non-textile industries were as yet quite unregulated, and many of the reports made to this commissioner indicate very bad conditions as to health and morals. The sanitary conditions were atrocious, except where the employers were specially conscientious and gave attention to the subject; there was little protection against accident, and child-labour was permitted at very early years. Most of the abuses noted had to do either with insanitary conditions or with child-labour. The women and girls are described as having been often twisted or injured by premature employment, and as being totally without education. One witness who gave evidence considered that the lack of education was more disastrous for girls than for boys.
In 1864 the Children’s Employment Commission found that the number and size of large factories had grown since 1841, and the number of women in the Birmingham district employed in metal manufactures was estimated at 10,000.
In 1866, when the British Association visited Birmingham, Mr. S. Timmins prepared a series of reports on local industries, the index of which gives no less than thirty-six references to women, which is some indication how widely they were employed. In the steel pen trade, for instance, which had developed from a small trade in hand-made pens, costing several shillings each, into a large factory industry, numbers of girls and women were employed, and a comparatively small proportion of men. In 1866, there were estimated to be 360 men, 2050 women and girls employed in Birmingham pen-works. Women were employed extensively in the light chain trade, also in lacquering in the brass trade, and in many other occupations. Successive censuses show very rapid increases in the employment of women in the metal trades generally, though, of course, they bear a much lower proportion to men in these trades taken as a whole than in the textile trades.
Similar developments are taking place in food and tobacco trades, soap, chemicals, paper and stationery. The boot and shoe trade is a good example of the rapid opening-out of opportunities for women’s employment. At the time of the Labour Commission (1893) it was noted that Bristol factories were mostly not up to date or efficient. Since that time there has been a rapid extension of factory work for women, and the methods in the boot and shoe trade have been revolutionised by the introduction of the powersewing-machine, and by production on a large scale. The new factories in or near Bristol have lofty rooms, modern improved sanitary and warming apparatus, and the best are carefully arranged with a view to maintaining the health and efficiency of the workers.
In 1903 a committee of the Economic Section of the British Association found in Sheffield that machinery had been displacing file cutlery made by hand for fifteen years past, and some women were already finding employment on the lighter machines. In Coventry the cycle industry employed an increasing number of women; watchmaking was becoming a factory industry, and the proportion of women to men had increased rapidly. Women are even employed in some processes subsidiary to engineering, such as core-making. But it should be remembered that these openings for women do not necessarily mean permanent loss of work for men, though some temporary loss there no doubt very often is. The rearrangement of industry and the subdivision of processes mean that new processes are appropriated to women; and it is likely enough that among factory operatives women are, and will be, an increasing proportion. But therewith must come an increasing demand for men’s labour in mining, smelting and forging metal, and in other branches into which women are unlikely to intrude.
In the clothing trades the industrial revolution has made some way, and is doubtless going to make still more way, but it is unlikely that the older-fashioned methods of tailoring and dressmaking can ever be superseded as completely as was the hand-loom weaving in the cotton trade. Dress is a matter of individual taste and fancy, and much as the factory-made clothing and dressmaking has improved in the last ten or twentyyears, it is unlikely ever to supply the market entirely. Stay-making is a rapidly developing factory industry at Bristol, Ipswich and elsewhere. In underclothing and children’s clothing also the factory system is making considerable advances. It is startling to see babies’ frocks or pinafores made on inhuman machines moved by power, with rows of fixed needles whisking over the elaborate tucks; but if the resulting article be both good and cheap, and the women operatives paid much better than they would be for the same number of hours’ needlework, sentimental objections are perhaps out of place.
In such factories as I have been permitted to visit, mostly non-textile, I have noticed that men and women are usually doing, not the same, but different kinds of work, and that the work done by women seems to fall roughly into three classes. My classification is probably quite unscientific, and indicates merely a certain social order perceived or conceived by an observer ignorant of the technical side of manufacturing and chiefly interested in the social or sociological aspect. In the first place, there is usually some amount of rough hard work in the preparing and collecting of the material, or the transporting it from one part of the factory to another. Such work is exemplified by the rag-cutting in paper-mills, fruit-picking in jam factories, the sorting soiled clothes in laundries, the carrying of loads from one room to another, and such odd jobs. I incline to think that the arrangements made for dealing with this class of work are a very fair index to the character and ability of the employer. In good paper-mills, for instance, though nothing could make rag-cutting an attractive job, its objectionable features are mitigated by a preliminary cleansing of the rags, and by goodventilation in the work. In ill-managed factories of various kinds the carrying of heavy loads is left to the women workers’ unaided strength, and is a most unpleasing sight to those who do not care to see their sisters acting as beasts of burden, not to mention that heavy weight-carrying is often highly injurious, provoking internal trouble. In the case of trays of boiling fruit, jam, etc., it may lead to horrible accidents. In well-managed factories this carrying of loads is arranged for by mechanical means or a strong porter is retained for the purpose.
The second class of work noticed as being done by women is work done on machines with or without power, and this includes a whole host of employments and an endless variety of problems. Machine tending, press-work, stamp-work, metal-cutting, printing, various processes of brass work, pen-making, machine ironing in laundries, the making of “hollow ware” or tin pots and buckets of various kinds; such are a few of the kinds of work that occur to me. Many of them have the interesting characteristic of forming a kind of borderland or marginal region where men and women, by exception, do the same kinds of work. It is in these kinds of work that difficulties occur in imperfectly organised trades; it is here that the employer is constantly pushing the women workers a little further on and the male workers a little further off; it is here that controversies rage over what is “suitable to women,” and that recriminations pass between trade unions and enterprising employers. These kinds of work may be very hard, or very easy, they may need skill and afford some measure of technical interest, or they may be merely dull and monotonous, efficiency being measured merely by speed; they may be badly paid, but on theother hand they include some of the best paid of women’s industrial occupations. They are in a continual state of flux, responding to every technical advance, and change in methods; they represent the industrial revolution at its tensest and most critical point. And to conclude, it is here that organisation for women is most necessary and desirable in the interests of all classes.
The third kind of work noted by the detached observer is more difficult to define in a word; it consists in the finishing and preparing goods for sale, and in the various kinds of work known as warehouse work. As a separate class it results mainly from the increasing size of firms and the quantity of work done. Paper-sorting or overlooking in paper-mills is typical of this class of work; it consists in separating faulty sheets of paper from those that are good, and is done at great speed by girls who have a quick eye and a light touch. It is said to be work that men entirely fail in, not having sufficiently sensitive finger-tips. In nearly all factories there is a great deal of this kind of work, monotonous no doubt, but usually clean in character, and less hard and involving considerably less strain than either of the two former classes of work. In confectionery or stationery works, for instance, to mention two only, troops of girls are seen busily engaged at great speed in making up neat little packets of the finished article, usually with an advertisement or a picture put inside. In china or glass works girls may be employed wrapping the goods in paper, and similar jobs are found in many classes of work. In a well-known factory in East London where food for pet animals is made or prepared, I was told some years ago that no girls at all had been employed until recently, when about forty were taken onfor the work of doing up the finished article in neat packets for sale. It is noticeable that the girls who are thus employed are usually of a social grade superior to the two former classes, though they by no means always earn better wages. They are very frequently the daughters of artisans earning good wages, and expect to marry in their own class and leave work. The women employed in the second class of work indicated, viz. chiefly on or about the machines, are on the whole more enterprising, and more likely to join unions. These again are socially superior to No. 1. No. 1 class, those who do the rough hard kind of work, are mainly employed for the sake of cheapness, are often married women, and are probably doing much the same kinds of work that were done by women in those trades before the transformation of industry by machinery. (This is merely an inference of mine, and can scarcely be proved, but it seems likely to be true.) The more perfectly the industry develops and becomes organised, the more machinery is used and different processes are adapted to utilise different classes of skilled effort, the less need will there be for class No. 1 work to be done at all.
It should be noted before we leave this subject that No. 2 class work is especially liable to change and modification, which means change in the demand for labour, and often means a demand for a different class of labour, or a different kind of skill. There are some who think pessimistically that improved machinery must mean a demand for a lower grade of skill. No doubt it oftenhasmeant that, and still does in instances. But it is far from being universally true. As the hand-press is exchanged for the power-press, the demand occurs for a worker sufficiently careful and responsibleto be trusted with the new and more valuable machinery. Again, when a group of processes needing little skill is taken over by an automatic machine that performs the whole complex of operations, several unskilled workers will be displaced by one of a higher grade. The new automatic looms worked by electric power are, I am told, involving the employment of a class of young women superior in general intelligence and education to the typical weaver, though not necessarily so in manual skill.
Conclusion.—Frau Braun sees in the machine the main cause of the development of woman’s industrial employment.[17]A more recent writer, Mrs. Schreiner, takes exactly the opposite view:
The changes ... which we sum up under the compendious term “modern civilisation,” have tended to rob woman, not merely in part, but almost wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and social labour; and where there has not been a determined and conscious resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to her new and compensatory fields. It is this fact which constitutes our modern “Woman’s Labour Problem.” Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often those of men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no longer say, proudly, as of old, that we, and we alone clothe our peoples.[18]
The changes ... which we sum up under the compendious term “modern civilisation,” have tended to rob woman, not merely in part, but almost wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and social labour; and where there has not been a determined and conscious resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to her new and compensatory fields. It is this fact which constitutes our modern “Woman’s Labour Problem.” Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often those of men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no longer say, proudly, as of old, that we, and we alone clothe our peoples.[18]
It is a striking instance of the extraordinary complexity of modern industry that two distinguished writers like Frau Braun and Mrs. Schreiner, both holding advanced views on the feminist question,should thus come to opposite conclusions as to the influence of the machine. In a sense, the opposition is more apparent than real. Mrs. Schreiner is thinking of production for use by the woman at home, and there is no question that production for use is being superseded by production for exchange. Frau Braun, in the passage quoted, is writing of wage-earning employment. There can be little question that the evolution of machinery has favoured woman’s employment. Woman has no chance against man where sheer strength is needed; but when mechanical power takes the place of human muscle, when the hard part is done by the machine, then the child, the girl, or the woman is introduced. The progressive restriction of child-labour has also favoured women, so that over the period covered by the factory statistics, the percentage of women and girls employed has increased in a very remarkable way.
It is possible to exaggerate the extent of the change made by the industrial revolution in taking women out of the home. We must remember that domestic service, the traditional and long-standing occupation of women, is always carried on away from the home of the worker, and does in fact (as it usually involves residence) divide the worker from her family far more completely than ordinary day work. The instances given inChapter I.also show that not only agriculture, but various other industries, afforded employment to women, long before the industrial revolution, in ways that must have involved “going out to work.” To the working classes it was nothing new to see women work, and, in point of fact, we do not find even the employment of married women exciting much attention or disapproval at the outset of the factory system. Inthe non-domestic industries the question of the wife taking work for wages was probably then, as mainly it still is, a poverty question. The irregular employment, sickness or incapacity of the male bread-winner that result in earnings insufficient for family maintenance, occurred probably with no less frequency in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than now, and these are causes that at all times drive married women to work, if they can get work to do. The class that felt it most keenly as an evil and a wrong, were the hand-loom weavers whose earnings were so depressed that they could not maintain their families, and found at the same time that the labour of their wives and daughters was more in demand than their own. Where the industry had been carried on by the family working together, and, for a time at least, had been sufficiently lucrative to afford a comparatively high standard of comfort, the disintegration of this particular type of organisation was, not unnaturally, resented as an outrage on humanity. The iron regularity of the factory system, the economic pressure that kept the workers toiling as long as the engines could run, the fixation of hours, were cruel hardships to a class that had formed its habits and traditions in the small self-contained workshop, and made continuous employment a terrible strain on the married woman. As the home centres round the woman, the problem for the working woman has been, and is, one of enormous difficulty, involving considerable restatement of her traditional codes and customs.
Whatever may have been the social misery and disorder brought about by the industrial revolution, one striking result was an increase in the earning power of women. Proof in detail of this statement will begiven inChapter VI.; for the present it will suffice to point to the fact. The machine, replacing muscular power and increasing the productivity of industry, does undoubtedly aid the woman in quest of self-dependence. In the era of the great industry she has become to an increasing extent an independent wage-earner. Low as the standard of women’s wages is, there is ample proof that it is on the whole higher under the factory system than under other methods, and as a general rule the larger and more highly organised factory pays higher wages than the smaller, less well-equipped. The cotton industry, which took the lead in introducing the factory system, and is in England by far the most highly organised and efficiently managed among trades in which women predominate, has shown a remarkable rise of wages through the last century, and is now the only large industry in which the average wage of women is comparatively high. Another point is that factory dressmaking, which has developed in comparatively recent years, already shows a higher average wage than the older-fashioned dressmaking carried on in small establishments, and a much smaller percentage of workers paid under 10s. a week. Monsieur Aftalion, in a monograph comparing factory and home work in the French clothing trade, finds wages markedly higher under the factory system. Yet another instance is offered by Italy, where women’s wages are miserably low, yet they are noticeably higher in big factories than in small.
The development of the single young woman’s position through the factory system has been obscured by the abuses incidental to that system, which were due more or less to historical causes outside industry. The absence of any system of control over industrialand sanitary conditions undoubtedly left many factories to become centres of disease, overwork and moral corruption, and the victims of this misgovernment and neglect are a reproach that can never be wiped out. On the other hand, later experience has shown that decent conditions of work are easier to secure in factories than in small work places, owing to greater publicity and facility for inspection. The very fact of the size of the factory, its economic importance, and its almost dramatic significance for social life, caused attention to be drawn to, and wrath to be excited by, evil conditions in the factory, which would have been little noticed in ordinary small work places.
The initiation of the “great industry” resulted in a kind of searchlight being turned on to the dark places of poverty. State interference had to be undertaken, although in flat opposition to the dominant economics of the day, and the better sort of masters were impelled by shame or worthier motives to get rid of the stigma that clung to factory employment. Now the girl-worker has profited by this movement in a quite remarkable degree. Domestic service is no longer her only outlook, and the conditions of domestic service have probably considerably improved in consequence. Her employment is no longer bound up with personal dependence on her own family, or personal servitude in her employer’s.
The wage contract, though not, we may hope, the final or ideal stage in the evolution of woman’s economic position, is an advance from her servile state in the mediaeval working class, or parasitic dependence on the family. The transition thus endows her with greater freedom to dispose of or deny herself in marriage, and is an important step towards higherracial ideals and development. Grievously exploited as her employment has been and still is, the evolution of the woman wage-earner, her gradual achievement of economic individuality and independence, in however limited a degree, is certainly one of the most interesting social facts of the time. The remarkable intelligence and ability of Lancashire working people was noticed by Mrs. Gaskell inMary Barton, as long ago as 1848. And to this day the Co-operative Movement and the Trade Union Movement flourish among Lancashire women as they do not anywhere else. The Workers’ Educational Association draws many of its best students from these women who toil their ten hours in the mill and use their brains for study in the evening after work is over.
STATISTICS OF THE LIFE AND EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN.
No very detailed or elaborate statistics will be here employed, the aim of this chapter being merely to draw attention to certain broad facts or relations disclosed by the Census and the Registrar-General’s Report.
The Surplus of Women.—It is a well-known fact that in this country women exceed men in numbers. The surplus increased slightly but steadily from 1851 to 1901, and remained almost stationary from 1901 to 1911. In 1901 and 1911 there were in every 1000 persons 484 males and 516 females. The excess of females varies at different ages. The number of boys born exceeds the number of girls in a proportion not far from 4 per cent, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But boy infants run greater risks at birth and appear to be altogether more susceptible to adverse influences, for their death-rate is usually higher up to 3, 4 or 5 years old. The age-group 5 to 10 varies from time to time; in 1901-1910 the average mortality of girls was the higher: in 1912 the average mortality of boys was very slightly higher. From 10 to 15 the female death-rate is higher than the male.
The age-group 15 to 20 shows very curious variations in the relative mortality of males and females. From 1894 onwards the males of that group have had a higher mortality than the females, whereas previous to that date the female mortality was the higher, in all years of which we have a record save two—1876 and 1890. The Registrar-General can suggest no explanation of this phenomenon.[19]It may be remarked, however, that girls generally now obtain more opportunity for fresh air and physical exercise than in former years, which may account for some of their comparative improvement in this respect; also that in the industrial districts a great improvement has taken place in the administration of the Factory Act since the appointment of women inspectors and the general raising of the standard after the Act of 1891, and girls may naturally be supposed to have profited more by this improved administration than have youths of the other sex, who are not included under the Act when over 18 years, and in many cases pass into industries unregulated by law.
The following table shows the death-rates per 1000 of male and female persons in England and Wales, 1913, and the ratio of male per cent of female mortality at age periods, as calculated by the Registrar-General.
Death-Rates at Ages, 1913.
As might be expected from these figures, the Census shows that males are in excess of females in very early life, but are gradually overtaken, and in later years especially men are considerably outnumbered by women. The disproportion of women is mainly due to their lower death-rate, but also in part to the fact that so many men go abroad for professional or commercial avocations. Some of these are accompanied by wives or sisters, but a large proportion go alone.
The disproportion of women is more marked in town districts than in rural ones. This may be partly due to the lower infant death-rate in the country, for a high rate of infant mortality on an average affects more boys than girls. But no doubt the large demand for young women’s labour in factories and as domesticservants is another cause of the surplus of women in towns. In rural districts there is a surplus of males over females up to the age of 25. The disproportion of women does not show any marked tendency to increase except among the elderly, the preponderance becoming increasingly marked towards old age. It would overload this chapter too much to give figures illustrating the changes in the last half century; those who wish to make themselves acquainted with the matter can refer to the very full and interesting tables given near the end of Vol. VII. of the Census, 1911.
Marriage.—The preponderance of young women, though not very considerable in figures, is, however, in fact a more effective restriction of marriage than might be expected, because women are by custom more likely to marry young than men, and thus the numbers of marriageable young women at any given date exceed the corresponding numbers of men in a proportion higher than the actual surplus of young women in particular age-groups.
The old-fashioned optimistic assumption that women will all get married and be provided for by their husbands, cannot be maintained. It is possible, however, to be needlessly pessimistic on this head, as in a certain weekly journal which recently proclaimed that “two out of every three women die old maids.” If we are to regard marriage as an occupation (an idea with which, on the whole, I disagree), it is still the most important and extensively followed occupation for women. In 1911 over 6½ millions of women in England and Wales were married, or rather more than one-half the female population over 15; and considerably more than one-half of our women get married some time or other. In middle life, say from 35 to 55, three-fourthsof all women are married. In early life a large proportion are single; in later life a large proportion are widows. Or we might put it in another way. From the age of 20 to 35, only two out of every four women are married, nearly all the rest being still single, and a very small proportion widowed; from 35 to 55, three in every four women are married; over 55, less than two in every four are married, most of the others having become widows. The proportion of women married has increased since the previous Census, but has decreased slightly at all ages under 45.
The following table displays the proportion married and widowed per cent of the different age-groups.
If the figures were drawn in curves, it would be seen that the proportion of single women falls rapidly from youth onwards, and is quite small in old age; that the proportion married rises rapidly at first, remaining high for 20 or 30 years, and falls again, forming a broad mound-shaped curve; while the proportion widowed rises all the way to old age.
It will be seen that, even on the assumption that all wives are provided for by their husbands, which is byno means universally true, a very large proportion of women before 35 and after 55 are not thus provided for, and that an unknown but not inconsiderable proportion never marry at all. In the case of the educated middle class, as Miss Collet pointed out in 1892, the surplus of women over men is considerably above the average, and consequently the prospect of marriage is less in this than in the working class. “Granted an equal number of males and females between the ages of 18 and 30, we have not therefore in English society an equal number of marriageable men and women. Wherever rather late marriage is the rule with men—that is, wherever there is a high standard of comfort—the disproportion is correspondingly great. In a district where boy and girl marriages are very common, everybody can be married and be more or less miserable ever after: but in the upper middle class equality in numbers at certain ages implies a surplus of marriageable women over marriageable men.”[20]
In some quarters the adoption of professions, even of the teaching profession, by women, is opposed on the ground that women are thereby drawn away from marriage and home-making. It is difficult to understand how such an objection can be seriously raised in face of the facts of social life. The adoption of occupations by women may in a few cases indicate a preference for independence and single blessedness; but it is much more often due to economic necessity. It is perfectly plain that not all women can be maintained by men, even if this were desirable. The women who have evolved a theory of “economic independence”are few compared with the many who have economic self-dependence forced upon them. Human nature is far too strong to make it credible that any large number of women will deliberately decline the prospect of husband, home and children of their own for the sake of teaching little girls arithmetic or inspecting insanitary conditions in slums. If a woman has to choose between marrying a man she cares for and earning her own bread, I am sentimental enough to believe that nearly all women would choose the former. The choices of real life are seldom quite so simple. When a woman has to choose between an uncongenial marriage and fairly well-paid work, it is quite likely that nowadays she frequently chooses the latter. In former days the choice might easily have been among the alternatives of the uncongenial marriage, the charity, willing or unwilling, of friends and relations, and sheer starvation, not to mention that even the bitter relief of the uncongenial marriage, usually available in fiction, is not always forthcoming in real life. The case grows clearer every year, that women need training and opportunity to be able to support themselves, though not all women will do so throughout life.
Occupation.—If we have any doubt of the fact that there is still “a deal of human nature” in girls and women, we have only to compare the Census statistics of occupation and marriage. We have already seen that the numbers married increase up to 45. As the number married increases the number occupied rapidly falls off. The percentage of women and girls over 15 who are occupied was, in 1911, 35.5; an increase of 1.0 since 1901.
This does not, however, mean that only a little more than one-third of all women enter upon a tradeor occupation. In point of fact a very large proportion are workers in early youth, as the following tables show. In order to illustrate the relation of occupation to marriage, we place the two sets of figures side by side.
The highest percentage of employment therefore occurs at the age of 18.
The next table shows the proportions of workers in age-groups.
Women and Girl Workers over Ten Years old.
Over 49 per cent of the total are under 25, and are therefore in ordinary speech more commonly termed girl than women workers. The rise in the proportion married compared with the drop in the proportion occupied as age advances, indicates how strong the hold and attraction of the family is upon women. Conditions in factories are undoubtedly improved; many a girl of 20 or 22, perhaps earning 18s. a week, with her club, her classes, her friends, and an occasional outing, has by no means a “bad time.” On the other hand, the life of the married woman in the working class is often extremely hard, taking into account the large amount of work done by them at home, cooking, cleaning, washing, mending and making of clothes, in the North also baking of bread, tendance of children and of the sick, over and above and all but simultaneously with the bringing of babies into the world. Moreover, the working girl is not under illusions as to the facts of life, as her better-off contemporary still is to some extent. Taking all this into consideration, the Census results shown above form an illuminatingtestimony to the strength of the fundamental human instincts.
The distribution of women in occupations illustrates both the deeply rooted conservatism of women and, at the same time, the modifying tendency of modern industry. The largest groups of women’s trades are still their traditional activities of household work, the manufacture of stuffs, and the making of stuffs into clothes. Two-thirds of the women occupied are thus employed.
It is convenient to picture to oneself the female working population as three great groups: the domestic group, the textile and clothing group, and the other miscellaneous occupations, which also form about one-third of the total. Now, while it is true that the two former groups, the traditional or conservative occupations of women, are still the largest, they are not, with the exception of textiles, increasing as fast as population, whereas some of the newer occupations, the non-textile industrial processes that have been transformed by machinery and brought within the capacity of women, are, though much smaller in numbers, increasing at a rapid rate. The following table shows the change from 1901 to 1911 in the most important industrial groups includingwomen. It should be read bearing in mind that the increase of the female population over 10 in the same period is 12·6 per cent.
England and Wales, 1901-1911.
But even with the occupations I have dubbed “conservative,” or traditional, modern methods are transforming the nature of the work done by women. The statistical changes in the so-called domestic group are an interesting illustration of the changes we can see going on in the world around us. Note especially the tendency towards a more developed social life outside the home indicated by the large percentage increase in club service, hotel and eating-house service; the tendency to supersede amateur by expert nursing, shown in the large increase in hospital and institutionalservice; and the slight but perceptible tendency for household work to lose its domestic character. Not only do the charwomen show an increase much larger than that of the group total, while the domestic indoor servant has decreased, but a new sub-heading, “day servants,” has had to be introduced. The laundry is fast becoming a regular factory industry, and shows a decrease in numbers, no doubt due to the introduction of machinery and labour-saving appliances.
Changes in Employment of Women in Certain Domestic Occupations.
Textiles, which as a whole have increased exactly in proportion to population, show a great variety in movement. The following shows the movement in the numerically more important groups.