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Being the Report of an Enquiry undertaken bythe Women’s Industrial Council
Edited by CLEMENTINA BLACK
This volume contains the report of an investigation organized by the Women’s Industrial Council, into the work for money of wives and widows. The facts have been collected mainly by means of personal visits, and the various sections have been written by different persons, quite independently. The aggregate result is a picture, unquestionably faithful, of life as led in thousands of working-class homes in this country.
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LIVELIHOOD AND POVERTY
A Study in the Economic Conditionsof Working-Class Households in Northampton,Warrington, Stanley and Reading
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Footnotes:
[1]I.e.Cots or cottages.
[2]Departmental Committee on Sickness Benefit Claims, Evidence 40446, Bondfield.
[3]Ibid.40462, Bondfield.
[4]37 Edw. III. c. 6, quoted in Cunningham’sGrowth of Industry and Commerce, I. 353n.(5th ed.).
[5]See a volume of tracts at the British Museum numbered 1851, c. 10.
[6]S.P. Dom. Eliz. 1593, vol. 244. Reprinted inEnglish Economic History, Bland, Brown and Tanney, p. 336.
[7]Cf. a report of a workhouse in 1701 (catalogued as 816. m. 15. 48 in the Brit. Mus. Library), where ten poor women were employed to teach the children to spin.
[8]Tour in East of England, vol. ii. pp. 75, 81. I am indebted to Mrs. C. M. Wilson for drawing my attention to these passages and for suggesting the remarks immediately following.
[9]Defoe in hisPlan of English Commercesays that after the great plague in France and the peace in Spain the run for goods was so great in England, and the prices so high that poor women in Essex could earn 1s. or 1s. 6d. a day by spinning, and the farmers could hardly get dairymaids. This was, however, only for a time; demand slackened, and the spinners were reduced to misery.
[10]James,History of Worsted, p. 289. This pleasant custom may remind us of lines in Shakespeare’sTwelfth Night, i. 4:
“The spinsters and the knitters in the sunAnd the free maids that weave their thread with bones.”
[11]Philip Gaskell, who was, however, so prejudiced against the factory system that his views must be taken with caution, says that the wives of manufacturers who had risen from poverty to affluence were “an epitome of everything that is odious in manners,” their only redeeming point being a profuse hospitality, which however, Grant attributes to “a sense of vain-glory.”—Manufacturing Population, p. 60.
[12]Growth of English Industry and Commerce,Modern Times, p. 654 (ed. 1907).
[13]History of Cotton Manufacture, p. 446.
[14]Factory Inspector’s Report dated August 1835, quoted in Fielden’sCurse of the Factory System, 1836, p. 43.
[15]Country round Manchester, p. 192. Compare Mrs. Gaskell’s descriptions inMary Barton, fifty years later, for a very similar account.
[16]Athenaeum, August 20 (probably 1842), quoted in W. C. Taylor,Factories and the Factory System, pp. 3, 4, London, 1842.
[17]L. Braun,Die Frauenfrage, p. 209. Cf. E. Gnauck-Kühne,Die Arbeiterinnenfrage23.
[18]Woman and Labour, p. 50.
[19]Registrar-General’s Report for 1912, p. xxxvii.
[20]“Prospects of Marriage for Women,” by Clara Collet,Nineteenth Century, April 1892, reprinted inEducated Working Women, P. S. King, 1902.
[21]The servant-keeping class often shows a tendency to regard social questions mainly from the point of view of maintaining the supply of domestic servants.
[22]See Appendix,p. 270.
[23]Webb,History of Trade Unionism, pp. 104-5.
[24]Parliamentary Papers, 1838, viii.qq.360, 1341-2.
[25]“Select Committee on Manufactures,”Parliamentary Papers, 1833, vol. vi. p. 323,q.5412-3.
[26]Rules of the Nelson and District Power-Loom Weavers’ Association, 1904, p. 13, “Advice to Members, etc.”
[27]Report of N.C. Amalgamation, June 1906.
[28]Evidence is not unanimous on this point.
[29]Report of S.E. Lancashire Provincial Association, Dec. 1912.
[30]SeeWomen in the Printing Trade(edited by J. R. MacDonald) for an excellent study of the whole circumstances and conditions of the trade.
[31]G. Oakeshott, “Women in the Cigar Trade in London,” in theEconomic Journal, 1900, p. 562.
[32]Second Report of the W.T.U.L.
[33]In Mr. Keighley Snowden’s words, from which this account is taken (Daily Citizen, 12, xi. 1912): “If foreign competition at last threatens us, it is in consequence of this heartless folly.”
[34]Space does not permit us to give a full account of the efforts for co-operative action for social purposes made by working women at this period, or of the interesting study of social conditions made by Leonora Barry, the investigator of women’s work under the Knights of Labour. See Report on Women’s Unions,ChapterIVa.
[35]Quoted in theCotton Factory Times, September 18, 1885.
[36]Report of the Strike of Textile Workers in Lawrence, Mass., p. 63.
[37]This chapter was written before the outbreak of war.
[38]It is a curious reflection on the tardiness of our Government statistical work, that figures for German Trade Unions are here actually accessible for a more recent date than those of English Unions. [Written early in 1914.]
[39]A. Erdmann,Church and Trade Union in Germany, 1913.
[40]Report of Gas-workers’ and General Labourers’ Association, March 1897.
[41]This chapter was written before the outbreak of war.
[42]Many worthy folk to this day even show by the use of the phrase “givingemployment” that they suppose themselves to be conferring a benefit on persons who work for them, irrespective of wages paid, and it is unlikely that our ancestors were more enlightened on this point than ourselves.
[43]G. Slater,English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, Constable, 1907, p. 266. Compare Hammond, J. L. and B,The Village Labourer, chap. v.
[44]See,e.g., the cases mentioned in the Factory Inspectors’ Report for 1912, p. 142, and compare the case reported by Miss Vines in the Report for 1913, p. 97. In a Christmas-card factory the women were being employed two days a week from 8 to 8, three days a week from 8A.M.to 10P.M., and Saturdays 8 to 4. “The whole staff of workers and foremen looked absolutely worn out.”
[45]School Child in Industry, by A. Greenwood, p. 7. Workers’ Educational Association, Manchester, price 1d.
[46]See theEnglishwomanfor June 1914.
[47]The work of a “big piecer” is practically identical with that of a spinner, only that responsibility rests with the latter.
[48]See Cadbury Matheson and Shann,Women’s Work and Wages, p. 212; Macdonald,Women in the Printing Trades, p. 53.
[49]See inChapterIVa.pp. 162-3. Frau Lily Braun’s views on the subject.
[50]See an article by the present writer in theEnglishwoman, April 1911.
[51]Northern Counties Amalgamation of Weavers, etc. Report for July 1913.
[52]I owe the suggestion of a “cleft” (Spalte) in the woman-worker’s career to Madame E. Gnauck-Kühne, who developed it in her book,Die deutsche Frau. Compare “Statistics of Women’s Life and Employment,”Journal of the Statistical Society, 1909.
[53]Earnings and Hours Enquiry: Textile Industries, Cd. 4545, 1909; Clothing Trades, Cd. 4844, 1909.
[54]Raised to 3½d. on 19th July 1915.
[55]Elements of Statistics, 2nd edition, pp. 37, 38, and 39.
[56]1,091,202 out of a total of 4,830,734.
[57]Women’s Industrial News, July 1912, p. 56; compareThe War, Women and Unemployment, published by the Fabian Society.
[58]This chapter was prepared during the first year and the early part of the second year of war. It is necessarily incomplete, as war is still raging; but it is hoped that a brief summary of the position of women-workers in war time, and of the expedients adopted to ease and improve it, may not be without interest.
[59]Article by G. H. Carter,Economic Journal, March 1915; see also Notes in theWomen’s Trades Union League Review, January 1915.
[60]Article by Jas. Haslam,Englishwoman, March 1915, and information given privately.
[61]See article by C. Black in theCommon Cause, February 12, 1915.
[62]Westminster Gazette, October 16, 1914.
[63]See a letter by Mr. A. J. Mundella, L.C.C., in theSchool Childfor December 1914.
[64]New Statesman, November 7, 1914.
[65]Report on Outlets for Labour after the War, British Association, Section F., Manchester, 1915.
[66]SeeThe National Care of Maternity, by Margaret Bondfield, published by the Women’s Co-operative Guild. The proposals include the administration of Maternity Benefit by the Public Health authorities in lieu of the approved societies, the raising of maternity benefit to £5, and other changes.
[67]B. Kirkman Gray,History of Philanthropy.
[68]Daily News and Leader, June 24, 1915. It may be remarked here parenthetically, though not strictly germane to the subject, that not only the local authorities, but the Departments, even the War Office itself, might utilise the services of professional women more freely than they do, with great advantage to themselves. Women have among other things a very sharp eye for the detection of fraud and corruption. It was to the initiative and energy of one woman that the greatest improvements in the organisation of the Army Hospital Service in the nineteenth century were due. It is admitted that no change in the administration of the Factory Department has been so fruitful for good as the appointment of women factory inspectors. Why, then, are not professional women called in to aid in the organisation of commissariat, the inspection of clothing stores, the “housekeeping” of the Army, especially in the case of the needs of raw recruits? Incalculable waste, diversified here and there by actual lack of food, is reported from the camps. The help of expert women might here be of enormous value, and not only avoid waste, but ensure the provision of more wholesome food and more comfortable clothing. Some valuable hints on this subject are to be derived from an article by Mrs. Janet Courtney in theFortnightly Review, February 1915, “The War and Women’s Employment.”
[69]The War and Democracy.Introduction by A. E. Zimmern, p. 14. London, 1914.
[70]It should be observed that the first proprietors of some cotton mills, alarmed by the consequences of obliging their servants to work incessantly, have shut up their mills in the night.
[71]A certain manufacturer of worsted threatened a sister of ours, whom he employed, that he would send all his jersey to be spun at the mill; and further insulted her with the pretended superiority of that work. She having more spirit than discretion, stirred up the sisterhood, and they stirred up all the men they could influence (not a few) to go and destroy the mills erected in and near Leicester, and this is the origin of the late riots there.
[72]It is, however, important to mention that cotton mills are materially improved of late years in most of these particulars, and that in some mills they exist in a much less degree than others, which shows them not to be essential and inherent.
[73]It is a curious circumstance, and one which amply merits attentive consideration, that the fecundity of females employed in manufactories seems to be considerably diminished by their occupation and habits; for not only are their families generally smaller than those of agricultural labourers, but their children are born at more distant intervals. Thus the average interval which elapses between the birth of each child in the former case is two years and one month, as we have found upon minute enquiry, while, in country districts, we believe, it seldom exceeds eighteen months. The causes of these facts we have at present no space to enlarge upon.
[74]The extracts are slightly compressed in transcription.
[75]The barber knotter is a small appliance worn on the hand to assist the work of winding.