Women in the Printing Trades Part 12

[Sidenote: Has legislation affected wages?]

On the question as to whether the restrictions of the Factory Acts have affected wages, it is almost impossible to obtain any trustworthy information. In briefly touching on it, we must be careful to distinguish between the rate of wages and the sum total earned. There seems an entire lack of evidence that the _rate_ of wages has been affected, although the sum total of women's earnings collectively and individually is obviously lowered, when some of their work is given to men. But even then the mere deprivation of the chance of working unlimited overtime is an altogether exaggerated measure of the loss in wages. A human being differs from a machine, for, even when the work done is mechanical, an interval of leisure and rest is essential, after a certain point, before the output can be continued. Experience has abundantly proved that for the regular worker overtime does not pay, and is also a wasteful expedient from the point of view of the employer.

The Factory Commission of 1866 published evidence that may be accepted as reliable regarding the wages paid in the trade before legislation intervened. Mention is made in the Report of one firm of printers who employed four girls for folding and st.i.tching, three of whom, under thirteen years of age, earned from 2_s._ to 3_s._ 6_d._; the fourth, a sort of overlooker, earned 12_s._ Another firm of printers paid the younger girls 4_s._ to 5_s._ a week; the older ones 8_s._ and 10_s._ The women employed by a third firm earned at least 14_s._ a week and 3_d._ an hour overtime. In a fourth a young girl earned 9_s._ 10_d._ for fifty-three hours, another 12_s._ 10 _d._ for forty-eight hours, another 13_s._ for fifty-seven hours, and the journeywoman 17_s._ 6_d._ for sixty hours.

In a firm where women made envelopes, one girl working from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, and till 3 p.m. on Sat.u.r.days, said she could earn 10_s._ 6_d._, and a journeywoman earned from 10_s._ to 12_s._ Women making envelopes for another firm earned 9_s._ or 10_s._ a week.

Paper-box makers earned, on an average, 9_s._ or 10_s._, some made 15_s._ or more. In another firm they earned 7_s._ or 8_s._ up to 25_s._ on piecework. Timeworkers earned 12_s._ or 14_s._; young girls earned 2_s._ 6_d._

These wages are very much the same as those paid to-day, and the hours then were undoubtedly longer.[74] Nor must it be a.s.sumed that wages would have risen more satisfactorily had there been no Factory Acts. Had there been any tendency for wages to rise which the Factory Law was r.e.t.a.r.ding, that tendency would have shown itself in a marked way during the intervals between each Act, but no such thing is observable, as Mr.

Wood's figures in the footnote indicate. Moreover, taken all together, the evidence gathered by this investigation proves that neither the demand for improvement nor the organisation to make that demand effective exists in the case of the woman worker. On the other hand, there is no evidence to show that legislation has improved wages, except in so far as it has reduced hours without apparently having lowered rates.

[Footnote 74: _Cf._ "The Course of Women's Wages during the Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. H. Wood, printed as an Appendix to "A History of Factory Legislation," by B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison, where the following figures are given as the estimated average weekly earnings of women and girls in the printing trade: 1840, 6_s._ 3_d._; 1850, 6_s._ 6_d._; 1860, 7_s._ 5_d._; 1866, 7_s._ 10_d._; 1870, 8_s._ 6_d._; 1883, 8_s._ 9_d._; 1886, 8_s._ 9_d._; 1891, 9_s._ 10_d._; 1895, 9_s._ 10_d._; 1900, 10_s._ 1_d._]

On the whole there seems to be no ground for considering that special legislation for women in this trade has materially injured the value of their labour. There is nothing to show that their wages have decreased, that legislation has acted as a drag upon their income, or that they have lost employment to any appreciable extent.

[Sidenote: Want of elasticity in the law.]

A lack of elasticity in the law seems to be the greatest complaint of the employers. On the face of it, it looks like a piece of senseless red-tape that, because it is usually preferable to an employer to open his factory between the hours of 8 to 8, he may not when it is more convenient to him, open it between 6 and 6 or 7.30 and 7.30. It seems absurd that it was an illegal act of an employer to allow two young women to begin work at 6 a.m. and work till 8 p.m., whereas it would have been quite legal if they had begun work at 8 a.m. and worked till 10 p.m., due notice having been given to the Home Office.[75]

[Footnote 75: _Stationery Trades' Journal_, 1898.]

Mr. Henderson, as above quoted, gives it as his opinion that "a wide limit of law is necessary for printing offices where women may not work after 8 p.m. or before 6 a.m. Hours for adult women other than at present should be allowed by the Secretary of State, as for instance the folders of weeklies."

Again, it is felt that a greater freedom is needed with regard to overtime. Mr. Vaughan, the Factory Inspector for North London, in the Factories and Workshops Report for 1899 says: "I find in some trades, _e.g._, Christmas cards, great dissatisfaction at the curtailment of overtime from five to three nights a week, when the busy season lasts only for a month or so; the allowance of thirty nights a year is not required, but an allowance of more nights during these few weeks would be an enormous a.s.sistance. The temptation in such cases to work more nights a week than are allowed is universally great."

It appears to be a great hards.h.i.+p that women who have not been working by day may not upon occasions work by night, and both employers and employees are unanimous in demanding that the law should recognise this distinction. There is a great difference between retaining an ordinary worker through the night, or for more than a certain number of hours per week, and drafting in a fresh set of workers to do work by night at stated periods in the month or at times of emergency.

Whether or not the law can be made sufficiently elastic to allow of greater freedom with regard to period of employment, overtime, and nightwork, raises difficult questions. No doubt it would be an advantage both to employees and employers, if the law could be made so elastic, but the difficulty of effective inspection would be so great as to outweigh any possible advantage. The early history of factory legislation and its working shows clearly that the intention of the Act was defeated because employers could so easily evade its clauses. At present it is known to a factory inspector that a factory that opens at 6 always opens at 6 and closes at 6, unless notice has been given that overtime is being worked; if, however, an employer were free to open his factory at 6 or 7 or 8, as occasion demanded, and close accordingly, the difficulty of administration would obviously be greatly increased.

The same point arises with regard to nightworkers. It is quite impossible to know among a staff of nightworkers, who has been working all day and who are _bona fide_ job hands. Such cases as the following, which was the cause of a prosecution, would occur far more frequently.

"Twenty-four girls who were employed at a neighbouring printing and bookbinding firm, worked for twelve hours at that firm on Friday, November 20th. They then went straight to the Carlyle Press, and worked all night, going back to their regular work at the other firm at 8 the next morning. The forewoman employed by the latter firm said that she did not know these girls had been working all day, or she would not have admitted them."[76]

[Footnote 76: _Printers' Register_, January 12th, 1892.]

It must be remembered that so far as the cla.s.s of job hands is concerned, they owe their present position in a large measure to factory legislation. By utilising them, the employer has been able to meet a sudden press of work, and yet to comply with the provisions of the law, so that, without the legislation of which they now complain, many of them would not have found employment. Moreover, job hands are not numerous when compared with regular workers, and the provisions in the Factory Acts which seem to bear hardly on casual labour have rightly been pa.s.sed in the interest of the permanent staff. To accede to the demand for greater elasticity is to suppose a higher code of morals on the part both of employers and of employed than experience justifies, and it would also render necessary a far more elaborate and irritating system of inspection than at present exists. The efficiency of modern factory industry depends very greatly upon automatic working--upon its standardisation of conditions, and the existing factory law with its inelastic provisions is, in reality, a great aid in maintaining those conditions of efficiency. Now and again an employer complains of some hard experience, and forgets that a departure from rigid rule would destroy the certainty which he feels that the law is treating him exactly as it is his compet.i.tors. Such a feeling of security is essential to business enterprise.

CHAPTER VII.

_WOMEN AND MACHINERY._

There is a general opinion amongst the women workers themselves that the introduction of machinery has ruined these trades for them. But we have found that certain opinions prevail, not because they have stood the test of investigation, but because they are pa.s.sed round, and have never been subjected to enquiry. We have already referred to the question in a general way.[77]

[Footnote 77: P. 48.]

[Sidenote: Effect of machinery.]

The impression of workers that machinery is displacing them, must be received with a great deal of reserve as they rarely take long or broad views.

Mechanical aid is very imperfect in most of these trades, and in book folding, envelope making, black bordering, etc., its use has. .h.i.therto been greatly restricted owing to the nature of the work.

The census figures, moreover, seem to be pretty conclusive that, taking the trade as a whole, machinery cannot have had such a very destructive influence upon women's employment.[78]

[Footnote 78: An old-established publisher commits himself to the statement that machinery has increased women's work by 20 per cent. The manager of a leading Scottish paper and stationery firm stated, with reference to envelope making: "The use of machinery is always extending; but only in the direction of increasing the output; there has been no displacing of workers; the result has been rather to increase their employment."]

The following statement by a Trade Union official is at once the most emphatic and most detailed of a considerable ma.s.s of information on this subject:--

"Folding and st.i.tching machines have largely superseded female labour and men's labour too. _E.g._, A. (a certain weekly paper), if folded, etc., by hand, would employ thirty hands--now it is all done by machinery. B. (another similar paper) by hand would employ 100 girls and, say, twenty or thirty men--now no girl touches it except just to insert 'things,' _e.g._, advertis.e.m.e.nts, and men merely pack it; machinery does the rest. Even wrapping is done by machinery--one machine with one man does the work of eight men.

At X. (a well-known London firm) ten folding machines do the work of 100 girls."

As a matter of fact the papers referred to have been created by the cheap work of machines, and no labour has been displaced by their employment. They have rather increased the demand for labour. But the statement shows the efficiency of machinery worked under the best conditions.

Another statement by a woman worker, typical of many others, is as follows:

"Machinery is ruining the trade, and workers are being turned off; thirty were turned off a few months ago, and twenty more will have to go soon."

This applies to a certain well-known London firm of bookbinders, and it is curiously corroborated by other investigators who found in other firms traces of the women discharged from this one. The firm's own statement, however, was that they had to turn away "ten hands (young ones), the other day, because of the introduction of folding machines"; but this information was received five months before the woman employed quoted above was seen.[79]

[Footnote 79: An Edinburgh firm states that one folding machine can be managed by two girls and it does the work of eight women hand-folders.

The firm does not state if it turned away hands, but it considered that there is too great a strain placed upon girls in watching this machine constantly, so their work is varied.]

[Sidenote: Displacement.]

That there is some displacement, either directly or by the subst.i.tution of younger workpeople, cannot be gainsaid with reference to particular processes.

The cla.s.s most affected is the sewers. The evidence in support of their displacement places it beyond dispute, and though the increased facility for sewing has created an extra demand for folding, and some sewers have turned to folding in consequence, this cla.s.s as a whole has suffered by machinery. Folders have been less affected.

The way in which the displacement is brought about is of some interest.

We have, to begin with, the general apparent inability of women to manage machines, and we find that the folding machine has tended to reintroduce men to aid in work which for many years has been exclusively women's.[80] Here we have a case of men and machinery doing women's work. On the other hand, the sewing machine does not appear to have had that tendency, the only explanation apparently being that convention determines that in these trades sewing machines and women go together.

Sewing machines are domestic implements in men's eyes. It is very curious that it should be so, but we are driven to that as the only possible explanation of well-observed facts. In this instance machines alone displace women.

[Footnote 80: The manager of a firm with an extensive business in popular periodical literature says: "Folding, which was all hand work and women's work, is now largely done by machines managed by men.

Wrapping, of which the same was true, is also largely done by machines which are managed by men.... If the machine is large and complicated, men will replace women, if it is small and simple, women will replace men."]

No process--excepting the few rare instances in the typographical trade--seems to have been opened up to women in consequence of the introduction of machinery; and, on the other hand, the instances where young persons, either boys or girls, have been put to women's work owing to the introduction of machinery are very rare. So all that has happened has been that machines have somewhat changed the character of women's work, and their chief effect, beyond the displacement of sewers, has been to prevent the taking on of some learners who otherwise might have been employed in certain branches of these trades.

Conclusions can be arrived at with more accuracy in respect of the paper-colouring and enamelling processes.

Paper colouring and enamelling hardly exists as a separate trade now.