_MEN AND WOMEN AS WORKERS._
[Sidenote: Do women displace men?]
One of the most important questions relating to women as workers is the
exact relationship between their work and that of men, _i.e._, how far
they are rivals in competition and how far they are helpers in
co-operation. In some of these trades, such as that of the lithographic
artists, this question has never arisen, because women have rarely
entered the trade. Only five instances of women working as lithographic
artists are known to the head of St. Bride's Institute. But that men and
women have been rivals from time to time is placed beyond doubt,
although it must always be remembered that the same work nominally is
not always the same work actually.[33]
[Footnote 33: Men feeders, for instance, carry formes and do little
things about the machine which women do not do. In one instance it was
reported that a firm with a London and a country house, employed women
in the latter to do binding done by men in the former. On enquiry it was
found that the heavy work was done in London and the light work in the
country. An interesting case in point is reported by a Scottish
investigator. "Stated that in another workshop a man had been displaced
at a paper-ruling machine and two girls taken on instead. I took special
note of this case when visiting the workshop in question later. There
were two girls employed at the machine, but they appeared to be working
along with the manager of that department, who was supervising it." But
there is work, such as the minding of platen machines which men do in
London but which women do in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.]
Gold laying for cloth binding has, within the last quarter of a century,
become the work of women who have taken the place of old "finishers" in
some bookbinding firms,[34] and at Dunstable women are reported as
doing binding throughout. Women are employed as compositors much more
frequently in the provinces than in London. In Edinburgh and Aberdeen,
for instance, women are reported as being engaged in every process,
except making-up and the heavy work of carrying type, in which men alone
are employed. Type-setting and distribution of type are often done by
women in Scotland. In some of the Edinburgh printing establishments
women do practically the same work as men. The extensive employment of
women during the compositors' strike in Edinburgh in 1872 to secure a
fifty-one hours' working week[35] was the result of the determination of
the employers to defeat the Typographical Association, and at least one
firm in London tried the same policy during the bookbinders' strike for
an eight-hours' day in 1902 though apparently with no success. The
enthusiasts for the introduction of women into the printing trades had
for some time been trying to get a hold upon Edinburgh printing offices,
but had failed until the strike of 1872. An enterprising employer then
trained some girls from the Merchant Company's Schools--a better class
of girls whom we find described sometimes as "stickit teachers"--to
compose. The results were satisfactory, and the example was speedily
followed. The strike failed and the displacement of men continued.
[Footnote 34: Reporting to their members in May, 1903, the Wages
Committee of the London Society of Journeymen Bookbinders (Third Report)
state regarding the award just given on certain points of dispute
between the Unions and the Employers: "The right of employment of women
in laying-on of gold has also been awarded against us, notwithstanding
that no part of the proceedings evoked more strenuous opposition from
your representatives. The hands of your delegates were weakened by the
fact that the practice already existed: in some cases had crept in, and
in others been extended unawares; yet they strove to preserve the right
of the workman, whilst willing and anxious that the supercession of the
workwoman, where she had been introduced, should be gradual and
considerate.--The argument for the employers is that the employment of
women on the class of gold laying-on indicated, will enable them fairly
to compete in other fields, and will tend to increase men's work instead
of to reduce it. This view, the arbitrator adopted."]
[Footnote 35: So also in Aberdeen. "About a dozen years ago during a
dispute about apprentices, seventeen men and three or five boys went
out, and girls were then taken on."]
[Sidenote: The Perth dispute.]
Something similar happened in Perth, where twenty-five years ago four
girls were taken into the newspaper department of the offices of the
_Perthshire Advertiser_. About seven years ago they were introduced into
a commercial printing office, and a year later the _Perthshire
Constitutional_ began to employ them on general bookwork and setting-up
newspaper copy, the proprietor claiming that he had the same right as
the other offices to have cheap female labour. Thus the practice
threatened to spread throughout the other commercial printing offices,
and the men's Union thought it was time to bestir itself. It decided
that the women must either be paid the same rates as the men or be got
rid of altogether. This ultimatum was sent to the employers. The
_Constitutional_ complied with the demands of the Union and dismissed
its women workers. The _Advertiser_ at first proposed gradually to
replace the girls by men in the commercial department, but to continue
to run the newspaper department by female labour. The proprietor
contended that this would not give him an unfair advantage over the
other firms, as they employed linotype machines. The Union then decided
to strike, and took thirty men out of the _Advertiser_ office. Four
remained in, and some other non-Union men were also engaged. The office
continues to work under this system.
[Sidenote: Value of women's work.]
There has also been trouble in Grimsby (1899), owing to the employment
of women on a bi-weekly newspaper, at Redhill (1898-1900), and at
Reading (1902). Other places where the Typographical Association report
women to be employed are, Louth (Lincolnshire), Aylesbury, Beccles,
Fakenham, Warrington,[36] etc.; whilst in Birmingham the experiment was
tried about 1890, but has been abandoned. They are also employed at
Bungay, but in decreasing numbers, because their proofs require so much
more correcting than the men's that the valuable time thus lost is not
compensated for by the cheapness of their labour. The same is true of
Edinburgh, where their wages have fallen from a rate of 1_s._ 6_d._ to
1_s._ per average page. In Leicester a firm tried to employ women in
distributing type at low rates of pay, but a protest from the local
executive of the Typographical Association led immediately to the
experiment being discontinued. There is an almost unanimous chorus of
opinion that women's work as compositors is so inferior to men's that
it does not pay in the long run. From the days of Miss Faithfull's
experiments, the men have been able to boast that women could not touch
them at the case. In Aberdeen the unwillingness of boys to submit to a
long apprenticeship and the fear of parents that the linotype has
spoiled the typographical trade, are said to be the main reasons
necessitating the employment of women compositors.
[Footnote 36: Women were introduced into Warrington newspaper offices
early in the decade beginning with 1880. They have been found to be
quicker than men in plain setting-up and simple straightforward work.
They do not stay very long--the eldest girl compositor employed, when
our investigator called, being only twenty-five. They are not employed
in locking the formes; nor curiously enough are they employed in the
machine-room to feed the printing presses, though they are so engaged in
Manchester. The women compositors are paid one-third of the men's rate.
Here it was definitely stated that the cheapness of women's labour made
it unnecessary to introduce linotypes.]
[Sidenote: The men's view.]
Men in these trades have never looked upon women competitors with a
friendly eye, the reason being that so many branches are just on the
margin line of those occupations which are so light and easily picked up
that women can supplant men in them altogether.[37] The Typographical
Association for over a quarter of a century has had to carry on a
constant struggle with the employers in order to protect the journeymen
printers against three forms of cheap labour--apprentices, unskilled men
and women.[38] Employers in a small way of business, maintaining
establishments on little capital, where efficiency is not high, employ
women on work done in larger and better equipped establishments
exclusively by men. Here there is rivalry and competition, and women are
preferred mainly because they accept lower wages, and because they are
not members of Unions;[39] and their lack of technical skill is not
found to be a sufficient counterpoise to these advantages. But in these
places an inferior kind of work is done, and if men were employed they
would either have to accept wages below the generally enforced scale, or
the whole character of the work and organisation of the business would
have to be changed.
[Footnote 37: It is interesting to note that an official of the
Lithographic Printers' Society, entitled to explain the attitude of the
Union, stated, "The Lithographic Society distinctly encourages girls;
when boys feed the machines they are apt to pick up too much and want to
become litho-printers before going through the apprenticeship. The
women, not desiring to become litho-printers, are better from the
Society's point of view."]
[Footnote 38: This is the real opposition which the men offer to women.
In Perth and Bungay, for instance, the women put in a bill at the end of
each week, worked out on the men's scale of rates. The cashier then
divides the total by two and pays the women accordingly. In Edinburgh
women's piece rates for composing average about two-thirds those of men.
At Warrington, women do machine-ruling for prices ranging from 15_s._ to
20_s._, whilst men are paid 32_s._ for the same work. A more definite
statement is made by a Manchester employer. He estimated that a woman
was two-thirds as valuable in a printer's and stationer's warehouse as a
man, and she was paid 15_s._ or 20_s._ to his 33_s._ A further example
of this is given in connection with a Scottish firm executing Government
work. "As the Government insists upon the men's Union price being paid,
the work is being done by men, although in the ordinary way it would
have been done by women." "But they would never allow the women," said
our informant of her employers, "to make such big money as that."]
[Footnote 39: This is why the Typographical Association offers a steady
resistance to the employment of women. It does not object to them as
women, but as forms of cheap and unskilled labour.]
[Sidenote: Apparent rivalry.]
In the better equipped houses, where women are employed on work
generally done by men, as in composing, only parts of a compositor's
duty are performed by women, and the heavier or the more technical
duties, such as carrying about the formes or imposing, are done as a
rule by boys or men.[40] So that here the rivalry is but partial, and,
moreover, the employment of women does not always pay. It appears that
in some cases, particularly in bookbinding, the application of
machinery[41] makes it possible for the less skilled and lower paid
women to do work formerly done by men, so that men regard women _plus_
the machine as their competitor. On the other hand machines have
displaced women and have made new openings for men, as in the case of
one of the most recently introduced folding machines which feeds itself.
But the re-organisation of the workshop which follows the introduction
of the machine cannot be regarded merely as a substitution of men's
labour by women's or the opposite, for what really happens is an
all-round shifting of the distribution of labour-power and skill, and a
re-arrangement of the subdivision of labour.[42] Men are transferred
from one kind of work to another, owing mainly to a change in the
volume of production; women are introduced not so much to take men's
places as to fill places created by the re-organisation of work; youths
also find a footing more often at the expense of women than of men. At
certain points the machine simplifies processes and abolishes the need
of paying for skill in the worker; at others it makes skill (sometimes,
perhaps, a new kind of skill) more necessary; at one point it abolishes
the need of paying for strength, at another it makes a new opening for
strength. Thus the displacement which occurs, and the competition set up
are often more apparent than real.
[Footnote 40: As a type of the reports from firms employing women
compositors, the following from Edinburgh firms may be summarised: Seven
girls are employed on each machine (monotype), five on the keyboards and
two correcting proofs. A man is kept for every ten or twelve girls, his
work being to "make up" the girls' work. Another firm employs a man to
attend to every three monotype machines used, for the purpose of keeping
things going. Another says it employs two men compositors and one
labourer for thirty-eight girls.]
[Footnote 41: Machinery has also tended to increase the employment of
women in stamping and embossing.]
[Footnote 42: An official of a Bookbinders' Union states: "In A works
there was much gloom among the men when the rounding and backing machine
came in; profitable work was taken away from the 'rounders' and
'backers,' but they had more 'lining-up' and other work to do in
consequence, so nobody was turned off."]
[Sidenote: A miscellaneous survey.]
In the more miscellaneous trades over which this enquiry ranged a
considerable mass of evidence points to the displacement of men by
women. General statements to this effect are common in the evidence of
both employers and employed. In firm A. it is alleged that women do the
same work in card mounting as used to be done by men, and are paid 2_s._
for work which used to be paid for at 10_s._ Paging and numbering used
to be men's work, but is now almost exclusively done by women. Plain
relief stamping and black bordering have also drifted into the hands of
women, whilst in various directions, such as the making and binding of
cases, wrappering, or feeding printing and particularly lithographic
machines, women are beginning to encroach upon men. These displacements
are very often only local. Manchester has one experience; Edinburgh
another. Leeds was agitated because women were displacing men on a
French ruling machine, whilst elsewhere no similar move was taking
place. But it must be emphasised again that in many of these instances
careful enquiry shows that when men were employed they did something
that the women do not now do,[43] and that the employment of women was
owing to an increased volume of trade, when new machinery or some other
change had made a greater subdivision of labour possible and profitable.
In some cases girls displace boys for no other reason than that boys
cannot be found to do the work; this was the case in Manchester some ten
years ago, when girls took the place of boys in letterpress work.
[Footnote 43: An Edinburgh employer put that in this way: "If women were
paid the same rates as men they would have to pay for their overseers
and assistants."]
[Sidenote: Conclusions.]
Generally, the results of our investigations show the following summary
of the advantages and disadvantages of women's labour to the employer,
and their employment in preference to men depends upon how far in any
given case or under any given circumstances the balance of these
advantages and disadvantages is on the side of the women--or, it must
also be said, how far the employer is bound by conservative use and wont
so as to be protected against any impulse to employ the best
organisation for the efficient conduct of his business.
The advantages of the woman worker are:--
1. That she will accept low wages; she usually works for about half the
men's wages.
2. That she is not a member of a Union, and is, therefore, more amenable
to the will of the employer as the absolute rule of the workshop.
3. That she is a steady[44] worker (much emphasis must not be placed
upon this, as the contrary is also alleged), and nimble at mechanical
processes, such as folding and collecting sheets.
[Footnote 44: "In Mr. W----'s youth, men used to do all the card
mounting. Women were introduced for it about twenty-nine years ago. They
were brought in because the men drank so and kept away." But later on
the same informant said that he had to introduce a varnishing machine
because women "kept away so."]
4. That she will do odd jobs which lead to nothing.[45]
[Footnote 45: Birmingham boys, for instance, would not feed printing
machines, because it "leads to nothing," so girls were employed. _Cf._
Aberdeen, p. 47, etc.]
Her disadvantages are:--
1. That she has less technical skill than a man, and is not so useful
all round.
2. That she has less strength at work and has more broken time owing to
bad health and, especially should she be married, domestic duties, and
that her output is not so great as that of a man.[46]
[Footnote 46: An employer with considerable experience both of men and
women in the printing trade in Scotland, says, "given a certain area of
floor space for men and women, on the former would probably be produced
half more than on the latter."]
3. That she is more liable to leave work just when she is getting most
useful; or, expressing this in a general way, that there are more
changes in a crowd of women workers than in a crowd of men workers.
4. That employers object to mixed departments.[47]
[Footnote 47: 1, 2, and 4, together lead London employers to conclude
that an extension of women's employment is impossible, because it would
mean larger workshops in proportion to the numbers employed, and
consequently ruinous rents.]
One interesting point must be noted in connection with these
conclusions. In London, where women mainly work on the more unskilled
and irregular processes, it is often difficult to see what industrial
influence they are exerting. In Edinburgh or Aberdeen that is not so
much the case. And one thing which is observable in these places is that
the employment of women of itself leads to those minute subdivisions of
labour characteristic of machine industry. "There are more subdivisions
of labour amongst women than amongst men in the printing trade. For
example, one girl will set-up the type, another will "brass-out" (put in
heads and finish it), or two may sometimes be employed in finishing
it."[48]
[Footnote 48: So in bookbinding. A Dundee manager of a general binding
establishment, says: "The subdivision of labour system has certainly
favoured the increased employment of women in the trade."]
Cheap, mechanical and light work consequently tends to be done by women,
whilst the men enjoy almost undisputed possession of the rest. The woman
worker, for instance, competes with the man in binding the cheap light
note-book, whilst she rarely interferes with him in binding heavy
ledgers.[49] On the other hand, in some of the more mechanical
departments, such as examining sheets of paper by touch, she attains a
wonderful dexterity.
[Footnote 49: The following report from Aberdeen gives an interesting
account of the subdivision of labour in a firm which has introduced
women for cloth-case making:
"The department where girls are beginning to encroach on men is in
cloth-case work, that is, making the cases and putting them on. In the
higher reaches of the trade the women do not show themselves to be so
skilful. As yet the men's Unions have not shown much active opposition
to women's work in this branch, provided always that one man is set to
work with every five girls employed on it. The making of a 'case' is
divided into five sections and illustrates the modern development of the
division of labour system.
1st girl glues.
2nd girl lays on boards.
Man cuts corners.
3rd girl turns in ends.
4th girl turns in fore-edge.
5th girl (young) puts it through rolling machine."]
We have also to note how very effectively conservative notions about
women's sphere and chivalrous prejudices about protecting them,
influence certain employers in determining what work they _ought_ to do.
[Sidenote: Technical training.]
We have endeavoured to ascertain how far technical training would
increase the pressure of competition between men and women, but in the
present rudimentary state of such training there are few data to guide
us to any very positive conclusion.
It is difficult, however, to see how in these trades the technical
training of women would threaten men, except perhaps in the artistic
branches. The use of the various mechanical type-setting machines has
already led to some displacement of labour, and though the _technique_
of setting and spacing might be taught to women in trade classes, the
greater regularity of the male worker, and his remaining longer at the
trade must always, in so skilled an industry as this, give him
advantages over his female competitor. Nor would classes for women in
bookbinding injure men bookbinders. For in this as in other trades women
are not handicapped only by a want of skill, and if they attended
classes, presumably they would be taught chiefly the arts and crafts
side of bookbinding, and thus be led into branches of the trade at
present undeveloped.
[Sidenote: "Use and wont."]
Moreover, a curious fact has to be kept in mind. Women workers are so
lethargic that they are largely governed by use and wont. No remark is
more frequent in the investigators' reports, than one to this effect,
"That is men's work. Why? We do not know, but it _is_ men's work, and we
do not think about it." In some instances this use and wont is based on
experience; in others, as in the backwardness of London employers in
putting women to feed lithographic machines, its rational explanation
is not obvious.[50] In this respect the women themselves are very
"loyal." "Once the employer wanted her," writes an investigator, "to
varnish books, and offered her 5_s._ a book: she has a steady hand and
could have done it quite well. It meant following a delicate zig-zag
pattern with a paint brush. She refused indignantly, and said, 'I know
my place and I'm not going to take men's work from them.'" And, again, a
rigid sense of propriety, based on a certain amount of good reason,
seems to determine many employers to separate male from female
departments without further question.[51]
[Footnote 50: Except perhaps, as has been suggested, that the premises
where lithographic work is done are generally so unsuitable for the
employment of women.]
[Footnote 51: A similar division exists in women's work; certain kinds
are done by women of an inferior social grade, _e.g._, machine-feeding,
and these are strictly kept at arm's length by women working in
different departments in the same factory.]
[Sidenote: Girls _v._ Women.]
So much is heard of women as rivals of men that we forget that women
themselves are often preyed upon by still cheaper rivals, and the real
value of technical training for women seems to lie in the fact that such
training might protect them against these. Owing to the unskilled nature
of their work, however, even technical education can afford to them only
an unsatisfactory security against younger and cheaper persons. One of
the investigators, for instance, reports:--
"It is the regular custom in A.'s now to have little girls at 3_s._ and
4_s._ a week doing work which women at 11_s._ and 12_s._ ought to do.
They put a little girl beside a regular hand, and as soon as the little
one masters the work [show-card mounting is being reported upon], they
discharge the big one. When the little one asks for a rise, they give
her 6_d._ or 1_s._ more, and when she wants still more, she goes."
Figures follow showing that just under one-ninth of the women employed
in this department at A.'s are "old hands." Then the report proceeds:
"A. discharged about forty hands on the plea of slackness a little while
ago, and then put up bills for learners." The investigators found that
amongst the employées there was a very widespread opinion that "the
learners always get all the best work," and that one of the regular
features of the trade is, that it employs a large fluctuating number of
learners, whilst a smaller number of skilled hands are kept in tolerably
regular work.[52]
[Footnote 52: This, however, is not a problem special to women's work,
but is one of general industrial conditions, although it is marked with
special distinctness in the case of women.]
The old hands occasionally object to teach the young ones, but nothing
comes of their opposition to a system by which they are compelled to
train their own executioners.