_HOME WORK._
[Sidenote: Census figures.]
The table of occupations compiled from the census of 1901 for the first
time indicates the number of home workers. For these trades the figures
for women are as follows:
+----------------+----------------------------------+-----------+
| _Census | ENGLAND AND WALES. | |
| 1901._ +------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| | Unmarried. | Married or | Total. | Total for |
| | | Widowed. | | Scotland. |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Paper | 9 | 10 | 19 | 0 |
| manufacture | | | | |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Paper | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| stainers | | | | |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Stationery | 37 | 25 | 62 | 0 |
| manufacture | | | | |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Envelope | 27 | 42 | 69 | 4 |
| makers | | | | |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Paper box (a) | 524 | 1,153 | 1,677 | 36 |
| and paper bag | | | | |
| makers | | | | |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Other workers | 54 | 52 | 106 | 2 |
| in paper, | | | | |
| etc. | | | | |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Printers | 73 | 46 | 119 | 2 |
| [? folders] | | | | |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Lithographers, | 18 | 12 | 30 | 0 |
| copper | | | | |
| and steel | | | | |
| plate | | | | |
| printers | | | | |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Bookbinders | 129 | 145 | 274 | 9 |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
| Typecutter | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
+----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+
(a) Paper box making was not investigated.
It is always difficult to trace out the home worker, and the information
we obtained was collected through communication with School Board
officers, Charity Organisation Society secretaries, district nurses,
sanitary inspectors, and workpeople. The groups of trades investigated
are mainly factory and workshop trades, and are becoming more so. Home
work is not so prevalent in them as it used to be, and it is now
somewhat difficult to trace its effects in its present decayed
importance.
[Sidenote: Home work drawbacks.]
There used to be a good deal of home work in these trades, but the
growth of large firms and the introduction of machinery[82] have
discouraged it.[83] The material is very heavy and sometimes costly, and
has to be carefully handled. It is therefore difficult to move from
workshop to dwelling-place; and when handled in kitchens or other living
rooms it runs a great risk of being stained and spoiled. The home
workers find some of their own material, _e.g._, paste and brushes for
bag making, and they save light and rent for employers; but, on the
other hand, they are apt "to send back their work with the mark of
teacups upon it," or spoiled in some other way, and it is difficult to
get them to return it punctually. So in these trades, home work really
does not pay.
[Footnote 82: This seems to be specially the case in the provinces.]
[Footnote 83: One of the home workers (also workshop worker) visited
said, "Home work is given less and less and is difficult to get now.
Only three work at it--old hands--and they are going to stop it
altogether, perhaps." Another investigator reports of machine-ruling in
Scotland: "Two elderly women who worked a paper-ruling machine in their
kitchen. They had been at the work for thirty years, having been taught
by their father, and have carried on the business since his death. The
father had a good business, and they can make their living by it, but
say the work has sadly fallen off. They get enough orders to keep them
going, and when very busy employ a girl occasionally to help them. 'It
is useless to try to compete with the new machines they have nowadays.
What used to be given to us at 2_s._ 6_d._, can now be turned out by the
machines for 1_s._ 6_d._ We couldn't afford to do it at those rates.'"
_Cf._ Appendix V.]
The Trade Unions prohibit home work when they are able to detect it.
There is, generally, a healthy feeling opposed to this method of
employment, and firms deny practising it.
[Sidenote: Home work processes.]
Home work is now mainly confined to book and paper folding, sewing
printed matter, black bordering and folding envelopes, making paper
bags, and designing and painting Christmas cards which is done at home
not so much because employers encourage it, but because it is undertaken
by a class of women indisposed to enter a workshop. The folding is
mostly of cheap printed matter like popular almanacs and other street
literature. Also, a good deal of folding thin paper Bibles and prayer
books is done at home.
Some paper staining is also done in living rooms by workpeople, but the
practice is less common than it was. "One paper colourer, a married
woman, whom we saw, told us that her mother worked at the trade before
her at home, and when she herself was a baby her cradle was rocked on
the colouring board. 'Many was the night' that she sat up as a child
helping her mother to do the work. She certainly throve on it and seemed
immensely proud of her industrial career."
[Sidenote: The home worker.]
What home work is still done is given mainly to women employed in the
workshop during the day, and is therefore illegal.[84] In addition,
women who have married whilst working in certain firms, or widows of men
who have been workmen in these trades, keep up old connections by
occasional--if not systematic--home work. But as it hardly pays the
employer to avail himself regularly of domestic workers, the work now
done at home is chiefly given out to meet a temporary pressure of
demand, and would practically disappear if these exceptional pressures
did not take place.
[Footnote 84: The wording of the section (31 (2)) of the Act, however,
makes it difficult to enforce.]
[Sidenote: Paper-bag making.]
The making of paper bags is, of this group of trades, most extensively
and systematically practised as a home industry. This is particularly
the case in the neighbourhood of busy street markets, such as are found
in South London. The work is mostly done by married women of a rough
class, as a supplement to their husbands' wages.[85] Reporting upon one
such worker an investigator says: "Mrs. ---- is one of nine daughters,
and seven are paper-bag makers. All her cousins, aunts and
relations-in-law have taken it up.... A niece of hers was consumptive
and could not earn her living, but she was fond of dress. Mrs. ----
taught her paper-bag making and she soon earned 8_s._ or 9_s._ a week."
The profit which yielded this income is stated to be 6_d._ or 7_d._ per
thousand bags. Many women who occasionally work at paper-bag making only
do so to earn a particular sum of money of which they are in need--say
10_s._ When that is earned they cease work. Such is the casual nature of
the employment and the disorganised state of the labour employed in it.
[Footnote 85: "In nearly all the cases that Mrs. ---- (an employing bag
maker in the Borough) knows there are bad husbands. Mrs. ---- is in the
trade herself to supplement her husband's earnings because she has nine
children and he cannot earn enough to keep them in comfort."]
[Sidenote: The homes.]
The practically unanimous report of the investigators is that these home
workers' home conditions are of the very worst. "A very squalid and
evil-smelling slum:" "Very poor and miserable house shared by others,"
are typical descriptions of the dwellings to which the home work
investigations led us.