_MISCELLANEOUS TRADES._
Machinery and Women’s Labour--Demand for Cheap Labour--The
Sweating System--Basis of Men’s and Women’s Wages--Women’s
Wages merely Supplementary--Women’s Wages in various
Industries--Difference between Men’s and Women’s Wages
artificially kept up--Policy of Men’s Unions.
=Machinery and Women’s Labour.=--We have seen that in the textile
trades men and women do the same kind of work, and are almost equally
skilled. Where their labour is organised they can also in some
districts command the same rate of payment; but it is certainly true
that in most trades which have opened their doors to women, the idea
on the employer’s part has been to secure a supply of cheaper labour
than could be obtained if men alone were to be relied upon, and to
break down the male monopoly. While this may not form a conscious
and distinct motive on the part of employers, it is obvious that the
intense sub-division and specialisation of manufacturing processes has
made it possible as time has gone on to dispense more and more with
trained and skilled labour, and to call in women and children who, with
a little practice, could soon adapt themselves to the work. The more
labour has become impersonal, the more the machine has produced both
the muscular energy and the manual skill which were once purely human
in their origin, the simpler has the labour question become from the
manufacturer’s point of view. “If,” he says to himself, “my machine,
on which I have laid out so much capital, and which represents the
ingenuity and the experiments of long years of labour, can perform
all the movements of the human body a thousand times more swiftly and
surely; if my machine does the working and the thinking, it is not
likely that I am going to pay the people who watch and tend it as
though they did all the work.” It is in those industrial departments
where the human processes are most mechanical and lend themselves after
a short training to almost automatic performance, that the field of
women’s labour under the factory system for the most part lies. All
those who are at all conversant with the movements of industry and
mechanical invention will be able to call to mind examples in point. Of
course the same process is taking place where men only are employed.
The skilled artizan has become less of a necessity as the skilled
machine becomes more common; and, on the other hand, the unskilled
labourer, the man who does the rough lifting, hewing, and carrying work
is becoming more of a mechanic, as the mechanical stone-breaker, the
steam navvy, the grain elevator, and other contrivances of the kind,
come into use. Now, while we have these two sets of forces at work,
one superseding the muscular energy, and the other the manual skill
and the mental training, the bearing of these tendencies upon women’s
employment cannot be overlooked. It seems only reasonable to suppose
that the demand for women’s labour in connection with mechanical
industry will become greater and greater as the work becomes simpler
and lighter; whilst masculine labour, in so far as it stands for
special aptitude and skill, is likely to find itself in less request,
and may have to submit to accepting a lower standard of remuneration
fixed by women. The movement of labour in the United States, as well as
in this country, tends to confirm this view.
=The Sweating System.=--Attention, perhaps, has been too much fixed
upon certain incidents of the evolution of industry which, though
important, are, as it were, branch lines, to have fully grasped the
real economical trend of events. Amongst these is what is known as the
sweating system. But the sweating system is, after all, but a kind of
guerilla warfare carried on upon the flanks of the main engagement. You
find it at its height in certain exceptional communities like London,
where the cost of rent is so heavy as to make it more economical for
the employer to let the worker pay the rent instead of himself. Again,
the accumulation of human beings in a great centre like London is so
vast that the purchaser of labour is in a position to compete with
machinery without standing to lose. This is why the human pressure
becomes so intolerable. It is a race in which the individual has to
compete against organisation and machinery--usually under the most
depressing conditions--in which the worker, without receiving any
equivalent, carries a large responsibility, which, under organised
industry, is discharged by the employer. It is only necessary to
compare some great clothing factory where the sewing machines are
driven by machinery, and work goes on in a well-lighted and airy
building for a fixed number of hours daily at a fixed scale of payment,
with the dirty and cramped rooms in Whitechapel or Stepney, which
are rendered comfortless as a home by being turned into a workshop,
in which a ruinous price is paid for the sewing machine bought on
the hire system, and where there are no regular hours of work, but
alternations of high pressure and protracted idleness, and finally
where the rate of payment is a matter for constant haggling between the
unfortunate worker and the middleman who gives out the clothes from
the City warehouse to be made up--you have only to compare these two
methods of industry to realise the real nature of the struggle, and
the intolerable pressure to which the victim of high rents, abnormal
density of population, and correspondingly low standard of equipment is
subjected.
The conclusions to be drawn from this brief survey seem to me to be not
unimportant. In the first place, it is because labour has become so
much lighter, and trades so much more easily learned, that the demand
for women’s labour has grown so immensely of late years; in the second
place, machinery, the great leveller, is tending to abolish rapidly
such differences as have existed between men’s and women’s labour;
and, in the third place, that whether legislation or organisation be
attempted in the interests of the workers, it must embrace men and
women alike.
=Basis of Men’s and Women’s Wages.=--But another condition which faces
one at every turn of the labour market, goes so far to differentiate
the work of men and women, that it may seem to make all the levelling
influences which we have just considered of no account. In the case
of men wages are based upon the cost of living. They approximate to a
man’s standard of existence and that of his family for the time being.
With the woman worker, on the other hand, though there are exceptions,
the rule is that her wages are of a supplementary character. If she
can add something to the nett weekly takings of the family, that is
the chief point. The daughter, who is apprenticed to the dressmaker
or milliner, or who begins life as a half-timer in the mills, is not
working for her living in the same way as the man who has to provide
himself with an independence; and it is obvious that this factor,
modified as it is by all the variations of the standard of family
living in different parts of the country, must be at the bottom of much
that is confusing, arbitrary, and inexplicable in the women’s labour
movement. For instance, cases are constantly to be found of a different
scale of payment for men and women for the same work. Thus, in the
French-polishing, printing, and many other trades, women are paid on a
lower scale at piece-work than men. We find that the average value of
a woman’s work is 9_s._ or 10_s._ a week, while that of a man is two
or three times as high. It is not that she does half or one-third as
much work, or that it is to that extent inferior in quality to men’s
work: the reason, I think, must in very many cases be looked for from
the domestic side. A woman considers what it will be worth while to
add to the family revenue, rather than what her work is really worth.
This fact more than anything else accounts for the immense difficulties
of introducing order and humanity into the field of woman’s labour;
for, obviously, if the woman worker is to acquire any form of economic
independence she must be able to earn such a rate of wages as will
enable her to maintain a decent standard of subsistence. But this
is rendered impossible so long as the effective remuneration of
women’s work is decided by conditions other than those which properly
attach to the work. With some girls working for pocket-money, others
literally exploited by their parents, and regarded as a mere means of
bringing grist to the mill; others again working to lay by something
to get married on, and a further great section of wives toiling to
add something to their husbands’ wages; it is only too clear that the
economic independence of women, which the advocates of _laisser faire_
in women’s labour hope to bring about, is very, very far from being
accomplished.
These conditions make it extremely unsafe to attempt generalizations
as to the wages earned by women in the various industries. There are,
however, certain fairly well-defined groups of trades, having wage
features in common, at which it will be interesting to glance. I will
take first the trades--very few in number--where women are organized.
Chief of these is the cotton industry; and here we find that where
men and women do the same work they receive, with a few unimportant
exceptions, the same wages. The payment for weavers, men or women, is
fixed according to the length and character of the piece of material,
and the looms are calculated to earn a certain sum for a full day’s
work according to their size and speed. The earnings, therefore, vary
with the time worked; but it is quite a common thing for a woman
weaver to earn 24_s._ a week all the year round. With spinners the
case is different. The mule spinners are men, and earn about 35_s._ a
week. The wages of ring and throstle spinners--women--rarely come to
more than 14_s._ or 15_s._ This kind of spinning has, in some cases,
displaced mule spinning, but only to a slight extent, as it is not
available for all varieties of material. The women and girls in the
cardroom departments earn about 18_s._ and 20_s._, warpers about the
same, and winders rather less. These rates may be compared with those
in the Yorkshire textile trade, where the workers’ organization is
less powerful, and consequently, in many cases, women are paid at a
considerably lower rate than men for similar work. This is markedly
the case with the Huddersfield weavers; also with the wool-combers
at Bradford, where women earn 12_s._ for work at which men make
18_s._ The Yorkshire weavers’ wages are in some cases as low as 8_s._
or 9_s._ a week, and seldom average more than 18_s._ A common plan
is to calculate all wages on a “women’s scale,” and pay the men so
much extra for the piece. The women in the Yorkshire textile trade,
on the whole, do not appear to be in any better position than the
ordinary class of unorganized female factory workers. In the West of
England cloth districts wages are even lower than in Yorkshire; for
a weaver earns only from 7_s._ to 14_s._ a week, taking the wages
all the year round. For a great mass of other factory workers these
figures would represent the usual earnings. Among this class are jam
makers, bookbinders, mineral-water operatives, bottle-washers, and
confectioners. Confectioners generally begin at 3_s._ 6_d._ a week, and
the average is about 8_s._ But in some trades, or branches of trades,
the earnings are still lower. The silk throwsters of Macclesfield, for
instance, and the Essex crape weavers, make about 6_s._ a week, and
the tobacco operatives 6_s._ or 7_s._ On the other hand, skilled cigar
makers can earn from 18_s._ to 30_s._ a week. And again, some of the
Birmingham trades are less badly paid. The button makers, for example,
earn 10_s._ to 15_s._ a week, and in the hosiery, boot and shoe, and
lace trades, the wages for the more skilled parts of the work are
fairly good, as women’s wages go, in times of full work; though when
the factories are working short time only 3_s._ or 4_s._ a week may
be the average. These last trades, which have their chief seats in
Leicester and Nottingham, all suffer from the competition of underpaid
labour in the neighbouring districts. The hosiery seamer in the factory
earns from 11_s._ to 16_s._ a week full time; but a home-worker at the
same business may work hard all the week and only make 2_s._ 6_d._ or
3_s._ Perhaps the worst paid group of trades is that in which home-work
is the leading feature, such as shirtmaking, mantle-making, tailoring,
matchbox-making. The earnings are not only low but uncertain, and it
is impossible to make any generalization as to their amount. There are
certain skilled occupations, such as dressmaking and millinery, in
which a superior worker can earn what are, for women, good wages. A
dressmaker will commonly make from 10_s._ to £1, and a milliner about
the same; but it must be remembered that there are women and girls
employed in the minor branches of such trades whose wages are much
less, and in provincial towns the superior workers too are paid on a
lower scale. Finally, there are the women employed in very toilsome,
disagreeable, or dangerous trades, and these are by no means highly
paid when the nature of their work is considered. Laundresses, in the
washing branch of the trade, get 2_s._ 6_d._ or 2_s._ 9_d._ a day,
and ironers 3_s._ to 3_s._ 6_d._, and in all branches of the laundry
trade employment is intermittent. Women are employed in tinplate works,
ironworks, and brickworks, for 7_s._ 6_d._ a week, or little more, and
white-lead workers’ wages are often only 2_s._ a day.
§ =Difference between Men’s and Women’s wages artificially kept
up.=--To sum up, then, the points we have been considering;--whilst
there are strong forces at work tending to abolish the distinctions
between men’s and women’s work and the industrial disabilities to
which women have been subject, such as lack of training and muscular
strength, these very distinctions are still kept up by the different
method of appraising the work performed. Even though a woman’s work
may be as good and as rapid as a man’s, we have seen that her scale of
payment is frequently far inferior to his. She may be working on the
same kind of machine, speeded at the same pace, turning out the same
commodity, and yet a heavy penalty is laid on her simply because she
is a woman. The experience gained in the cotton trade, however, seems
to shew that in an industry where machinery is largely employed, and
where the trade organization includes both men and women, the economic
disadvantages under which women labour tend to disappear.
It would seem, therefore, clearly to be in the true interest of workmen
to promote such legislation and such methods of organization as will
afford to women the same vantage-ground as men. A good deal of nonsense
is talked and written about men’s unions trampling on women’s labour.
It is not to women’s labour as such that the unions are opposed; but
they know from long experience that labour, whether it be men’s or
women’s, that yields to the slightest pressure, and whose remuneration
is subject to no given standard of living or efficiency, is the
greatest danger that they could have to meet. To blame men for their
action in trying to apply to women’s labour the conditions which they
have found absolutely essential to their own well-being, is really to
deny their own organizations any validity. It seems to me very certain
that by resisting the levelling down which would follow any surrender
of the standard of living as the minimum gauge of wages the men’s
unions have been fighting not only against the degradation of labour
generally, but for a better status for women’s labour.