Work of Women and Children before the World War
To understand the effect of the World War on the work of women and
children, it is necessary to have as a background a picture of their
place in industry before the war. As in other modern industrial
countries, the employment of women and of girls and boys in their teens
had long been an important factor in the work life of the English
people. At the time of the latest census of the United Kingdom in 1911,
nearly 6,000,000 “females ten years of age and over,” or almost a third
of the total number of females of that age, were returned as “gainfully
occupied.”[6]
[6] United Kingdom, _Abstract of Labour Statistics_, 1915, p. 307. The
exact numbers were 5,851,849 “occupied” and 12,704,404 “unoccupied.”
In 1901, 5,309,960, and in 1881, 4,521,903 females were “gainfully
occupied.”
About 2,000,000 of the total number were engaged in some form of
“domestic” pursuits; 53,000 worked for the central government, or local
authorities; 415,000, the majority of whom were teachers or nurses,
had some professional occupation. Food, drink and tobacco, and the
provision of lodgings accounted for 546,000, and there were 120,000
female agricultural workers. The great bulk of the remainder, some
2,275,000, were found in the manufacturing industries. Here again the
principal lines of work were the metal trades, with 93,000 females;
paper and printing, with 148,000; textiles, with 938,000; and dress,
with 898,000. Almost all of the six million were working for hire; only
80,000 were “working employers,” and 313,000 were “at work for their
own account.”
While in England and Wales in the thirty years from 1881 to 1911 a
special study of the census figures showed that the proportion of
occupied women to 1,000 unoccupied women rose from 659 to 674, over
a fifty year period the relative number of working women in the
whole female population seemed to have fallen slightly.[7] Marked
declines in the proportion of females in “domestic” occupations and
in the dress and textile trades were not entirely balanced by smaller
increases in the proportions in professional and clerical work,
nontextile factories, paper and printing and food and lodging. The
proportion of girls between ten and fifteen at work had also fallen.
The author of the above studies believes that the relative decrease
was to be found among the industrial classes and that it was due to
the commencement of work at a higher age and to a somewhat lessened
employment of married women. Recent increases in the proportion of
gainfully occupied females carried out this theory, since they were
found largely in the age group between sixteen and twenty-five. Over
half of the girls of these ages were at work in 1911, and 70 per cent
of those from fifteen to twenty, which has been called “the most
occupied age.” The proportion of these young workers to older women
rose considerably in the decade from 1901 to 1911, though during the
same period the number of married women and widows at work increased
from 917,000 to 1,091,202. For thirty years the proportion of men to
women workers had remained practically stationary, being 2.3 males to
one female in 1881, and 2.4 males to one female in 1911.[8]
[7] Dorothy Haynes, “A Comparative Study of the Occupations of Men and
Women,” _Women’s Industrial News_, Oct., 1913, pp. 398, 399.
[8] Margaret G. Bondfield, “The Future of Women in Industry,” _Labour
Year Book_, 1916, p. 259.
Especially in industrial occupations women had been largely confined to
the least skilled and lowest paid lines of work. To a deplorable extent
they had been the “industrial drudges of the community.” It is, for
instance, officially estimated that out of the 100,000 “home workers,”
whose work has become almost synonymous with “sweating,” three quarters
were women. An estimate by the English economist, Sidney Webb, of the
wages of adult women “manual workers” in 1912[9] placed their average
full time weekly earnings at 11s. 7d. ($2.78). Making allowance for an
annual loss of five weeks a year from sickness, unemployment and short
time—a conservative estimate—average weekly earnings throughout the
year would be about 10s. 10½d. ($2.61). Only 17 per cent of the women
regularly employed were believed to receive more than 15s. ($3.60)
weekly, and those averaged only 17s. ($4.08) for a full time week. The
average full time wages of adult male manual workers were estimated by
the same authority at 25s. 9d. ($6.18) a week.
[9] Fabian Society, “The War, Women and Unemployment,” _Fabian Tract
No. 178_, 1915, p. 5.
_Legislative Protection for Women_
Since the forties, however, much special legislative protection had
been extended to women workers mainly through the factory acts. There
were numerous regulations to protect their health and safety. They
might not be employed in cleaning moving machinery, nor in underground
mines, nor in brass casting nor in certain processes exposed to lead
dust. In other lines where women were in danger of contracting lead
poisoning, they were allowed to work only if found in good condition
through monthly medical examination. In some unhealthy trades separate
rooms for meals were required and in some dangerous ones women were
obliged to cover their hair. Separate sanitary accommodations were
compulsory in all factories and workshops. A provision which had
proved of less value than anticipated because of the difficulties of
enforcement, forbade a factory employer knowingly to give work to a
woman within four weeks after the birth of her child. Wherever women
were employed as “shop assistants” one seat was to be provided for
every three assistants.
For factories and workshops an elaborate code limiting working hours
had long been in existence. No work on Sunday or at night was allowed,
and only a half day on Saturday. The maximum weekly hours permitted
were fifty-five in textile factories and sixty in “nontextile factories
and workshops.” Daily hours were ten in the former, and in the latter
ten and a half, with, in certain cases, a limited amount of overtime.
The time to be allowed for meals was also strictly regulated.
The latest phase of regulation of working conditions, the fixing of
minimum wages, was begun in 1909 by the Trade Boards Act. Minimum wage
rates might be fixed for trades in which wages were “exceptionally low”
by boards made up of employers, employes and the general public. Though
the wage fixing covered both men and women, the large proportion of
women employed in the trades first regulated made the law of special
importance in a consideration of women’s work. The trades covered up to
the outbreak of the war included certain branches of tailoring, shirt
making, some forms of chain making, paper box, sugar confectionery and
food preserving, and certain processes in lace finishing. The minimum
rates fixed for experienced adult women in these trades varied from
about 2½d. (5 cents) to 3½d. (7 cents) an hour amounting on an average
to approximately 14s. a week ($3.36) for full time work. The awards
appear to have been effective in raising the wages of a considerable
number of low paid women.
_Child Labor_
In matters of industrial employment the English recognized not
only “children” under fourteen, whose employment was in great part
prohibited, but also a special class of “young persons,” whose
employment was subject to special regulation. Boys and girls under
eighteen whom the law allowed to work were in the latter group. The
1911 census returned 98,202 boys and 49,866 girls, or a total number
of 148,068 children between ten and fourteen years as “gainfully
employed” in Great Britain. Mr. Frederic Keeling, an authority on
English child labor conditions, believed, however, that this number was
an underestimate because it failed to include many children employed
outside of school hours. In 1912 he set the number of working children
under fourteen in the United Kingdom at 577,000, of whom 304,000 were
employed outside of school hours, and the rest under special clauses of
the factory and education acts.[10]
[10] Frederic Keeling, _Child Labour in the United Kingdom_, 1914, p.
xxviii.
The great majority of the boys and girls in Great Britain went to work
before they were eighteen years old. There were 1,246,069 male “young
persons” and 902,483 female “young persons” gainfully employed in Great
Britain in 1911.[11] In England and Wales in that same year 309,000
boys and 241,000 girls of seventeen were at work, and only 20,600 boys
and 87,400 girls of that age were “unoccupied.”
[11] These girls are also included in the number of “females gainfully
occupied,” previously discussed. _Vide_ p. 14.
The 1911 census figures covering the principal lines of work in which
girls and boys under eighteen are employed had, in November, 1917, been
published only for England and Wales. For boys these occupations were
the building trades, the metal trades, textiles, agriculture, mining,
outdoor “domestic service,” messenger and porter work—which is in most
cases a “blind alley” occupation—and commercial employment, whereas
for girls they were textiles, clothing, domestic work and commercial
employment. The girls, it may be noted, were found mainly in the same
kinds of work as were adult women.
While, as has been previously mentioned, there was a relative increase
in the number of young working girls between fifteen and twenty, the
number of working children under fourteen was falling off. There were
97,141 boys and 49,276 girls under fourteen, a total of 146,417,
employed in England and Wales in 1911. In 1901 working boys under
fourteen numbered 138,000 and working girls 70,000, a total of 208,000.
In Scotland there were but 1,600 young children of these ages at work
in 1911, and 17,600 in 1901.
Most children and “young persons” were, of course, receiving very
low wages. Sidney Webb estimated the average earnings of girl manual
workers under eighteen to be 7s. 6d. weekly ($1.80) and those of boys
to be 10s. ($2.40).
_Laws Affecting Children’s Employment_
The chief forces in bringing about this diminution of child labor were,
naturally, the laws forbidding child labor and requiring compulsory
schooling. Children were required to attend school until they were
fourteen unless they were thirteen and could secure a certificate
of “proficiency” or of regular attendance. They might not work in
factories until they had completed their school attendance, except
that “half timers,” girls and boys of twelve, might work not more than
thirty-three hours a week and were compelled to go to school half the
time. Most of the “half timers” were found in the Lancashire cotton
mills.
Children under eleven might not sell articles on the street, boys under
fourteen might not work in coal mines, and the local authorities might
forbid all work by children under fourteen, though unfortunately the
power had been but slightly exercised.
The health and safety regulations affecting “young persons” under
eighteen were similar to those for women, but somewhat more stringent.
The lead processes which were forbidden women were also forbidden girls
and boys under eighteen, together with a few other very unhealthy
trades. In others where women might be employed, boys and girls under
sixteen were forbidden to work. Children under fourteen might not
be employed “in a manner likely to be dangerous to their health or
education.”
In factories and workshops the same regulation of daily and weekly
hours, night and Sunday work, applied both to adult women and to “young
persons.” In addition the hours of boys under sixteen employed in mines
were limited, and a maximum of seventy-four hours a week was fixed for
shop assistants under eighteen.
The minimum rates set by the trade boards for boys and girls under
eighteen generally rose year by year according to age from about 4s.
weekly at fourteen (96 cents) to 10s. ($2.40) or 12s. ($2.88) at
seventeen. Girls with the necessary experience in the trade received
the full minimum rate for women at eighteen years of age, but the boys,
who sometimes began at a higher rate than the girls, did not reach the
full men’s rate till they were twenty-one or more.
Almost all these working conditions—the principal kinds of work women
and children were doing, the rate of increase in their numbers, their
wages and the legal regulations protecting them—were changed during
three years of the world war.