WOMEN’S LABOUR AND CHILD-LABOUR
_History of Child-Labour._--During the Middle Ages child-labour seems
not to have been very general. At the time of the guilds, improper
utilisation of the working powers of children and young persons was
hardly possible. Night work was unknown, and the working conditions
were strictly regulated by the guilds. In the statutes of the guilds,
there is no reference to child-labour; whereas, had such labour been
at all common, its regulation would have been inevitable. We find,
for example, in the statutes precise rules as to production, as to
the sale of the finished products, as to the hours of work, as to the
number of craftsmen to be employed by the individual masters, &c. As
the guilds became mean-spirited, the condition of the apprentices
became worse.
With the development of manufacturing industry and the growth of
machine production, handicraftmanship lost its dominant position. In
consequence of the industrial revolution, the guilds perished, the
principle of freedom of contract was established, and in accordance
with this principle the working powers of the cheapest of all objects
of exploitation, children, were utilised. But the first phase of the
development of capitalism was the most dangerous one, not only for
youthful, but also for adult workers. In England, for example, it
was towards the end of the eighteenth century that the conditions
as regards child-labour were at their worst. The factory owners
hired children from the workhouses and orphan asylums. These latter
institutions were far from the factories, and for this reason no
official supervision of the children was possible, and their care
was left entirely in the hands of the factory owners. The condition
of these orphan children, similarly with that of the other youthful
workers, mocks every attempt at description. The most heartrending
tortures were customary. They were tormented with the utmost
refinement of cruelty; chained, flogged, starved to emaciation, and
driven to suicide. All this is easily comprehensible. The aim of the
factory owner was to utilise as rapidly as possible the opportunity
resulting from the replacement of hand-labour by machine-labour,
to utilise it to gain wealth for himself before machine-labour
became general; he therefore procured his labour at the cheapest
possible price, and exploited the working powers of his employees
to the utmost limits. Before the days of capitalism, night work was
unknown, and, moreover, was quite unnecessary. But with the growth
of capitalist production, there came into existence a number of
industries which were carried on continuously night and day, if only
for the reason that any interruption of the process of production
would cause a great curtailment of profit. Night work is extremely
injurious in its effects, it undermines the health (sleep during
the day does not adequately compensate for loss of sleep during the
night), morality, and the family life of the worker (who has no time
to occupy himself with his family). All these dangers are even more
serious in the case of women and children.
As regards the diffusion of child-labour, those branches of
manufacture which take the form of home-industry are by far the
worst. The manual workers fight the machine-workers with the same
weapons that these latter themselves employ. These weapons flay the
hand-workers even more than the machine-workers, because the attempt
is made to compete with the machine-labour by human over-exertion.
This phenomenon becomes apparent in every branch of industry directly
the use of machines begins. In agriculture, child-labour becomes a
serious matter only when manufacturing industry comes to draw labour
more and more from the country into the towns, so that a scarcity
of labour begins to prevail in the country districts. Child-labour
in agriculture is a necessary accompaniment of the small-holding
system, because the small-holder is able transitorily to maintain his
independence only through the use of cheap labour in the form of the
utilisation of the working powers of all the members of his family.
The widely celebrated patriarchal conditions which were reputed to
exist in agriculture have completely passed away. When the condition
of the labour market renders it possible, certain factory owners,
even to-day, discharge men to replace them by the cheaper labour of
women and children.
_Diffusion of Child-Labour._--In most countries the children, alike
in the villages and in the towns, are employed in agricultural
production, in trade, and in manufacturing industry. They herd geese,
cows, sheep, and swine; work in the fields and in the mines; beg,
sell matches, flowers, laces, newspapers; perform in the street,
at the theatre, the circus, and the music-hall; work at home with
their parents in inns and drinking saloons, and work in factories
and workshops. In Germany, about two and a half million children
are engaged in wage-labour, and of these more than 600,000 are of
school age. Of these latter children of school age, nearly 60 per
cent. are engaged in manufacturing industry. The number of children
employed on Sunday is certainly not less than 100,000. In the years
1890-1894, the number of children returned as working in factories
underwent a decline, for the law of 1891 and the need for notifying
the employment of children drove a portion of the children previously
employed in factories into unregulated domestic industry. In
Switzerland, 50 per cent. of the children of school age are engaged
in wage-labour; in Austria, only about 30 per cent.
The child at work in the open air enjoys a healthy freedom of
movement. For this reason, under certain conditions (which, however,
to-day can hardly be said to obtain) agricultural labour is healthier
than any other. It is seasonal work--that is, it is in abeyance in
certain seasons of the year, but in other seasons is pursued with the
greatest diligence and the greatest possible intensity, so that the
children engaged in it must work very hard from early in the morning
till late in the evening. No one who knows the wretched condition
of the country schools will speak favourably of the school training
of those children engaged in agricultural work. Child-labour in
agriculture does not replace the labour of adults. Notwithstanding
the increase in agricultural child-labour, the complaints of lack of
labour-power in the country districts are unceasing. The increased
working contributions of the children are more than counterbalanced
by the withdrawal of adult labour. This is all the more important,
because, owing to the multiple character of agricultural activities
and the lesser extent of the division of labour, agriculture demands
more independence and ability from the worker than manufacturing
industry.
Domestic work is an interesting field of child-labour. Working-class
parents are out at work all day, and have but little time to give to
housework. It is the children who attend to this. They clean out the
house, and wash and dress and take care of the little ones; that is
to say, such children do nearly as much work as those employed in
factories or workshops. In addition, the girls have to knit, sew,
mend, and cook.
Wage-earning work for children of school age is another interesting
question. The number of children of school age engaged in such work
is very great, and most of them are engaged in domestic industry. For
a proportion of school children, the holidays mean simply harder work
than ever, because, when school attendance ceases for a time, there
is no hindrance to their exploitation.
_The Causes of Child-Labour._--Capitalism, notwithstanding the
ever-increasing utilisation of machines, still needs a larger and
larger supply of human labour-power. Competition becomes increasingly
fierce, and therefore the capitalists are driven to seek cheaper
and ever cheaper human labour-power. The material needs of children
are much smaller than those of adults. In Austria, the earnings of
children engaged in domestic industry for eight hours a day, in
addition to their school work, amount to from 6 to 20 keller (6d.
to 2d.) daily. In Germany, the wages of children per hour seldom
exceed 7 or 8 pfennig (about one penny). The development of technical
science leads to a simplification of the process of manufacture by
means of a continually-increasing division of labour. This renders
it possible to employ in the work of production persons who have no
technical training whatever, and whose bodily powers are very small.
In the case of children, technical training and bodily strength are
less than in the case of adults. The employers gladly make use
of the working powers of children for the following reasons: the
children are inexperienced, they are less inclined to combine with
their fellow-workers, they can more readily be forced to accept
unfavourable conditions of work, and in the struggle with his adult
employees the possibility of replacing their labour by that of
children can be used by the employer as a trump card. Through the
employment of the labour of children, the total quantity of labour
available for employment is increased. It is owing to this fact,
and to the greater cheapness of their labour, that the employment
of children in wage-labour helps to force down the wages of adults.
It is through poverty as a rule that children are forced to adopt
wage-labour. The earnings of the parents and of other adult members
of the family are so small that the earnings of the children are
absolutely indispensable, and constitute no inconsiderable addition
to the family income. The parents, who, according to the existing
laws, for the most part have full control over the earnings of
children under age, have a direct interest in sending the child to
work. Many parents even believe that they have unrestricted rights
over their children, and that there is no reason why they should
not send the latter to the hardest possible work in the earliest
years of childhood. Many parents think that it is good alike for
them and for their children that the latter should work for wages.
They are too ignorant to understand that this expectation will prove
illusive, and that the actual result will be the precise opposite of
what they suppose. Many children are themselves pleased to go out to
work, which saves them from having to spend every day and all day in
their dull and gloomy parental home, saves them from spending all
their time under the eyes of their parents, and secures for them
freedom and independence, and opportunity for all kinds of lawful and
unlawful pleasures.
_Women’s Labour._--The parts played by the two sexes in production
and consumption differ in consequence of sexual differences. It is
for this reason that in earlier times women’s labour was concerned to
a small extent only with production, and was mainly employed in the
regulation of consumption within the household. With the development
of commerce, manufacturing industry, and town life, as a sequel of
the modern economico-technical changes resulting from the evolution
of capitalism, which rendered home industry more difficult, women’s
work entered upon a new phase. Women gradually adopted work for
wages, completely divorced from the home and its labours. Whereas
formerly women’s work was performed on behalf of certain specific
persons, under conditions largely of the women’s own choice, women’s
work had now to be conducted in accordance with a prescribed code
of rules, and the products were for consumption by unknown persons.
It is widely maintained that this change was referable to the
development of the movement for women’s emancipation, to the desire
of women for independence, but this view is erroneous. The change
just mentioned, far from contributing to the emancipation of women,
has tended rather to fix the yoke more firmly on their shoulders.
The character of women’s work naturally experienced these changes in
the towns earlier than in the country, in manufacturing districts
earlier than in agricultural. Such wage-labour as women to-day carry
on in their own homes is urban, not rural, in character. Of late,
therefore, ever more and more women leave the domestic hearth to
sell their labour in the industrial market. Wage-labour employs an
ever-increasing number of women. The census returns of all civilised
countries show that in the last decade, notwithstanding special
legislation for the regulation of the work of female wage-earners,
there has been a marked increase in women’s work, and that this
increase is proportionally greater than that of the wage-labour
of men. In countries in which capitalist production is fully
established, wage-earning men constitute about 60 per cent. of the
total adult male population, whereas 25 to 30 per cent. of the
adult female population are wage-earning women. In the factories of
Germany, more than 1,000,000 women are employed, of whom more than
30,000 are married.
The labour-force of women is utilised by capitalism on much the same
grounds as that of children. Female labour is cheap, the customary
wage for women being one-half to one-third of that for men. The
reasons for this are as follows. On the average women are more
subject than men to bodily disorders whereby their ability to work
is interrupted. In many women, wage-labour is merely a subsidiary
occupation. Such women are willing to accept lower pay, and thus
depress the wages of other women doing the same classes of work.
Moreover, they are unorganised, for the obvious reason that in
the case of women much less often than in the case of men does
wage-labour constitute their permanent life-work, and the centre of
their life’s interest is to be found in their actual or expected
family life. Women are dexterous and quiet workers, conscientious,
punctual, change their dwelling-place less readily than men, and are
willing to undertake the most disagreeable and difficult kinds of
work (married women do this for the sake of their families). Many
girls are compelled to work for absolute vital necessities. In the
case of a married couple, the husband’s earnings may be so small
that vital necessities can be supplied only when the wife also goes
out to work. The most tragic feature of such cases is that the woman
is usually forced to go out to work precisely at the time when, in
consequence of illness, the large size of the family, &c., she is
especially needed at home.
_The Consequences of Child-Labour._--A moderate amount of occupation
for children accustoms them to bodily and mental activity,
cultivates in them a sense of diligence and economy, and safeguards
them against idleness and other evil courses. Work affords an
important educational influence, and one whose value must not be
underestimated. A moderate amount of bodily work in addition to the
mental work of school is not merely harmless, but is in most cases
desirable. It is not wage-labour in and by itself which is harmful,
but the conditions under which that labour is usually carried out.
(This applies equally to the labour of women and of children.) The
greed of employers, the deficient resisting powers of children, and
the poverty of the children’s relatives, make child-labour dangerous
in manifold ways for the bodily, mental, and moral health of the
child. (_a_) Character: the work is monotonous, difficult, carried
on in dusty, evil-smelling, damp places, very early in the morning
or late at night. (_b_) Duration: many children work five to six or
even eight to ten hours, in addition to their school work. (_c_)
Age: even to-day, hundreds of children of six, seven, or eight go
out to work for wages; in home-industries, children even of four or
five are employed. (_d_) Other conditions: the tragical revelations
of official inquiries display very clearly certain other disastrous
results of child-labour.
Let us consider, for example, the case of the apprentices. Although
children of fourteen to sixteen years of age are not so strong as
the adult workers, they have to rise at an earlier hour to put the
workshop in order; for the same reason they leave later than the
adult workers. They have to serve the master, his family, and his
assistants, and, in addition, to attend school. Thus most apprentices
have to work very hard from early in the morning till late at night,
and this not only in the workshops, but also at domestic work. At the
same time they are often very badly treated. Many employers engage
many more apprentices than are really needed, simply in order to
be able to dispense with the services of assistants and servants,
whose duties are performed by the apprentices. In course of time
this ill-treatment of apprentices becomes more widely diffused. The
misery of the apprentices is greater in proportion to the poverty
of the factory or workshop in which they are employed. No one need
be surprised that there is universal complaint of the lack of
apprentices. They are so badly treated that no parents want their
own child to become an apprentice. Moreover, many families are so
poor that their children must earn money as soon as possible, and
therefore cannot be apprenticed. The relationship between apprentice
and master involves a contract on the one side to give care,
protection, and instruction, and on the other to do work. Thus the
relationship of the apprentice to the master is a twofold one, the
apprentice being a pupil, but also a workman. It is the duty of the
master to instruct the apprentice. For this purpose the apprentice is
wholly entrusted to the master’s care, and must carry out the duties
ordered by the master. The master is the stronger party economically,
and possesses a kind of parental authority over the apprentice, so
that the former’s rights and duties in respect of the contract of
service cannot be very precisely defined. Such protective rules as
exist for apprentices practically ignore the smaller industries and
home-work, for in these the difficulties of proper supervision appear
almost insuperable. What has been said will have shown that there are
sufficient causes for the miseries of apprentices.
Thus it appears that factory work is not the worst of all for
children. The influence of factory work appears in such a bad light
simply because, owing to its being more readily supervised, and owing
to the facility for statistical statement of its results, the data
are in this case more readily obtainable.
The lives of children employed in circuses and similar spectacular
public entertainments are always in danger. Any work which is
disproportionate to the powers of the weak and undeveloped body
of the child is injurious to the latter’s health. Arduous work
interferes with proper growth, and the effects of such work may
be especially disastrous in the female sex, giving rise to pelvic
contraction, &c. By interfering with the proper development of
individual organs, different forms of child-labour give rise to
characteristic deformities. It is a well-known fact that the
disease-rate and the death-rate are higher in youthful wage-workers
and in apprentices than in other children. In this connection it
suffices to refer to the so-called “diseases of occupation.” It is a
matter of general knowledge that in those districts in which children
engage in very arduous wage-labour, the percentage of adults found to
be fit for military service is exceptionally small. The best example
of this is found in those districts of Sicily in which children
work in the sulphur mines. In the year 1827, King William III of
Prussia ordered measures to be taken against excessive child-labour,
in consequence of reports made to him to the effect that a large
proportion of child-workers subsequently proved unfit for military
service.
When a child begins in early youth to work for wages, his school
attendance is interfered with. If the child-worker does attend
school, it is so tired that it cannot follow the teacher with
sufficient attention. In districts in which a large percentage of
the children are at work, the educational development of the whole
population suffers, and not merely that of those who work for a
living. Children whose occupation involves a very restricted use of
their faculties become unfitted for other occupations, and, indeed,
lose almost entirely the faculty of adaptation. In the streets of
great manufacturing towns, large seaports, and like places, we
find numbers of children engaged in the sale of matches, flowers,
newspapers, &c., and they hawk such wares also in public-houses,
coffee taverns, and the like. Most of them use this traffic merely
as an excuse for vagabondage, begging, criminal practices, or the
offer of their persons for use by sexual perverts. They frequent the
streets by night as well as by day, and make no secret of the fact
that their aim is to beg rather than to sell their wares. It will
readily be understood that in the streets and other places in which
they hawk their wares, such children get into very bad company, and
are likely to become completely depraved. Those children who work in
factories or workshops, and those who are employed in agriculture,
are in continuous contact with adult workers, by night as well as by
day, listen to their obscene conversation, and watch their improper
acts. Some youthful workers are quite independent and free from
all supervision. Such workers often earn comparatively good wages,
and this early command of money is in such circumstances apt to be
fruitful of evil in various ways.
Excessive work awakens in the child an aversion, and even a hatred,
to work. Such a child works only from compulsion and under the
influence of fear. The hatred of work thus engendered becomes a cause
of truancy and idleness. Vagabondage and begging are easier and
more lucrative than incessant toil. When the child perceives that
its lot is one of arduous toil, whilst others live, not comfortably
merely, but in luxury, anti-social sentiments are aroused. When such
a child grows up, we have an adult disinclined for exertion and
taking pleasure in nothing. Owing to the monotony of his occupation
and the neglect of his education, his intelligence is dull and
stupid. He sees that his parents force him to work and otherwise
neglect him, and this destroys his affection for his relatives. The
foundation of the authority of family life, namely, the economic
dependence of the other members of the family upon its head, is
undermined by child-labour. Some wage-earning children are entirely
dependent upon their work, and, if unemployed, as often happens,
they lose their only legitimate means of support, and are forced into
vicious modes of livelihood. It is proved by statistical data that
a larger percentage of youthful wage-earners than of other children
become criminals; and, further, that in those districts in which
child-labour especially prevails, criminality is more extensive than
in others.
_The Consequences of Women’s Labour._--Many girls begin to work
for wages before their physical development is completed, and
when their sexual life is just beginning to awaken. The injurious
effects of work upon the health are much greater in women not yet
fully developed than in older women. By hard work the subsequent
development of the blossoming girl is disturbed. By wage-labour
girls are deprived of the opportunity of becoming acquainted with
the details of household management; their mode of life is free and
unsupervised, so that they are apt at an early age to enter into
illegitimate sexual relationships. It will be readily understood
that, in different classes of workwomen, the unfavourable influence
of these factors will exert itself in different ways. It will suffice
to refer to the different working conditions of female factory hands
and of female domestic servants.
There are many branches of manufacturing industry in which women
ought not to be employed at all, because the work these branches
involve is injurious to women’s health, and, in especial, to the
functions of their sexual life; there are many other branches of
industry in which women should only be employed if certain specific
precautions have been taken, and if certain regulations are rigidly
enforced. But at present economic pressure forces women into these
occupations also, and the necessary precautions and regulations are
too often ignored. Many women are engaged in the most exhausting
and offensive occupations, and have to continue at work even in the
later stages of pregnancy. It may even happen that the capitalist
pays a pregnant woman a smaller wage than his other women workers,
notwithstanding the fact that her needs are greater. It will readily
be understood how disastrous may be the influence of this upon the
unborn child. The children of women who continue at work during
pregnancy are born earlier and are weaker than the children of other
women. Occupations especially dangerous for the unborn child are
those in which the mother has to sit for long hours at a time in a
bent posture; those in which she has to stand continuously; those in
which she works in contact with mercury, phosphorus, aniline, iodine,
lead, or nicotine. In women who continue to work during pregnancy,
miscarriage, premature labour, and still-births are commoner than
in other women. With regard to the question of the prohibition of
women’s work during pregnancy and lactation, another point has to
be considered. If the woman remains away from work throughout the
whole period of pregnancy and lactation, not only does she lose her
place with her employer, but also she loses to a large extent her
previously acquired skill and aptitude for work. It results from this
that the woman is no longer able to work when work again becomes
possible to her. If the mother of a young infant is forced to engage
in wage-labour, the consequences are extremely disastrous to the
child, for its care is inevitably neglected. The proletarian mother
neglects her child in many instances not, as is so often believed,
because of the lack of maternal affection, but simply because she is
forced to go out to work.
Obviously it makes a great difference whether the mother’s
wage-earning work is carried on at home or elsewhere. In the latter
case the mother can do less for her child, but home-work has the
great and obvious disadvantage, that it transforms the dwelling into
a workshop, and thereby accentuates the already-existing hygienic
defects of the proletarian home. Moreover, in domestic industry the
protective regulation of women’s labour is far less complete, and
the wages are also lower. If the wife goes to work instead of the
husband, matters are not quite so bad as they otherwise might be,
for the husband in such cases to some extent takes his wife’s place
in the household. The conditions are far worse when both husband and
wife go out to work. If both the parents go to work in a factory,
the interests of the entire family suffer; the children receive no
proper upbringing, and the whole family life is ruined. In districts
in which the married women go out to work in factories, the
percentage of miscarriages and of still-births, and the death-rate
and the criminality-rate among the children, are all greater than in
regions in which factory work for married women does not prevail. In
manufacturing regions, in times during which female unemployment is
widely prevalent, there is a decline in infant mortality, in spite
of the increasing poverty resulting from the lack of employment.
The death-rate of the children, and more especially the death-rate
of the infants, in any area, is found to increase in a direct ratio
with an increase in the number of hours that the mothers work away
from their homes, and to vary inversely with the amount of the daily
earnings. The chief cause of high infant mortality is artificial
feeding, or rather the diseases engendered by artificial feeding.
Among the Jews, the infantile death-rate is lower than among those
of other creeds. The chief cause of this difference is that so small
a percentage of the Jewish married women work for wages. But in the
Jewish proletariat the conditions as regards infantile mortality are
identical with those that obtain among the Christian proletariat.
The result of the wife’s absence from home in order to work for
wages is that she is unable to attend to the work of the household;
for this reason, the housekeeping of her home is at once costly
and bad; commodities and services which in working-class homes are
usually provided by the labour of the housewife have to be obtained
or provided elsewhere for money--washing and mending, for instance.
Owing to the prevailing disorder of the household, many articles
have to be bought anew, when the old ones would have done very well
for a long time if carefully mended or patched. Various housekeeping
accessories are required; a servant may have to be employed. The dirt
and disorder of the dwelling, the bad feeding, and the irregular
family life, often drive the husband to drink; and this further
increases the family expenses.
_Regulation of Child-Labour._--Of all working conditions, those
affecting child-labour are perhaps most unrighteously regulated.
The relationship between the protection of child-labour and the
protection of other kinds of labour is analogous to the relationship
between the sections of criminal law dealing with youthful offenders
and those dealing with adult criminals. It is an actual fact that
legislation for the protection of adult workmen originated in the
protection of child-labour. It was in England, the true fatherland of
the factory system, that the regulation of child-labour first made
its appearance. The first English law for this purpose was passed in
the year 1802. Even as early as this it was necessary to intervene
for the protection of child-labour, for at that time the conditions
were perhaps the worst in the whole history of child-labour. The
individualist state, being already to some degree permeated by
socialist ideas, protects women’s labour and child-labour. But
this protection, like that of labour in general, was not in any
way based upon ethical considerations; it arose simply from the
need to protect the working capacity of the labourers considered as
profit-making tools. Moreover, in many countries, the regulations for
the protection of labour are for the most part evaded or ignored by
the employers.
In the more advanced countries, but only in these, we find the
following legislative provisions for the regulation of child-labour.
Child-labour and compulsory school attendance are contradictories. If
merely in the interest of the protection of child-labour, the State
must ordain that every child shall attend school from the age of six
to the age of twelve, and must employ every means in its power to see
that the duty of school attendance is never evaded. Regulations are
made for the prevention of mendicancy by children. In addition, the
State prescribes the conditions under which children may perform in
public (in the theatre, the concert-room, the music-hall, the circus,
&c.). The general groundwork of these regulations is that children
under fifteen shall not appear in public for money at all, and those
over fifteen only by special permission of the local authorities.
Apprenticeship is also subject to State regulation. Before the
indentures are signed, it is necessary to obtain the consent of the
local authority, and there must be a written contract between the
child’s legal representative and the master. The master must employ
the child only upon suitable work, and must provide proper housing,
food, and education for the apprentice; the apprentice must live
in a place altogether apart from the workshop, and must attend an
apprentices’ or continuation school; the master has no right to
inflict corporal punishment. What has been said about apprentices
applies in some degree also to juvenile domestic servants. The State
regulates child-labour in the larger workshops and in factories. The
employment for wages of children below a certain age is completely
forbidden. When this age is surpassed, a child may be employed
only when permission has been obtained from the local authority.
Night work by children is absolutely prohibited; a maximum number
of hours is prescribed for daily work (five to eight), and for
weekly work (thirty to forty-eight), adapted to the child’s age and
physical constitution; the intervals (daily and weekly) for rest and
the intervals for meals, and also the minimum wage, are likewise
prescribed. The State, of course, arranges that breach of these
regulations should be visited with punishment, with withdrawal of
the authority of the parent or guardian, and with prohibition of the
employment of children by the employer concerned.
_Regulation of Women’s Labour._--Night labour for women is in some
cases forbidden, in others allowed under certain restrictions. The
employment of women in mines and in certain other extremely dangerous
occupations is forbidden. The employment of women for a certain
number of weeks after childbirth is also forbidden. From various
sides we hear a proposal that women should be permitted to work as
half-timers--that is, for half the working day. It is suggested, to
secure continuity of work, that the women should work (during the
daytime only) in two shifts, half the women employees during the
morning, the other half during the afternoon. The advocates of this
proposal suggest that the women on the morning shift could attend
to their domestic duties in the afternoon, and, conversely, that
those on the afternoon shift could attend to their domestic duties
in the morning, and that the supervision and care of the children
could be mutually arranged by the members of the two shifts. Most of
the advocates of this system propose merely its introduction as an
optional measure--that is to say, that women who wish to work the
whole day should not be forbidden to do so; and they also propose
that it should be applicable in the case of married women only. In
any case, we cannot expect great things from any such system.
_Reform of Apprenticeship._--To-day much thought is given to the
question of the reform of apprenticeship, which indeed stands greatly
in need of reform. The technical education of the present day is
extremely defective. The smaller employers are unable to give proper
instruction, because they lack both time and capacity. The training
of the apprentices in the larger factories is also scrappy, because
the division of labour is of such a kind that none of the employees
have time to give to the instruction of apprentices, and these
latter therefore receive no more than a partial technical education.
Moreover, the owners of the larger factories are unwilling to receive
apprentices, because, if they do this, their factories are subjected
to a number of additional inconvenient regulations. The apprentice no
longer belongs, as in former times, to the master’s family, and no
longer receives his education there; indeed, many masters do not even
provide board and lodging for their apprentices, and in that case
the latter are apt to be greatly neglected. It is obvious that great
stress must be laid upon the technical education of apprentices. But
no importance can be attached to the argument that through a proper
education of the apprentices an improvement would be effected in
the conditions of the lesser industries. What is necessary is that
the State should provide technical schools, and itself undertake in
these the education of apprentices. In some countries quite a number
of such technical schools have been founded, but, owing to the great
cost of these schools, the complete abolition of the system of the
nominal instruction of apprentices at the hands of their masters is
not at present to be expected. Homes of technical instruction for
girls are also greatly needed, and do already exist in many places.
But such homes must on no account be under the management of the
Church, nor must they be dominated in any degree by the so-called
religious spirit. Their sole object is to provide for these learners
board and lodging on the same scale as they would have if they
were in service, and to provide them with opportunities of seeking
employment during their free time. A further crying need is the
organisation, not of apprentices only, but of the younger workmen
and workwomen generally. The organisation of the workers is the most
effective means for the prevention of their ill-treatment at the
hands of their employers.
The general attitude of socialists and trade-unionists towards
apprenticeship is the following: Many trade-unions insist that in
collective bargains between workpeople and their employers there
should be stipulations as to the maximum number of apprentices to
be employed by each individual master; before the contracts of
apprenticeship are signed, the unions call the attention of the
relatives of the proposed apprentice to the unfavourable position
occupied by the apprentices in certain branches of industry, and
warn the relatives against certain employers who are well known to
treat their apprentices badly; some unions found their own technical
schools. No attention whatever need be paid to the objection that
such activities on the part of trade-unions tend towards the revival
of the old guild system.
_Enforcement of such Regulations._--To secure a really effective
protection for women’s labour and child-labour, it is necessary that
women and children should be protected in all branches of labour,
including agriculture and domestic service. If the protection and
regulation are limited to certain branches of labour, the inevitable
result is that women and children are driven out of the protected
and regulated, into the unprotected and unregulated trades. (This
was the experience in Germany, for example, as a sequel of the law
passed in the year 1891.) It is, above all, necessary that home
industry should be regulated, as, in default of this, no satisfactory
results can be expected. It is further essential that all children
should be protected, regardless of the relationship they may bear to
the employer. Employers related to the children they employ must be
subject to regulation just as much as others, for it is well known
that relatives who have once begun to exploit their own children tend
to become the most inconsiderate of all those who overdrive youthful
workers.
In the larger workshops, and in factories, the requisite strict and
continuous regulation of all the circumstances which might affect
children unfavourably is rendered fairly easy, owing to the fact
that the number of such large establishments is comparatively small.
But the stringency and reality of the supervision still leave much
to be desired, owing to the great influence possessed by wealthy
property owners. In almost every country, year after year, the
factory inspectors report that the regulations for the protection
of children working in factories are evaded, and yet the local
authorities are powerless to remedy these abuses. Where children work
in their own families, or in small workshops, the conditions are
always less favourable, owing to the close and intimate relationship
that obtains in these cases between child and employer. Inasmuch as
the number of families engaged in home industries and employed at
small workshops runs into millions, and in view of the circumstance
previously mentioned, that the protection of child home-workers
involves an interference with parental authority, regulation is here
a much more difficult matter.
The executive authorities to which is entrusted the enforcement of
these protective regulations are: medical practitioners, factory
inspectors, local governing bodies, police, and school teachers. It
is essential that the part played by the medical practitioner should
be largely extended. Permission for a child to undertake wage-labour
should depend absolutely upon the permission of a certifying
physician; the doctors should examine all the workplaces with an eye
to their hygienic requirements; and from time to time they should
examine the female and youthful employees, to make sure that their
work is not injurious to their health. But we are still far from the
adoption of these simple and yet essential measures. The rôle of the
factory inspectors is especially important, because the enforcement
of regulations for the protection of labour is one of their principal
and specific duties. In many of the States of the American Union, in
France, in England, and in many of the federated States of the German
Empire, there already exist female factory inspectors. The school
teachers play an important part in regulation. They are constantly
in contact with the children, know their special circumstances, are
in a position to note abnormalities as they appear, and readily
ascertain the causes of such abnormalities. Above all, is their rôle
an important one in relation to the control of domestic industry.
_Objections to the Protective Regulation of the Labour of Women
and Children._--Many objections have been advanced, chiefly by the
employers of labour, against the protective regulations we have been
considering. Most of these objections were first heard in England
more than a century ago, at the time of the first legislation for
the protection of child-workers; but they are continually and loudly
reiterated to-day. They are the following: (_a_) Arduous physical
toil, the work of the proletarians, women’s labour, are merely parts
of the struggle for existence with which we have no business to
interfere. (_b_) The work of women and children is indispensable to
modern industry, for certain of its processes can be carried out
only by women, or by children, as the case may be. (_c_) The work
is not injurious to the health either of women or of children; on
the contrary, it does them good. (_d_) The children ought to be at
work, otherwise they are either loafing about the streets or making
themselves a nuisance to their parents at home. (_e_) To abolish
women’s labour and child-labour would simply be to deprive them of
their means of livelihood. (_f_) The suppression of women’s labour
and child-labour renders it more difficult for national industry
to compete with foreign industry; indeed, it threatens the very
existence of the national industry. (_g_) Many advocates of the
emancipation of women oppose the protection of women’s labour on
the ground that such protection limits women’s right to sell their
labour. (_h_) In regions inhabited by two or more nationalities
regarded as being of unequal value, it is thought to be permissible
to exploit the labour of the women and children of the reputedly
inferior race. (In the United States of America, for example, we are
told that the question is not one concerning American children, but
one concerning Slavonic and Italian children, which, however hard
they may have to work, are yet better off than they would have been
in their own fatherland. It is worthy of remark that in the United
States of America, especially in the Southern and the Western States,
the conditions in the matter of child-labour are much the same as
those that obtained in England at the beginning of the nineteenth
century.)
_These Objections Answered._--(_a_) The answer to this and to similar
arguments was given in our discussion of Darwinism in relation to
child-protection. (_b_) There are no processes for whose performance
women and children are indispensable. When, for certain stages of
manufacture, women and children are unobtainable, these stages are
very well performed by men or by machinery. (_c_) This is true
only when the conditions of work are properly regulated. (_d_) It
is true that certain work may exercise an educative influence;
but wage-labour is entirely devoid of moralising and educative
influences. When we are told that by putting the child to work it
learns to love work, that it becomes thrifty and diligent, that it
is restrained from vagabondage, we may answer, that under present
conditions wage-labour for children has the very opposite effects.
If child-labour in factories and workshops really exerted such an
educative influence as the employers pretend, why do they not send
their own children to work in the factories, and why do they reserve
these advantages for the children of the proletariat? (_f_) Wherever,
in certain branches of industry, woman’s labour and child-labour have
been forbidden, as, for example, in England, the following results
have been noted. An improvement in working conditions is invariably
followed by an increase in the intensity of the work performed, and
also by an improvement in its quality. Manufacturing industry does
not come to a standstill because, in consequence of regulation,
certain processes previously performed by women and children have
now to be carried out by machines or by men; on the contrary, as
a result of this, the industry becomes more vigorous and more
efficient. It does so, first of all, because the latest improvements
in technique are perforce adopted when cheap labour can no longer be
exploited; in the second place, because the health of the workers,
upon which above all the efficiency of the industry depends, is
increased. Regulation therefore actually increases the power of
a national industry to make headway against foreign competition.
We have also to remember that the same objections that we are now
considering have been advanced against the protection of adult male
labour, and have been shown by experience to be invalid in this case
also. This objection commonly makes its appearance in the following
form: in many branches of industry the protection of the workers
increases the cost of production and lowers the quality of the
goods produced; this resulted, for example, when the use in certain
processes of lead, mercury, phosphorus, and arsenic was forbidden,
and the sequel was that the commodities in question were imported
from countries in which such protection of labour did not exist. But
this argument is in fact an argument for the internationalisation of
the legislative protection of labour. For it involves an admission
that the disadvantages of such regulation cease to exist when in a
number of competing countries like measures of protection prevail, so
that no one of the countries enjoys in this respect any commercial
advantage over the others. It is an actual fact that in very recent
years the international regulation of women’s labour and child-labour
on uniform lines has made enormous advances. The very fact that
the protection of women’s labour and child-labour tends to lead
ultimately to the adoption of a uniform international code, is an
extremely favourable phenomenon, in harmony with the general tendency
of evolution. (_g_) The argument from the side of the advocates for
the emancipation of women is fundamentally false. It does not tend
towards women’s emancipation to leave women free to seek their own
destruction. If the protection of women’s labour leads to injurious
results, the only conclusion we can properly draw from this fact is
that our regulation must be effected in some other manner, so that
these injurious results may no longer occur. (_h_) The argument about
the inferior races is a very dangerous one. The rights of women and
children are identical, to whatever nationality they may happen to
belong. We might just as well maintain that the exploitation of the
labour power of the proletariat is quite justifiable on the ground
that the proletariat is of inferior quality to the other classes of
society. And if we are told that women and children are better off
in the factories and workshops than they are in their own homes,
the obvious answer to this is that, in that case, it is absolutely
essential that the conditions of their domestic life should be
improved.
_Radical Solution of the Problem._--A radical solution of this
problem is to be expected only from an increase in the wages of
the adult male workers. Not until the earnings of the father of
the family suffice to provide adequately for all the needs of the
family, will it become unnecessary for mother and children to work
for wages. It is a fact of general experience that those workmen
who earn adequate wages do not let their wives and children go out
to work; and also that in the case of men occupied in the so-called
seasonal trades, it is only during the husbands’ slack season that
the wives and children contribute by their earnings to the family
income (for instance, the wives and children of bricklayers go out to
work during the winter only). If women and children did not undertake
wage-labour, the supply of labour in general would be much smaller,
and as a result of this the wages of the adult male workers would
necessarily rise. It is most probable that in course of time the
adult male workers will succeed in obtaining considerably higher
wages than they receive on the average to-day. Wage-labour on the
part of women and children will then for the most part cease, and
this will result in yet further increase in the wages of the men. The
adult male workers should not lose sight of the fact that by allowing
their wives and children to work for wages they merely succeed in
making their own condition worse. For a short time after the wives
and children first begin to work there may, indeed, be an increase in
the family income; but the ultimate result is to make life harder,
not merely for themselves, but for other workmen in general. If,
on the other hand, they do not allow their wives and children to
engage in wage-labour, they may sometimes suffer for the moment, by
a temporary diminution in income; but they enter upon a path which
cannot fail ultimately to lead to benefit both for their own family
and for the other workers.
_The Tendency of Evolution._--The tendency of evolution is towards
the disappearance of child-labour. It is statistically proved that
the larger any industrial undertaking, the smaller proportionately
is the number of children employed in that undertaking. But the
tendency of evolution is unquestionably in the direction of the
development of gigantic commercial enterprises through the absorption
or competitive destruction of a much larger number of comparatively
small enterprises. In the future we shall attain a condition in
which no one will be allowed to undertake work of any kind which is
injurious either to himself or to his offspring in any way whatever.
Much of the work of women and children for wages such as goes on
to-day will unquestionably be prohibited. No doubt, wage work for
women will exist in the future, and some of it perhaps will be more
intensive even than to-day; but, unquestionably, whatever wage work
women do will be in a form which can do no harm to the present or
to future generations. Children will be properly educated, and
until the years of their education are finished will engage in such
work only as is educative in its influence and character. Technical
manual instruction will be one of the principal methods of education.
As co-operative housekeeping spreads, women will have much less
domestic work to do than at present. In this department of work
also, the principle of the division of labour will be applied, and
the individual details of the domestic economy of to-day will then
be entrusted to the hands of professional specialists. Adult women
will engage in much the same sort of work as men, with the exception
of those occupations which experience shows to be injurious, for
sexual reasons, either to themselves or to their offspring. In the
regulation of women’s work, consideration will of course have to be
paid to the physiological disturbances which periodically recur in
women.