have undertaken to establish a House of Industry in New York,” and “To
the Editor of the New York _Daily Sentinel_,” _Select Excerpta_ (A
collection of newspaper clippings made by Matthew Carey, now in the
Ridgway Branch of the Library Company, Philadelphia), vol. 13, pp.
138-142; _Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land_, 3d ed., p. 15.
[7] Quoted in Carey, _Miscellaneous Pamphlets_, No. 12, Philadelphia,
1831.
[8] _New York Daily Tribune_, July 9, August 19, 1845.
[9] _Fincher’s Trades’ Review_, Nov. 21, 1863.
[10] _Industrial Leader_, July 9, 1887.
[11] _Workingman’s Shield_, Cincinnati, Jan. 12, 1833.
[12] _Workingman’s Advocate_, Chicago, June 6, 1868.
[13] Mitchell, _History of the Greenbacks_, p. 307.
[14] Montgomery, _Practical Detail of the Cotton Manufacture of the
United States_, 1840, pp. 173-174.
[15] Montgomery, _op. cit._
[16] _Massachusetts House Document_, no. 50, 1845, p. 3.
[17] Quoted in the _Voice of Industry_, a labor paper published in
Lowell, Nov. 28, 1845.
[18] _New York Sun_, Dec. 3, 1877.
[19] _Lynn Record_, Jan. 1, 8, March 12, 1834.
[20] _The American Workman_, Boston, Aug. 7, 1869; _Workingman’s
Advocate_, Chicago, April 28, 1866; _The Revolution_, N. Y., Oct. 8,
1868.
[21] Carey’s _Select Excerpta_, Vol. 4, pp. 11-12.
[22] _Baltimore Republican_, Oct. 2, 1833.
[23] _Peoples’ Paper_, Cincinnati, Sept. 22, Oct. 6, 1844.
[24] _New York Daily Tribune_, July 31, Sept. 11, 1851; June 8, 1853.
[25] _Mechanics’ Free Press_, Phila., Jan. 17, 1829; _New York
American_, Jan. 5, 1829; _National Gazette_, Phila., Jan. 7, 1829.
[26] Baxter, C. H., _History of the Fall River Strike_, 1875.
[27] _Voice of Industry_, Feb. 20, 1846.
[28] Gray, _Argument on Petition for Ten-Hour Law_, 1873, pp. 21-22.
[29] In that year it was said that a man and two women working together
from twelve to sixteen hours a day earned a dollar among them, and that
the women, if they did not belong to the family, received each about
$1.25 a week for their work. _Workingman’s Advocate_, July 27, 1844.
CHANGES IN WOMEN’S WORK IN BINDERIES[30]
MARY VAN KLEECK
Committee on Women’s Work, New York City
“Bookbinding is a very uncertain trade,” said a forewoman who had held
her position fourteen years; “I wouldn’t advise any young girl to go
into it. There is so much machinery now. Where a girl used to make
eight or nine dollars, she now makes five or six, and that’s not a
living. Also you never know when you’ll be laid off. Take the magazine
binderies. They don’t keep the girls a full month. Ten days is their
month. Twelve days is a long month. It’s a bad arrangement to do thirty
days’ work in twelve. You have to pay board every week.”
Remarks like these were made by many girls employed in the bookbinding
trade in New York. For the most part they did not see reasons or
remedies for the conditions which they faced, but by daily experience
they had learned this fact of change as it appeared in numerous
guises, irregular employment, irregular hours, hit-or-miss methods of
learning, cuts in wages, and the displacement of workers by the coming
of machines. If their impressions be correct, more important than any
photographic description of their economic position, regarded as a
static thing, is an account of changes in conditions and their effect
on women workers.
If we attempt to verify the statements of the workers by the official
figures in the census, showing the proportion of men and women employed
in binderies at successive enumerations,[31] we shall be surprised and
somewhat bewildered. In 1870 30% were women, 70% were men; in 1880
39.7% were women, 60.3% were men; in 1890 48.5% were women, 51.5% were
men; in 1900 51.6% were women, 48.4% were men.
This rapid shifting of the relative proportion of men and women would
lead the statistician to suppose that in this trade was to be found a
perfect example of the displacement of men by women. Behind the figures
one seems to read the story of a struggle in which men have been the
losers. Yet the comments of workers and employers, and the conditions
actually witnessed in binderies in New York contradict this reading of
census figures. Evidently more facts are needed in order to understand
what is happening in the trade.
The bindery trade in New York employs about five thousand women, a
third of all the women at work in binderies in the United States. A
few are at work in hand binderies, where craftsmen of two or three
centuries ago would find tools and methods not entirely unfamiliar.
Others work in “edition binderies,” where machines bind books by the
thousands. Others work in pamphlet binderies, or magazine binderies.
The methods and conditions differ in these different branches of the
trade.
Whether a book is bound by hand or machine, whether it is covered with
levant or paper, whether it is sewed with linen thread or stitched with
wire, certain processes are necessary. The sheets must be folded into
portable size, the folded sections must be held together in proper
order, and the whole must be covered. It is in the matter of the
covering that the branches of the trade differ most widely. The making
of the hand-bound book, designed to last longest, demands the most
numerous processes. At the other extreme is the paper-covered pamphlet.
The machine method of binding books omits many processes of hand
binding, and combines others into one simple operation. In hand
binding, one book is the center of attention until it is finished, and
each volume requires slightly different treatment. In machine binding,
the method is to repeat one process thousands of times, adopting the
factory system with its division of processes and its labor-saving
machines. A pamphlet should be folded and its sections placed in
proper order as accurately as a book bound in cloth or morocco, but as
it is to be covered only with heavy paper, it requires no such careful
pressing, trimming, and retrimming, rounding and backing, glueing,
lining-up, drawing-in, and all the other diverse manipulations by
which the artistic binder assures the preservation of the sheets in a
solid and substantial cover made by hand. A periodical is a species
of pamphlet, but it is distinguished by uniformity of size week after
week or month after month. Thus it lends itself admirably to machine
production.
Women are standing on the threshold of the bindery trade. All the work
of preparing the sheets is theirs, folding, placing them in sequence,
and attaching them together with paste, thread or wire. In pamphlet
binding they put on the covers, but in edition binderies, they have
no share at all in the important work of the forwarding department,
and they enter the finishing department only in order to lay the gold
on the covers and to examine and wrap the completed volumes. Will the
process of change give them greater or less opportunities?
The machine is the great fact which looms large before the eyes of
bindery women, when they describe changes in their trade. They accept
it as they would accept a rainy day but it usually spells “out of work”
for someone in the bindery, and the calamity of unemployment is more
immediate and real to the workers than are the advantages of better
methods of production.
The different methods of folding sheets illustrate the development of
machinery. Often these different methods are found together in one
workroom. For example, in an edition bindery in New York the sheets
are fed into one of the six point folding machines or placed in the
automatic folder or, very rarely, folded by hand. In the first case,
girls sitting on high stools feed each separate sheet into the machine,
placing the printed dots on needle-like points, which serve as guides,
while their helpers, the learners, take out the folded sections and
“jog” them straight on tables. If the pages are to be folded by the
automatic machine, they are placed in the proper position under two
rubber knuckles, which push them toward the folding rollers. The
forewoman, in addition to her other work, keeps watch to see that the
folding is properly done, but no hand work is required except to pile
the sheets under the rubber fingers and to lift the folded sections
from the boxes into which the machine delivers them. Between the
“point” machine and the “automatic” was another invention not found
in this bindery. In it the points gave place to automatic gauges, and
the girl who fed it need only flick the sheet from the pile so that
the machine could grip it. By dispensing with the points on which each
sheet must be fitted much time was saved. Obviously the next step was
to supply an automatic feeder.
The stories of displaced workers illustrate what happens when new
machines are introduced. One girl had been employed in bindery work
three years. As a learner, she had “knocked up” sections folded by the
“point” machine. She was paid three dollars a week, and continued the
same process one year. Then when a vacancy occurred, she was given a
chance to operate the machine. It was not easy to learn, nor could it
be done in a day or a week. At first she received a weekly wage of four
dollars and fifty cents, but “advanced rapidly” until she was earning
nine dollars.
One day an automatic machine appeared in the workroom and proved so
successful that it was used in preference to the point folders. This
girl was given hand folding, which is “terrible work.” It is hard to
earn a living wage by hand folding. The worker is paid a cent or a cent
and a half for folding one hundred sheets if one fold is necessary.
If the sheets are large and heavy like those in a dictionary the work
of folding is very exhausting, although the pay may be higher. If one
is paid four cents for one hundred sheets, she must fold nearly three
thousand sheets in a day or seventeen thousand five hundred in a week
to earn seven dollars. Moreover, each sheet must be folded three times,
and each fold creased smooth by drawing the bone folding knife across
the heavy paper. This girl was paid four cents a hundred for folding
the pages of an encyclopedia, but she could not earn more than seven
dollars a week, in spite of her efforts to work rapidly. She left
because she was not needed for hand folding and the forewoman thought
that there would be no more work for “point feeders.” She advised her
to learn some other process.
An employment bureau sent her to a bindery where a point feeder was
needed, but the machine was not the same make as the one which she had
been operating, and therefore she was not employed. After a fruitless
search for work in her trade, she was employed by a manufacturer of
neckwear as a learner without wages. Later, as an experienced operator,
she earned seven to nine dollars a week.
Another girl had operated a point folding machine in a large edition
bindery. Newer inventions were introduced, and gradually more and more
work was transferred to them. This girl was a piece worker, and her
wages were depressed steadily as the machine which she was operating
fell into disuse. She had learned only two other processes, hand
folding and filling the boxes of the gathering machine. There was no
gathering machine in this bindery, and the prices for hand folding were
not high enough to yield a living wage. This girl and her sister, also
a bookbinder, lived alone, and were dependent on their own earnings.
She had decided to look for work in another bindery, when the forewoman
offered to teach her to gather by hand. Gathering is not easy work. “At
first,” she said, “I was so tired at night I could hardly keep my eyes
open at supper. I said yesterday I wished I had one of those things you
put on your feet to measure the distance you walk; I’d like to know
how many miles I walk in a day. There’s no boys to carry our work. The
folding machines are at the other end of the bindery, and we carry
the work the distance from one street to another. That’s a block. If
there are forty sections in a book, we walk it forty times for that one
book.” Nevertheless her experience in handling sheets made it possible
for her to learn the new process easily, so that by the end of six
months she was earning approximately ten to eleven dollars a week piece
work, whereas the point folding machine had yielded her a maximum of
nine or ten dollars.
An expert wirestitcher in a magazine bindery sometimes earned
twenty-four dollars in the busiest week of the month when she worked
overtime. When a combined gathering and wirestitching machine was
introduced for binding small magazines, she was transferred to work on
a weekly periodical whose pages were too large to fit the new machine.
Her work was inserting during part of the week and mailing during the
rest of the time. She earned ten to eleven dollars piece work, and had
steadier employment than if she had continued to stitch the monthly
magazine.
A gatherer, who had had long experience, “made a fuss” when the
gathering machine was introduced, and was given an opportunity to
operate it at a wage of eighteen dollars, the regular rate paid to men
for this work. Young girls were employed to fill the boxes. The other
gatherers were obliged to learn other processes in this establishment
or seek work elsewhere.
The important fact common to these stories is that there was no
systematic effort to prevent the maladjustment which was due not to the
inefficiency of the workers but to change in industrial organization.
The displaced employes had not been in a position accurately to foresee
these changes; the appearance of the machine in the workroom was
usually their first warning that they must seek other occupations. Time
was lost in the effort to make the required readjustments. It does not
appear that this loss of time was a necessary evil. On the other hand,
it is evident that solutions were possible, and that the suffering of
the workers was due to the fact that readjustments were matters of
chance rather than forethought.
There is another fact, almost as important as the introduction of
machinery, and that is the failure to introduce it. Of the 306
binderies visited in the course of this investigation, including
temporary departments of printing offices, lithographing establishments
and other branches of the industry, there were only nine in which no
handworkers were employed.
In 234 some machine was used.
In 66 no machines were used.
In 6 the use of machines was not ascertained.
In 20 a gathering machine was found.
In 269 no gathering machine was found.
In 17 the use of a gathering machine was not ascertained.
In 112 a folding machine was found.
In 181 no folding machine was found.
In 13 the use of a folding machine was not ascertained.
Several employers discussed the use of machinery and gave their reasons
for not introducing it. Small firms could not run the risk of investing
capital in machines which might change soon again. It was better to
be a specialist in one process and give out part of the work to other
establishments. Others did not have large enough orders to keep a
machine for one process in motion all day. High rents prevented others
from providing larger space for machinery. Others were inert. As long
as there were girls willing to take low wages for handwork, it was just
as well to continue in the old way.
This failure to introduce machines brings about a diversity in methods
which is very confusing to the worker. It prevents the establishment
of a standard and makes necessary a different bargain in each factory.
“You see every bindery is a little different,” said one woman; “when
you go to a new place you never can tell what it will be like.” In
so far as machines compel uniformity, they help to standardize both
processes and conditions of work.
The way in which machinery breaks up a trade into establishments making
a specialty of one branch of work has been noted. The other form of
specialization is illustrated in the case of employes who practise only
one process in the workroom. This sort of specialization does not seem
to be inevitable. In a bindery in New York where there were machines
for every process, “all round” workers were in demand, and those who
could turn from one process to another were not laid off. But, however
great may be the demand for employes experienced in more than one line
of work, it is the tendency of machinery to force a worker to practise
only one. If you are a piece-worker, to lose practise means to lose
wages. On the other hand, the machine will not yield its maximum profit
unless it be kept in constant operation. Thus while general practise
in all branches of the trade brings to the worker the desirable power
of adjustment to changing conditions, nevertheless the employer’s
wish to keep his machines in motion, and the piece worker’s eagerness
not to lose the speed which comes from constant practise, both tend to
organize the bindery force in separate departments, whose workers are
not interchangeable. The same demand of the machine, that it be fed
with enough work to keep it in constant motion, forces the employer
either to specialize in one department, or to secure more orders and to
enlarge his establishment.
It is obvious that the larger the establishment, the more successful
will be the attempt to keep every machine in motion throughout
the working day. The feeder of the machine will then have little
opportunity to practise other processes. “Establishments are now so
large that a woman learns only one process,” said one superintendent;
“for example, she becomes a sewer and does nothing but that.” In
the light of this fact, the census figures showing the size of
establishments are significant. In New York State in 1905, 53.9% of
the total number of wage earners were employed in 26 binderies, 8.6%
of the total number of establishments in the trade. There were 6 more
binderies counted in New York State in 1905 than in 1900 (304 in 1905,
298 in 1900) while wage earners increased 11.6% or 832 in number.
Specialization shows itself in another way, namely, in an inability to
turn from one kind of product to another. There is a large bindery in
New York where several periodicals are bound. A girl employed there
complained of the irregularity of her work. “It seems pretty hard on
a girl,” she said, “to have to stay home two days in the week and
then have to work so hard the other days.” Her employment was due to
the different methods of binding different periodicals. Two weekly
magazines were brought to the bindery on Tuesday and must be mailed
on Thursday. Hand folders and wirestitchers were needed to bind them.
An engineer’s magazine must be bound between Tuesday and Friday. The
work on this was hand folding, gathering by machine, and sewing by
machine, instead of wirestitching. Another publication was brought from
the printer on Friday and issued on Monday. It was folded by machine
and wirestitched. On Friday evening and Saturday there was no work
for a hand folder or an operator of the sewing machine. Wednesday was
the busiest day in the bindery; two magazines must be completed for
the mailers on Thursday. Overtime was usual on that day. This girl
could fold by hand, fill the gathering machine and operate the sewing
machine. She worked from Tuesday to Friday. The issues of the magazine
had been smaller than usual and her earnings were reduced. She reported
that at hand folding, if there were plenty of work, she could earn
seventy-five cents or a dollar a day. For filling the gathering machine
the rate was eighteen cents an hour or one dollar fifty-three cents a
day. But there had been so little work that her earnings in the past
three weeks had been:
January 4th-10th, $3.19;
January 11th-17th, $7.75;
January 18th-26th, $3.21.
If she had been steadily employed, she could have earned five or six
dollars a week as a hand folder, or nine dollars and nine cents for
filling the gathering machine. “There isn’t much chance for a sewer
any more in magazine binderies,” she said; “you know nearly all the
magazines used to be sewed, but now they are wirestitched.”
When different kinds of orders demand different processes, the
specialist must be prepared to face not only change in machinery, but
change in the size or character of her employer’s orders. This sort
of change may affect the organization of the workroom. Recently a
magazine, which had been gathered by machine, was enlarged by doubling
the size of its pages. Thereafter a force of inserters was employed,
and there was no work for gatherers. It may affect the process and its
demands on the worker. In one bindery a little girl was employed to
cut off books for one machine, earning four dollars. “I can keep up
with the machine when the books are the right size,” she said; “but
it’s awful when they’re thin.” It may affect wages. One girl who had
been employed to operate the sewing machine in the book department
was transferred to the magazine department where her work was to look
over sheets folded by machine and to fill the boxes of the gathering
machine. Her pay was reduced from ten dollars to a wage varying from
five to seven dollars according to the kind of work assigned to her.
This transfer from work on one product to another requiring different
processes was due to the fact that much of the book work formerly
done by this firm was withdrawn by a large publishing house which had
recently organized its own bindery.
If we trace the history of the folding machine or the gathering machine
we find that with the development of automatic feeding devices the
tendency is to dispense with the work of women and to employ men to
care for the machines. It is not a displacement of women by men; it is
rather the substitution of rubber fingers or other automatic feeders
for women’s hands, and as a result a reorganization of the force.
What then is the meaning of the census figures which tell us that
in 1870 30% of the bookbinders were women and 70% were men, while
in 1900, 51.6% were women and 48.4% were men? In the absence of any
data as to the number employed in different branches of the trade in
1870 and in 1900, the answer must be in part merely hypothetical.
Judging by present tendencies in the trade the cause of change in the
proportion of men and women would appear to be twofold. It has been
pointed out that the share of women in hand binding is relatively
small, that they do only the folding, gathering and sewing, and that
the numerous processes of forwarding and finishing are usually in the
hands of men. Hence in the early days of the trade, when hand binderies
predominated, men were in the majority. In the development of the
industry two important changes have taken place. With the introduction
of machinery, many processes of forwarding and finishing were omitted,
while others were combined in one simple operation. At the same time
there was a great increase in the production of pamphlets, which need
only to be folded, gathered, stitched and covered. The first decreased
the relative number of men needed in edition binderies; the second
increased the demand for the processes always performed by women. Thus
it would appear that without any shifting of the line between men’s
work and women’s work, the proportion of women steadily increased
between 1870 and 1900.