between men and women and a transfer of processes to women, it seems to
have left no trace on present trade conditions. The instances of this
kind of transfer are so scattered as to seem the exceptions that prove
the rule. The possibility of carrying on more processes than their
present share in the trade does not appear to be a burning question
among the women. One employer, in charge of an edition bindery, said
that the issue had never been raised. “The women would just say, ‘It’s
men’s work.’” One girl, who had fed a ruling machine, work requiring
no skill, was asked if she had ever wished to learn to operate the
machine. “Oh, no,” she said; “ruling is gentlemen’s work. There are no
lady rulers. The gentlemen have their hands in the ink pots all day,
and no lady wants to get her hands inked like that.” “A woman can learn
to feed the ruling machine in a day,” said another; “she doesn’t need
to bother with managing it.” “The smell of the glue is awful,” said
another, speaking of covering; “it’s men’s work.” Another, describing a
machine which could fold, gather and insert, said, “It’s men’s work,”
although each one of these processes formerly had belonged to women.
Nor do employers appear to have given much thought to the question.
One, an “art binder,” said that the work of women was restricted only
by the trade union, and that they were capable of doing men’s work.
He added, however, that a woman would find it difficult to do the
work fast enough to make it profitable. Another, the superintendent
of an edition bindery, said that the work of women was restricted by
capacity, not by the rule of any organization; they would not have
strength to handle the machines which the men operate. Another, a “job
binder,” said that he employed women for temporary work only, because
they were not strong enough to lift books and be “generally useful.”
“If you employ a woman, you can’t give her anything but sewing,” said
another job binder; “while a man can turn his hand to other things.”
But the superintendent of a magazine bindery said that there was no
process in his workroom which could not be done by women. “I could put
a girl to work operating the cutting machine,” he said, “if I paid her
eighteen dollars a week. I could have a woman tend the large folding
machines if I paid the union scale. I don’t know why I don’t, except
that I don’t see any good reason why I should.”
In the course of the inquiry, there have been more numerous instances
of the transfer of women’s work to men and boys. Men have been found
operating folding machines and sewing machines, feeding the ruling
machines and folding and sewing by hand. Boys have been found emptying
boxes of the folding machine, sewing by hand, cleaning off the books
after they have been stamped, and operating the wirestitching machine.
The development of automatic feeding devices for the folding machine
and the invention of gathering machines and covering machines have
caused these processes to be transferred to men in many binderies.
Indeed, the census of 1905 showed that in the five years since 1900 the
number of bindery women had not increased so rapidly as the number of
men, and that women no longer outnumbered men.
A woman who had fed a point folding machine and was displaced by the
“automatic” tended by a man, remarked, “A man is paid according to what
he knows, and not according to what he does.” It is certainly true that
the tender of a large complex machine, with all the devices for feeding
itself, must be one who knows rather than one who does. Women, without
mechanical training, have small chance of adjusting themselves to new
occupations.
In view of these changes, the future of women’s work in binderies is
hard to predict. In art binding a few well-educated women have proved
themselves capable of performing every process from the folding of
the sheets to the tooling of the cover. There would seem to be an
opportunity for growth in this branch of the trade, and it is the
opinion of some binders that women could be trained to carry on this
work in all its departments. In machine binderies it would seem to be
largely the lack of mechanical skill, or of opportunity to acquire it,
which prevents women’s adjusting themselves to new inventions.
The bookbinding trade is not an example of extraordinary industrial
evils. Its significance is to be found rather in its illustration
of the common lot of women in many occupations. It is not alone in
binderies that conditions of industry change rapidly; that machines
cause a reorganization of work and then give place to new inventions
and new conditions; that speed seems to be the most essential
requirement; that women work exhaustingly long hours in the busy
season; that specialization appears inevitable, although the continual
repetition of one process weakens the power of adjustment which is
most needed in a changing environment; that irregularity of employment
means loss of all or part of the wages in the dull season; and that the
income at best is scarcely sufficient for self support. The experiences
of bindery girls illustrate these conditions, yet they also point to
several possible methods of improvement.
The encouraging facts in connection with women’s work in binderies
in New York are, first, that the state has already begun a policy of
deliberate intervention. It has prohibited the employment of children
under fourteen years of age. It has safeguarded them between the ages
of fourteen and sixteen, limiting their working hours to eight in a
day. It has made increasingly strict demands regarding the sanitary
conditions of factories. It has recognized the principle of limiting
the hours of labor of women, however faulty its provision may be for
this purpose.
Second, there is a growing interest in industrial education in public
schools.
Third, more than twelve hundred bindery women in New York are members
of the women’s local of the bookbinders’ union, while a league of
employers has been formed to deal collectively with the union and
thus to “abolish in the bindery trade the system of making individual
labor contracts, and to introduce the more equitable system of forming
collective labor contracts.”
The bindery girls’ experiences indicate that in so far as adaptation
to change is a matter of chance, women are not profiting by changes or
gaining new opportunities. On the contrary their standard of living
is menaced by uncertainty. The danger to be feared is the danger of
neglect. The remedy would seem to be the substitution of forethought
for chance, the safeguarding of minimum standards by education,
organization and legislation.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] This article is based on a chapter of a report not yet published
on women’s work in binderies in New York. It is the result of an
investigation carried on for the Alliance Employment Bureau of New York
from the autumn of 1907 until the spring of 1909. Every bindery in the
borough of Manhattan was visited, and 205 women employed in the trade
were interviewed at their homes or in the office of the bureau.
[31] _U. S. Census_, 1900. _Occupations_, pp. LII, CXXXVI.
THE TRAINING OF MILLINERY WORKERS
ALICE P. BARROWS
Committee on Women’s Work, New York City
“We have no time for learners.”--“Learning is nothing but running
errands.”--“It’s always experience, experience they want, and I didn’t
have it, so what was the use?”--“Trade schools are no good. It is
altogether different outside.” These were some of the remarks heard
at the beginning of an investigation of workers in the millinery
trade[32] which led to an intensive study of the training of girls for
that occupation. “Industrial education” is a large, general term. What
it meant to the workers in one trade throws much light upon it, and
suggests a method for dealing with a subject which is at present rather
topheavy with theories.
Probably no trade in which girls are employed could illustrate better
than millinery the present status of industrial education for girls in
New York City. There are more women in this trade than in any other
except the clothing trades. There are more classes in millinery than
in any other women’s trade except dress making. It is one of the first
industrial subjects introduced into the school curriculum. Yet an
investigation of workers in millinery showed that these classes were
being formed when there was little information upon the most important
factors in the problem of trade training--that is, the girls, the
schools where they had received their previous instruction, and the
trade in which they worked.
It is not easy to describe the millinery trade clearly because the
essence of the description is to show that it cannot be made clear. If
the next few paragraphs leave the reader with an impression of chaos
then the description has been successful. “The millinery trade is about
twenty-five different trades,” said one employer. This statement does
not give a true impression because it does not show that each branch
overlaps and penetrates into every other in a most confusing manner.
Millinery shops are of all types, in all parts of the city, with all
kinds of work. Broadly speaking, the establishments can be divided into
wholesale and retail, and in general it may be said that in wholesale
shops “it’s speed we want,” and in retail, “careful, neat hand
workers.” Actually, such definitions of the trade are not true to fact.
Every variety of hat is made in all kinds of ways whether manufactured
at wholesale or retail. There are “trimmed hats” and “untrimmed hats,”
“ready-to-wear hats,” “artistic millinery,” “home-made hats,” and
“tailor hats.” At first glance, it would seem that the trade is an
excellent example of the subdivision of labor. The important point to
the worker, however, is that sometimes it illustrates this subdivision
of labor and sometimes it does not. Trimmed hats are found in the same
establishments with untrimmed and ready-to-wear hats, or with only one
or with neither. Artistic millinery is found in exclusive private shops
and in sweatshops. Tailor hats are made in the same establishments with
trimmed and untrimmed hats or in shops by themselves. Home-made hats
are found to be contract work for great factories, or “neighborhood
work for a few friends.”
Naturally, this lack of system and standard is reflected in the demands
made upon workers. In general, it may be said that there are four
stages in making a hat,--designing it, making the frame, covering the
frame, and trimming it. And in general it may be stated that there are
seven kinds of positions open to a girl looking for work in millinery.
She may be a learner, an improver, a preparer, a milliner, a copyist,
a trimmer, or a designer. But when a girl starts to look for work as
preparer, for example, she may turn toward a Fifth avenue shop where
she must be a “neat worker” who can make frames accurately by hand, and
“have an eye for color and form”; here she may advance from preparer to
designer; or she may find her way into a shop a few doors away where
she does not need to make frames because they have two girls who make
all the frames; or she may apply at a department store where in one
department she will have an opportunity to do all the kinds of work
found in the Fifth avenue shop, “only not so particular”; or she may
go into the ready-to-wear department where “you never make a frame but
cover with straw and stick on a rosette”; or she may join the throng
of girls pouring into a Broadway wholesale house, and as she walks
up the stairs she may stop at any one of the five floors and enter a
“millinery establishment.” But in one she will be asked to do straw
operating all day; in another to make dozens of wire frames a day; in
another to trim hats by the dozen and never make frames; in another
to work at nothing but millinery ornaments. In the autumn of 1908 she
finds it difficult to get a position as preparer because “the machines
are driving them out”; and in the spring of 1909 preparers are in great
demand because “the styles have changed this season, and hand work has
come back this month.” In any case, she thinks herself fortunate if she
works more than six months a year at $5 a week in not more than three
or four positions. No prophecy can be made about the kind of skill
which will be demanded in any shop.
But if no two establishments are alike in methods of work, they all
have one characteristic in common. The slack season descends upon
employers and workers alike. Taking the employers’ statements, the
millinery year is at best only seven or eight months long, divided into
fall and spring seasons. The fall season, starting on Division street
and lower Broadway in July, gains headway in August, rushes up Fifth
avenue in September, and then gradually spreads out north and south,
east and west, lingering for the longest time where the current is
least swift. Third avenue and Fifth avenue, Grand street and Harlem
cannot buy early and all at once. In any case, the season disappears
before Christmas. The spring season begins in January, and gains
speed until the Easter rush, after which workers are laid off in great
numbers.
“It is terrifically hard work while it lasts,” said one employer.
If it is terrifically hard work for the employer with some capital,
credit and business shrewdness, it is obvious that to the girl with
no capital, no credit and no knowledge of trade conditions except
as represented by her place, “laid off--slack” means an even more
serious loss. According to census figures, 64% of the women employed
in retail establishments are out of work in January. In August 65%
are unemployed. In September, the busy wholesale month in the autumn,
there is no room for 11% of the number needed in the spring. In June
45% are out of work. Of 639 positions in millinery held by the group of
workers investigated, 447, or more than two-thirds, lasted less than
six months. Although they sometimes found work in other trades when
laid off from millinery, 60% of those who could estimate the time lost
were unemployed more than three months in the year. “Millinery gets on
my nerves,” said one girl, “because there is always the worry about the
seasons.”
The following is a calendar of a girl who had worked in millinery for a
year. She was particularly fortunate in getting subsidiary work.
August--Worked 3 weeks at millinery on Third avenue. Worked 1 week on
Broadway. Laid off--slack.
September--Looked for work.
October--Worked at millinery on Sixth avenue 4 weeks.
November--Worked at millinery on Sixth avenue 3 weeks. Laid
off--slack. Sold candy one week. Left to return to millinery.
December--Worked 3 weeks at millinery on Sixth avenue until the day
before Christmas. Laid off--slack. Sold candy one week.
January--Sold candy one month.
February--Returned to millinery.
March--Worked at millinery.
April--Worked at millinery.
May--Worked at millinery. Laid off--slack.
June--Looked for work.
July--Looked for work.
The season also has its effect upon workroom conditions. “It’s rush,
rush all the time and then nothing to do.” In 62% of the shops
investigated the girls worked nine to nine and a half hours daily. A
large majority had a working week of fifty to fifty-five hours. In
only eight was the week less than fifty hours. In 86% of the shops the
day’s work lasted regularly until six o’clock or later--an important
fact when the question of evening school work is to be considered. 71%
of the girls worked overtime in the busy season. During the overtime
season the total hours varied from less than ten up to fifteen a day.
The wages which workers in millinery receive are not such as to
compensate them for short seasons and long hours. The average wage is
between seven and eight dollars. Considered from the point of view of
yearly income, the weekly average of seven or eight dollars is reduced
25 or even 50% by the slack season. A liberal estimate of the average
wage, allowing for loss of time, would be five dollars. But the keynote
of the wage question in millinery is lack of standard. The workers
have no trade union large enough to sign contracts with employers. The
only bargain is the individual bargain. If the method of payment is
by the piece, “you never know what you are going to get.” As one girl
expressed it: “Piece work is bad because you are always fussing about
the price. At that French place, they said they’d pay you seventeen
cents a hat but at the end of the week you would find they had made it
fourteen cents. It was awful. You had the same fight every season over
the prices. Instead of giving you what you ought to get they’d say to
themselves, ‘We’ll make it $2.50 a dozen, and if they will work for
that, all right; if not we can make it $3.’”
A tabulation of wages received in 738 positions held by 201 workers
shows what a variation in wages there is in positions called by the
same name. The variations are as follows:
Learners: 0 to $5.
Improvers: less than $2 to $8.
Preparers: $2 to $15.
Milliners: $4 to $12 or $15.
Makers: $4 to $9.
Copyists: $4 to $15 or more.
Trimmers: $6 to $25 or more.
Facts such as these have been used in other countries as an argument
for the establishment of minimum wage boards in millinery. Public
opinion in this country does not yet demand such action.
If these facts about conditions in the millinery trade prove anything
they prove that “learning to make hats” is a very different thing
from “learning the millinery trade.” The experiences of millinery
workers would seem to suggest that in modern times, perhaps even
more than in the days when industrial conditions were less complex,
apprenticeship must include learning the trade as well as one process
in it, if the workers are to be efficient. A milliner who does not
know that millinery means machine work and hand work, speed work and
careful work, that the seasons are irregular, that the wages are
unstandardized, and that conditions are constantly changing, is in no
position to become efficient. Such knowledge is part of her job, and it
is as necessary that she should understand her various relations to the
trade in which she is working as that she should master the technique
of the machine that she is operating. Power to adapt to different types
of establishments, to varied kinds of work, and to fluctuating seasons,
rather than specialization in a particular process, is a practical
necessity for the girl who would earn her own living. According to the
testimony of both workers and employers she does not get this power in
the trade itself; employers have no time for learners, and the girl
finds that “learning is nothing but running errands.” According to the
same testimony, the schools do not know the trade and do not prepare
their pupils to do any one thing well. In order to test the truth of
these criticisms, millinery classes were investigated in the course of
this study, and their graduates were interviewed.
The visits to these classes were profitable in three ways. They
brought out the prevalent ideals in regard to women’s work, the
tendencies in the past with respect to methods of teaching trade
courses, and the possible questions which need to be considered in
plans for the industrial education of girls. Half the group of workers
investigated had attended classes where millinery was taught. There
were sixty-two of these classes in the city, of which only three aimed
specifically to prepare girls for trade. The others gave courses “for
home and trade use”; that is, they aimed primarily to teach women to
make their own hats, but girls could also enter the class if they
wished to prepare for trade.
The three schools which aimed at trade preparation dealt with three
different types of girls. One was founded in order to prepare the
fourteen-year-old girl who is forced to leave school at the earliest
time allowed by law; one would take no girls under sixteen years of
age; the third gave training to immigrant girls of any age. They
were all alike in that they knew little about their pupils’ previous
schooling or their experiences after they went to work. Only one
attempted to make any investigation of trade conditions. In regard to
methods of instruction, only one sifted its applicants by requiring
them to state whether they intended to work at the trade. Only one
tried to eliminate the unfit by taking girls on trial. Only one
attempted any instruction in trade conditions, and that one found it
difficult to give such instruction to the type of girls with whom it
was dealing. The aim of this “academic” work was to supply the lack
in the general education of the fourteen-year-old girl. To do this,
courses in English, arithmetic and civics were given. Civics included
“industrial history, cultivation, manufacture, and transportation of
materials, citizenship, commerce, philanthropics, history of Manhattan
and social ethics.” The time allotted to English, arithmetic and
civics was one hour a week for each. The course was six months long.
All preparation on these subjects had to be done by the pupils during
this one hour in the classroom. The graduates from only one of these
schools had anything favorable to say about the work. After visiting
the schools and following up the experience of the pupils who had
taken courses there, it was easy to understand why the girls thought
that it was “altogether different outside.” On the other hand, daily
indications of the complexities of the conditions “outside” gave us a
sympathetic realization of the size of the task which the schools had
undertaken.
As classes in industrial training will ultimately find their way into
the public school system, not only is it important to understand the
aims and methods of the trade schools, but it is also desirable to
know what has already been done in the way of industrial training in
the public schools. At the time of this investigation millinery was
taught in forty-five evening schools in New York City. Thirty-nine of
these were elementary schools. The investigation of these schools was
profitable because it threw light upon the function of evening schools,
their connection with day schools, their conception of the aim of
industrial courses for girls, and finally the effect of these ideals
upon the actual formation of a trade class in one evening school.
The school buildings are very imposing. One finds no difficulty in
locating them at night even at a distance of two or three blocks. A
great dark building occupying about one-third of the noisy, crowded
block, gives notice to the visitor that she is headed in the right
direction. The school always looks impressively quiet and remote. Few
windows are lighted and only one door is open. After picking her way
through crowded streets, stepping around small children, narrowly
avoiding collisions with innumerable boys and girls darting in and out
among the crowds, the visitor finds the inside of the building quite
deserted, and her footsteps echo in the great, gray, empty basement.
She can find no one to direct her to the principal, but presently
seeing a few girls straggling up the fireproof stairs she follows them
to the assembly room, a waste of empty desks. At one end is a long
desk where the principal is seated. Often she has been teaching all
day in a day school. Soon a girl enters slowly and hesitatingly, and
slips into a chair near the door, where she stays until the principal
turns to her with, “What can I do for you?” Bashfully the girl comes
up to the desk and whispers down into it that she wants “to take up
millinery.”--“Your name?”--“Sadie Schwartz.”--“Address?”--“-- East
----.”--“Age?”--“Fourteen.”--“Have you left school?”--“Yes.” Sometimes
the question is asked, “Are you working? At what occupation?” Sometimes
it is omitted. Then the principal concludes, “Here are two cards. Keep
one and give one to the teacher. The millinery class is down the hall
on the right-hand side.” This is the extent of the consultation before
entering a class.
After the girl has been in the class a short time, she learns that most
of the girls are taking the course so that they can learn to make their
own hats. More and more girls come as Easter approaches. They can stay
as long as they like, and go when they like. They can even keep on
making their own hats for two years or more.
“It is rather unfortunate that the board of education supplies the
materials,” said one teacher; “because I have known of cases where the
girls come simply to get a hat and then leave. For example, I know of
one case where a girl at the end of a few weeks asked to be transferred
from the millinery class and when asked her reason, said that she
wanted to go into dressmaking because ‘I’ve got a hat and now I would
like a dress to match.’”
“You don’t learn anything in evening school,” said a girl who was in
trade; “every night it is a little on a hat, and one hat a year.”