WOMEN IN THE FACTORY
_All rights reserved._
WOMEN IN THE FACTORY
AN ADMINISTRATIVE ADVENTURE, 1893 TO 1921
BY ADELAIDE MARY ANDERSON
D.B.E., M.A.
FORMERLY HIS MAJESTY’S PRINCIPAL LADY INSPECTOR OF FACTORIES, HOME
OFFICE
FOREWORD BY THE
RIGHT HON. THE VISCOUNT CAVE, G.C.M.G.
LORD OF APPEAL; FORMERLY HIS MAJESTY’S PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF STATE FOR
THE HOME DEPARTMENT
“Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.”
LEONARDO DA VINCI.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1922
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER
DEDICATED TO
ALL WOMEN WORKERS
OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
FOREWORD
This book tells the story of the Woman Inspectorate of Factories and
Workshops from its beginning in 1893, when the first Women Inspectors
(Miss May Abraham and Miss Mary Paterson) made their first inspection,
until the year 1921, when thirty Women Inspectors saw the fruits of the
work of their branch, not only in greatly developed protection for the
woman worker, but also in her own increased capacity to help herself.
It was a story worth the telling, for it is a chronicle of a steady and
dogged campaign, of few defeats and many victories. The adversaries to
be met were all the ills which threaten the “factory girl”—poisoning by
lead or phosphorus or arsenic or mercury, insanitary or unventilated
rooms, accidents from unsafe machinery, phthisis, anthrax, overstrain,
truck and sweating, and more besides. Readers who like a “thrill” will
perhaps begin with the chapters on “Dangerous Trades” and on the War;
and if their imagination serves them, they may read between the lines of
those brief records stories of suffering, of endurance, and of rescue,
which will set them wondering why our predecessors so long grudged to
the woman worker the help which only a woman can give.
But the whole book, with its documented record of steady grinding effort
and hard-won success, is well worth reading.
Dame Adelaide Anderson went through it all, and for twenty-four out of
the twenty-eight years with which the volume is concerned filled the
responsible position of Chief Woman Inspector with untiring devotion and
conspicuous success. It was plainly “up to” her to write the history of
the struggle; and all will like to read it who honour our working women
for their work and value their welfare.
(_Signed_) CAVE.
RICHMOND,
_March 30, 1922_.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The writing of the following story of what Women Inspectors did for
women and girl workers under the Factory Acts and Truck Acts was
undertaken in response to the wish of friends and colleagues that it
should be told, while memory was fresh, by one who had seen the largest
part of the conditions and immediate effects of the work—a work carried
on under aims and organisation that are now undergoing change.
The aims and the starting-point of the past organisation are shown in
the Introduction, and the outcome, down to 1921, is unfolded in the
following chapters.
The material available in official reports for those who wish to study
the facts more closely is so full of incident that, with the best will
to be brief, it has been difficult to tell the tale shortly. Keeping
entirely to published official records the whole could be told over
again with fresh illustrations. And yet much that was significant and
enlightening can only be seen in innumerable notices in the daily and
weekly press and monthly reviews of the period; a fairly full collection
of these exists, but they could only be quoted occasionally in these
pages. Their correspondence in general tendency with the outlook shown
in Parliamentary Debates—of which an account is given in Chapter VI.—is
noteworthy.
Next to the breadth of the field of action of the Women Inspectorate,
and the variety of their contacts with local administration and the
courts, as well as with industry, the smallness of their numbers from
1893 to 1914 strikes the mind. The strength of the impulse that
sustained and carried them through their years of labour may be traced
to conditions summed up in words spoken to one of them by a woman
toiling at a heavy task, “Is it right that I should have to do this work
and only have eight shillings a week for it?”
There was a dominating impulse towards relieving the hardships and
sufferings of working women that drew all the women who entered the
Factory Department into a real unity of endeavour—whatever their social
or political outlook before entering.
It is in the same spirit that they have lent me indispensable help in
the completing of this little book. I wish gratefully to acknowledge the
time and thought freely given to it by those who have long worked with
me. Miss Martindale has critically read through all the typed
manuscript, Miss Squire the chapter on Wages and the Truck Acts. Miss
Squire has also most kindly revised the Appendix I. on Special
Regulations for Dangerous Trades, written in 1913, and brought the
details up to the present time. Miss Escreet supplied me with most
helpful summaries from the mass of material in Annual Reports on child
labour, heavy weights, and religious and charitable institutions. Miss
Maura Brooke-Gwynne has devoted much time and skill to a literary
criticism of the text. Miss Paterson and Mrs. Drury have kindly written
special contributions, the former on mothers and child labour—subjects
of special appeal to Women Inspectors—the latter on a stirring day in
the life of a Factory Inspector. Finally, I wish to thank Mr. Gerald
Bellhouse for some figures in the Introduction, and Dr. Legge for kindly
reading through the chapter on Dangerous Trades, for his helpful
comments, and for the tabulation of reported cases of industrial
poisoning. They are in no way responsible, however, for my facts or
opinions.
A. M. A.
UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S CLUB,
2, AUDLEY SQUARE, W.
_April 2, 1922_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION: HOW WOMEN INSPECTORS CAME, AND WHAT THEY
CAME TO DO 1
II. THE WOMEN WORKERS AND THEIR APPEAL; EXCESSIVE HOURS,
INSANITATION, AND OTHER UNCIVILISED CONDITIONS 22
III. WOMEN’S WAGES AND THE TRUCK ACTS; THE PIECEWORKER AND HER
PAY 58
IV. DANGEROUS AND INJURIOUS TRADES; ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY 94
V. EMPLOYMENT OF MOTHERS; CHILD LABOUR; CHARITABLE
INSTITUTIONS 149
VI. THE LIFE OF THE INSPECTOR AND ITS INFLUENCE ON
LEGISLATION; EXPERIENCES IN COURTS 190
VII. THE WAR AND WOMEN “SUBSTITUTES”; NEW LIGHT ON HOURS,
LABOUR-SAVING, FATIGUE, FOOD, AND EFFICIENCY 224
VIII. DEVELOPMENT OF FACTORY WELFARE AND ITS RECOGNITION BY
PARLIAMENT; WORKS’ COMMITTEES AND WELFARE MANAGEMENT 250
APPENDIX I. SPECIAL REGULATIONS FOR DANGEROUS TRADES 287
APPENDIX II. REPORTED CASES OF INDUSTRIAL POISONING AND ANTHRAX 306
INDEX 308
WOMEN IN THE FACTORY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: HOW WOMEN INSPECTORS CAME, AND WHAT THEY CAME TO DO
This book aims at giving some account of an enterprise that is felt by
the Women Officers who lived through it to have been a great experience
and a great adventure in the service of the State and Nation—an account
that must be somewhat less and yet more than a chronicle.
It is hoped, with the aid of outstanding facts and features recorded in
many Blue-books and other documents issued during the time, to give a
picture of the undertakings and experiences of these women, both at the
outset and through the experimental development of their administration
of Acts and regulations for women in industry, and to trace changes that
have followed in conditions of factory life in a period of little over a
quarter of a century.
Personality and the idealising powers of youth (our average age at the
beginning was twenty-seven years), embarking on a calling that involved
conduct of legal proceedings and much other technical knowledge of an
entirely novel kind for women of that day, counted for much. We had also
liberal, kindly direction and encouragements behind our efforts from the
higher authorities responsible for sanctioning and carrying out the
decision to appoint us. Yet the main impetus came from without, in the
needs of the women workers who had persistently called—from 1878
onwards—for the personal aid and understanding of “Women Inspectors,”
armed with authority and powers to enquire into and enforce remedies for
wrong conditions, or to persuade sympathetic employers to provide
amenities that the law could not enforce.
Much that seemed novel then has, through the publicity of our work and
the spontaneous lively interest taken in Parliament and elsewhere in our
published reports, become part of the natural order of things. Yet in
those days the first appearance of a Woman Inspector in her proper field
of work, whether inside a factory or workshop[1] or on the solicitors’
bench in the police courts, was liable to cause a sensation of surprise,
sometimes very favourable to the new-comer.
“Are _you_ the lady inspector? Why, I expected to see a woman six feet
high and a perfect virago;” or, “Girls, it is a lady this time, come and
tell her everything she wants to know;” or (in Ireland), “We had a
gentleman inspector here last month, and he said we must take dinner at
the same hour every day: now a lady like you will know _that_ is
impossible!” In police courts it was not unknown for waiting solicitors
to enter with keen interest into the merits of our cases and even try to
offer professional hints in support of our amateur efforts. Yet the
following is a typical press comment of early years: “A small sensation
was caused in K—— Police Court when for the first time a lady advocate
appeared.... She made her statement with as much clearness and ease as
any more accustomed advocate, and as the facts and laws were alike
indisputable, conviction necessarily followed.”
When this story begins, in great industrial communities of Europe, and
pre-eminently in Great Britain, women’s labour in industry had for more
than a hundred years fundamentally depended, without control by women,
on such organisation as was furnished by capitalist and middlemen
employers, in a factory system that had been completely severed from
domestic life. Trade union organisation for women was generally a small,
young, and fragile plant where it existed at all. In textile factories
for upwards of fifty years Factory Inspectors had applied certain
outstanding statutory limits and requirements in matters of hours of
labour, elementary sanitation, and safety; and for a much shorter time
in many non-textile factories. Glamour had been lent to these questions
of regulation by movements for reform led by such outstanding
personalities as Robert Owen, Shaftesbury, Peel, Oastler, Sadler. The
fact remained, however, as official witnesses assured the Royal
Commission on Labour in 1891–92, that women workers themselves tendered
practically none of the complaints that the Inspectors were there to
remedy and to which they looked for clues in exercising their protective
functions.[2]
Apart from the few industries where women had in some degree carried
their traditional skill over from the domestic system of industry into
certain factory processes—I have to write in few words of a many-sided,
unevenly-moving change—the entry and ever-extending rule of the power-
engine had brought “lower grade work and diminished industrial self-
respect”[3] for women workers in a wide field. The loss also of
leadership and supervision by fellow-women of better education in the
“making of things” (such as soap, candles, and the many other articles
formerly made at home) that obtained under the domestic system—that is,
by women more habituated than workers to exercise of direction—brought a
new social cleavage between them and working women. This meant an
incalculable loss to both classes of women. Yet it meant still more for
the whole community—the elimination, for a dark period, of the guiding
ideas of women in regard to conditions essential for a good industrial
life of both women and men.
Thus, the factory system of the nineteenth century, “unsuited as we now
know it to have been to men, was far more unsuited to women.”[4] For the
worker it emptied more than half the meaning from the ancient symbol of
a social order when _master_ meant _master of craft_, “As the eyes of
servants look unto the hands of their masters and the eyes of a maiden
unto the hand of her mistress.” It wholly removed into the realms of
mythology classic pictures of the days when women’s industries were
entirely home industries—of Nausicaa and her maiden laundresses on the
seashore of Corcyra, or of Penelope weaving in the days when “Pallas
taught the texture of the loom.”
While mechanical power mainly ruled, instead of serving, in the factory,
the intervention of State regulation merely prevented the greatest
abuses. Even constructive and efficient application of scientific
standards to human conditions of manual work was almost unthought of,
and the withdrawal of the poet from the arena of industry proclaimed the
essential barbarity of its character.
And yet the official life that was lived by the Women Inspectors in
those early days of infinite surprises and appeals was a most lovable
and enthralling one, of great movement and happiness. We escaped all
fear of “venturing the hand into the spinning cog-wheels of the huge,
implacable machine.” How much we owed to the fact that—in a wonderful
ignorance of ordinary official method and tradition—we were sent out
into a wide world to find our tasks; sent with powers that could and did
effect changes, having eyes and hearts ready and anxious to read the
meaning of the system under which a million and a half of our fellow-
country women made the things needed to clothe and feed the body and to
furnish and equip the home! Understanding of the basis from which we set
out can hardly be attained without a brief survey of the stages in the
movement that led to our appointment.
On February 19, 1891, Miss Emily Faithful, after an interview with the
Home Secretary, Lord Aberdare, about the working of the Factory Act,
wrote a letter to _The Times_. She said that as long ago as 1872 the
information she received from various sources strengthened her
conviction that Women Inspectors were necessary if certain evils were to
be redressed and rules enforced in places where women were employed. The
first effectual advocacy of the appointment of women as Inspectors came,
however, from a leader in Women’s Trade Union Organisation, Mrs. Emma
Ann Paterson, wife of Thomas Paterson, “a man of genius and of
remarkable range of knowledge belonging to the ranks of labour.” Working
women owe to her, said Mr. Hodgson Pratt, in an obituary notice, “an
eternal debt for her wise, practical, and incessant labours. She founded
in 1874 and conducted the Women’s Protective and Provident League.[5] It
was not easy to teach ill-paid, overworked women that by association
among themselves they could raise their position ... and combine for a
demand of fair treatment by employers. Women accustomed to think
themselves too weak and dependent, too ‘inferior,’ women isolated and
struggling for bare life ... how could they combine or do anything? Emma
Paterson has taught hundreds of them—bookbinders, upholstresses,
dressmakers, machinists, tailoresses, and others—that they can do all
this. She has given them a new life, shown them the noble idea of mutual
help and service ... and given them the power of organisation and self-
government.”[6] Mrs. Paterson and another member of the league were
deputed in 1875 to represent two of the London Women’s Unions at the
Trade Union Congress in Glasgow, and there and in various other
industrial centres of Great Britain, she extended her activities for
trade union organisation of women.
In the year 1878—the year of the first great consolidation of numerous
Factory Acts—at the Bristol Meeting of Trade Union Congress Mrs.
Paterson moved to include “women” in a resolution urging upon the
Government the appointment of “practical working men” as Inspectors
under the Factory Act. This was carried, and in 1881 she arranged for a
conference, at which Lord Shaftesbury presided, to advocate the
appointment of women as Factory Inspectors. She did not live to see the
reform, as she died in December, 1886.
Although Trade Union Congress never failed to pass the amendment in
favour of appointment of working women as Inspectors, brought up year
after year by successors to Mrs. Paterson, Parliamentary Committee was
either unfavourable or lukewarm. “Oh, pass it,” one great person is
reported to have said; “it don’t matter, they will never get it.” Fresh
factors were needed to bring the administrative reform into being.
In 1899, when a doubt had been expressed by Mr. Matthews, Home
Secretary, whether he had power to appoint a woman, and even whether
there would be enough work for her to do if he had, the Fabian Society
inserted a clause (eventually proved unnecessary) in an Eight Hours
Bill, expressly declaring that women were eligible for the Inspectorate.
Year after year the pressure grew stronger from various sides, and was
in no way lessened by the appointment between 1881 and 1890 of a
considerable number of “practical working men” as Inspectors.
As the agitation grew, the burden on women of ever severer speeding-up
of machinery and the so-called “driving system” in cotton mills, of
excessively long hours and overtime in the dress and clothing trades, of
“sweated” wages in various low-grade industries and outwork, and of the
increasingly-felt evils of bad sanitation, fines, and deductions from
uncertain wages, all gave point and urgency to this claim. While wages
for men were rising, for women, on the whole, they were stationary or
falling. Enquiries into the sweating system had shown its worst features
to be low wages, long hours, and insanitary surroundings. In spite of
the long years since Hood wrote his “Song of the Shirt,” these adverse
conditions continued to affect women. Middle and upper class women’s
political organisations began to move energetically. The Women’s Liberal
Association and Women’s Liberal Federation had this question, annually
on their agenda, discussed, and resolutions passed from 1890 onwards.
As Miss I. O. Ford wrote in 1896: “The idea that it was not right, that
it was unjust and sometimes even cruel, for women to have no one but men
to whom they could appeal against any sort of abuse, had been steadily
growing in people’s minds. It was an idea that appealed to everyone,
both rich and poor.” Miss Ford had already spoken repeatedly in this
sense, notably in 1892 at the Bristol meeting of the National Council of
Women Workers.
At last, between 1891 and 1893, the turning-point in the movement came,
with the appointment and work of the Royal Commission on Labour. Four
Women Assistant Commissioners were appointed at an early stage in the
proceedings. One, Miss May Abraham, Secretary to Lady Dilke (better
known as Mrs. H. J. Tennant, C.H.), became in the spring of 1893 one of
the two first Women Factory Inspectors under the Home Office, the other
being Miss Mary Paterson, with valuable experience of Labour questions
in Scotland. Another Assistant Commissioner, Miss Clara Collett, became
special correspondent for women’s industrial conditions to the
Statistical Department of the Board of Trade. The report of the Women
Assistant Commissioners, the first official women investigators of
industrial conditions, received high praise and conclusively supported
the demand for appointment of Women Inspectors. One of the two
Secretaries of the Commission, Mr. Geoffrey Drage, furthered the
movement by employing University women and giving them opportunity and
training as clerks to the Commission. After the appointment of Miss Lucy
Deane in April, 1894, two of his staff were added to the Inspectorate,
Miss A. M. Anderson (July, 1894), and Miss A. Tracey (1897), bringing
additional experience in précis-writing and knowledge of foreign
reports, especially of French, German, and Austrian industrial codes.
Miss R. E. Squire, appointed in December, 1895, brought, like Miss
Deane, fresh and good experience as a Sanitary Inspector. These first
five Inspectors have all, in time, passed to other tasks and
responsibilities.
The comparative survey of international Labour questions in the chief
industrial countries that was undertaken by the Royal Commission on
Labour followed soon after the work of the International Conference on
regulation of conditions of work in factories and mines, held in Berlin
in March, 1890, at the invitation of the German Emperor. That conference
was followed in England by the passing of the Factory Act of 1891. This
limited the employment of women after childbirth, raised the age of
admission and employment of a child, and provided for regulation of
dangerous and injurious trades. It is now of peculiar interest that that
“forerunner” of the Labour Convention under the Peace Treaty of 1919
should be in a manner linked with the first effectual employment of
women as Factory Inspectors.
At a political meeting of the National Liberal Federation in January,
1893, Mr. Asquith spoke as Home Secretary, among other subjects, on
Administration of Factory Laws, promising extension of the Inspectorate,
and adding: “I hope I may be able at the same time to do something—it
will not be much—to gratify the desires of our lady friends for female
inspection.” He did far more; he gave them their liberal starting-point
and wide field of activity. Opportunities were maintained and extended
by Sir Matthew White Ridley and a long succession of Home Secretaries.
Permanent Under-Secretaries, too, furthered the work in its earliest
stages by carefully planned instructions; Sir Godfrey Lushington was the
first, and Sir Kenelm Digby succeeded him in January, 1895, and largely
guided our legal work through nine eventful years. Sir Mackenzie
Chalmers followed him, until he in turn was succeeded, in 1908, by Sir
Edward Troup. It was the last who gave evidence to the Royal Commission
on the Civil Service in 1913 that the work of the Women Inspectors,
expressly organised as it was on parallel lines with the men’s, was
comparable with and as good as theirs.
The quality of the earliest Women Inspectors did much to decide the
official status of women in the Inspectorate. Between some of the
official witnesses to the Labour Commission, who urged that the
appointments—admitted to be inevitable—should be solely as subordinate
assistants, “never to be called on to discharge the higher duties of the
office,” and outside claimants, who pressed for their full appointment
to _all_ the powers and duties of an Inspector, there stood a middle
party with moderating views. From them, led by Lady Dilke, came the
advice that women should enter as a special class of officers to serve
in trades in which women were employed. Somewhere between the extreme
limits proposed the higher official decision was made. It was there, in
women’s trades, the field at that time of women’s greatest need, that
the new Inspectors found their practically limitless work. And by the
decision they were saved, first, from a hampering necessity of working
entirely under conditions and according to standards already prescribed
before they entered with their new instinctive understanding of
complaints made to them by working women. Secondly, they were saved from
losing themselves in an overpowering mass of technical requirements,
such as elaborate fencing of machinery[7] primarily affecting men,
where—presumably—Men Inspectors were sufficient without women’s aid. At
the beginning their instructions allowed them to take up any questions
affecting women and girls, including fencing. For a time, and at their
own instance, they referred all fencing to the Men Inspectors, while
they turned almost exclusively to questions of general hygiene
(cleanliness, ventilation, temperature, sanitary conveniences, etc.),
hours, excessive overtime, fines and deductions from wages, payment in
kind in various parts of the United Kingdom, dangerous and injurious
processes, industrial poisoning, employment of young workers, and of
women after childbirth; and to the encouragement of employers making
voluntary welfare arrangements in the factories. Later, from 1901
onwards, they took up special questions of fencing affecting women in
laundries and clothing factories, and there they succeeded in
standardising methods.
The Women Inspectors were, in fact, free under the early official
instructions to devote the concentrated energy of heart and mind, in
enthusiastic “team-work,” to enquiry and action on these most urgent
problems. Happily they entered just when public opinion, as distinct
from specialised knowledge, was awakening to the immense extent of
injury and loss and to the great need for constructive reforms in
industrial life. Their first Chief (under the Home Secretary, who had
initiated this addition to the Inspectorate), was Mr. R. E. Sprague
Oram, C.B. During his administration the important new provisions of the
Factory Act of 1891 were applied and the preparatory enquiries for the
yet more important Act of 1895 were begun. This Act furnished new
starting-points and made provision for more exact knowledge, in
requiring regular returns of persons employed in a factory or workshop
with particulars as to age and sex, and notification by medical
practitioners and employers of cases of industrial poisoning, together
with other provisions for regulation of dangerous trades. These were
carried to far greater developments under our second Chief, Sir Arthur
Whitelegge, K.C.B., M.D., in what may be considered the culminating
period of Factory Act administration.
Before the retirement of Mr. Oram in 1896, the five Women Inspectors
were, in harmony with their own wish, formally constituted a branch of
the Factory Department, under immediate superintendence of Miss May
Abraham, subject of course, as all branches were, to control by the
Chief Inspector. Miss Abraham retired from the Inspectorate in May,
1897, a year after marriage, and the branch continued from that year
until August 1, 1921, under direction of the writer of this book. From
1896 the reports of the women were, until 1914 inclusive, issued over
the signature of this head of the branch, as a separate section in the
Annual Report of the Chief Inspector, thus giving a clear history of the
progress of their work. Staff Committees to enquire into and make
recommendations on organisation came and went at intervals of a few
years, but the only important changes affecting organisation of the
Women Inspectors’ work that came before 1921 were in 1899 and in 1908.
In 1899 came the useful devolution, never extended beyond two districts,
of special district charge of certain women’s industries into the Women
Inspectors’ hands. In the later year came the creating of new group
centres in the chief industrial cities (Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham,
etc.), where the Women Inspectors, under charge of a senior woman,
carried on their routine general inspection and enquiries into
complaints in factories employing women and girls, but with newly
defined duties, investigating notified cases of industrial poisoning,
accidents, and other matters specially affecting women. All this work,
however, was subject to the central direction at the Home Office through
the Principal Woman Inspector, and was carried on in definitely
regulated co-operation with their colleagues, the Men Inspectors in
charge of Districts, as well as the Medical and Engineering Inspectors.
The number of Women Inspectors grew, from five in 1897, to twenty-one
just before the Great War in 1914, increasing by temporary additions
during the War to a maximum of thirty. From this point, further and
adequate extension in numbers of the women’s branch was admittedly
impracticable without reorganisation of a fundamental character. To
prevent cumbrous dual inspection of factories largely employing women it
was necessary to have either well-defined sharing and division of the
whole work of inspection as between men and women, with interchange of
Inspectors as regards any factories not employing men or women
exclusively; or a fusion more or less complete of men and women for
_all_ duties and responsibilities. This assumes that broadly they are
alike effective, whether for enforcing safety of men and boys in
shipbuilding, docks, blast furnaces, foundries, engineering works, etc.,
or for securing health and safety of women and girls in fruit preserving
and confectionery works, laundries, corset factories, millinery, mantle
and shirt and collar factories, textile factories.
Fusion was the line of development chosen by the Home Office, under a
scheme that allowed in 1921 for 42 Women and 195 Men Inspectors; this
could not then be fully carried out as to numbers.
It is impossible to state exactly the present proportionate number of
men and women in factories and workshops for purposes of comparison with
the earliest systematic figures, which were published by the Factory
Department in 1896. At that time there were in the United Kingdom
144,000 factories and workshops in which 1,403,568 women and girls and
2,699,917 men and boys were employed. These figures had risen by 1907 to
1,852,241 women and girls and 3,274,868 men and boys. When the War broke
out there were nearly 2,000,000 women and girls employed in factories
and workshops. By the end of the War there were 3,000,000 women and
girls industrially employed, and in 1919 the women and girls still
numbered over 2,000,000 in a total of over 6,000,000 male and female.
The rise and fall of “substitution” during the War and of unemployment
in 1920 to 1921, makes more recent exact comparison difficult. At the
outside the ratio of female to all workers can hardly exceed 35 per
cent.
While the reorganisation of the Inspectorate that began in August, 1921,
rounds off a well-marked epoch in Factory Act administration, giving
point to the choice of period covered by this book, it is well to
remember that in industry itself there remains, for the present, small
change in the division of occupations between men and women workers.
The hopes of a substantial widening of women workers’ activities, to
follow after the great work of their substitution for men in factories
during the War, have not been fulfilled, and in some processes women
have been excluded by the unions with increased stringency since the
War. The ratio of men and women in industry probably remains somewhere
near that in 1907. Thus the greater numbers of men with their immense
problems of safety and accident prevention provide the largest call on
the time of the whole Inspectorate. And Women Inspectors are now bound
to take a considerable share of this work.
A great gain may be achieved by developing fuller mutual interchange of
special knowledge and special experience between Men and Women
Inspectors as regards hygiene, safety, and welfare of all the workers at
a time when Inspectors are becoming less and less corrective, and more
and more constructive, in their functions. It was a matter of common
regret among the earlier Women Inspectors that they could do so little,
even indirectly, to further much-needed reform in conditions of health
and welfare for men and boy workers. “Let the Women Inspectors come into
our shops,” said a bold and advanced male trade union worker at a
meeting, early in the twentieth century, at which the writer explained
dangerous trades regulations; “they seem to be able to frighten
employers into doing things!”
Any change of organisation can, however, in the long run, be weighed and
judged only by the result in increased effectiveness and fineness of
inspection, not by greater official convenience, nor by a theory of
equality of men and women. We have yet to learn whether in face of the
actualities of industrial life complete fusion of the functions and
activities of Men and Women Inspectors can serve the many distinct needs
of men and women in factories and workshops better than some degree of
specialisation and co-ordination.
In order to secure permanent, equal eligibility of men and women for
future appointments and promotions in the department, some equivalence
in numbers is necessary. A minority which is no more than approximately
a fifth of the whole has small chance of putting up as many able
candidates for promotion as the larger majority. As a general rule the
minority has, further, the extra handicap of compulsory retirement on
marriage. Thus some approximation of the number of Women Inspectors to
at least the relative proportion of women in industry is a necessary
corollary of “fusion” of the Inspectorate. The value of the special
contribution brought by Women Factory Inspectors to the regulation of
factory life for women and girls is too well and authoritatively
established to be, as it were, accidentally lost.
The testimony of the Women’s Employment Committee under the Ministry of
Reconstruction, in 1919, as to the great “administrative success” of the
work of the Women Inspectors is strong.[8] It can be tried and tested by
a careful study of the range of subjects the Women Inspectors covered,
and of the records of their actions, in the Annual Reports of the Chief
Inspector issued by the Home Office from 1894 to 1914; by the testimony
of working women; by the official reports of Parliamentary Debates on
Home Office Administration, and on amending Factory Acts embodying
recommendations which they had been emboldened to make. More arresting
and convincing, however, for the general reader may be observations from
a distinguished onlooker outside official ranks.
Listen to the voice of Canon Scott Holland, speaking in July, 1896, in
the Editorial Notes of the _Commonwealth_, on the new light that was
appearing in the dark places of factory industry:
“What used to be one of the most depressing and uninforming of Annual
Blue-books is now (issue for 1895) one of the most interesting and
valuable.... I take from my shelf the starved-looking report of the
‘eighties’ and early ‘nineties’ and lay it out by the side of the two
stout volumes just issued, and wish that the people who are losing
heart ... all the wise people who have seen so many things in their
time that they can never believe in an upright and vigilant
officialdom, would come and turn over the leaves with me.... It is the
report of crusaders; it brims with suggestions of reform.... You feel
that to be a Factory Inspector is to be something splendid and
stirring and effective; that these men and women are the missionaries
of order and health, and that they bring hope with them where they go.
“The state of things is in many ways disgracefully bad, but it is
something to see the State itself exposing the evil and casting about
for a cure. Since 1892 the staff has been increased by 50 per cent....
“The joint report (of the Women Inspectors) is a record of tremendous
work, accomplished with courage and judgment.
“The work of levelling up as to safety and health goes on apace.... It
is cheering to see that many manufacturers are becoming alive to the
effects of industry on health....
“The report has a special interest on account of its being the
valedictory message of Mr. Sprague Oram, H.M. Chief Inspector, who
retires after half a century of public service.... It is no secret
that much of the go-ahead work of the last few years has been due to
his enthusiasm, initiative, and devotion.... He hands over his duties
to Dr. Whitelegge, a distinguished authority on public health, who
should be a tower of strength ... in the work of making every factory
and workshop fit for human beings to work in.”
The entering of a breath of new life, obvious as it becomes in the
Annual Reports of 1895, 1896, and onwards, is not, and must not be,
attributed disproportionately to the entry and work of the small band of
Women Inspectors—for that itself sprang from a wider movement affecting
the whole department. None the less, it was a powerful new factor that
gained in effectiveness as time went on. And it preceded in time even
the highly significant and essential addition of Medical Inspectors
considered in Chapter IV. If we do not speak here in detail of the fine
work done by Men Inspectors, it is because that lies outside the scope
of this brief survey. They have had great pioneering days in the early
battles for Factory Act regulation. Their service when Women Inspectors
entered with a new task before them had yet to be fully developed in the
light of scientific knowledge and method.
If these pages in any true measure picture, for twentieth-century
workers and employers, certain conditions in industry during the twenty-
eight years under review; if they can put any clues into the hands of
legislators and administrators regarding women’s share and needs in
industry, they will fulfil their aim. They are designed to serve as a
finger-post to the original documents. By imaginative study of them
alone can the growth and change of this profoundly interesting period be
seen. During its course, after about ninety years of tentative,
experimental Factory Acts, something like civilisation began to dawn
inside industry. Out of it there emerges, from about the year 1918,
glimpses of the possibility of a new order, when—instead of intervention
by the State between diverging interests of workers and employers—
regulation can partly spring from within industry itself, by Joint
Councils and Works’ Committees, as well as by representative Trade
Boards. Factory Inspectors may then become mainly technical and expert
advisers and counsellors in factories that are developing a life of co-
operation between manual workers and employers as co-organisers of
production.
NOTE.—The terms “factory” and “workshop” are defined in Section 149 of
the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901.
Broadly they apply to any workplace where the manufacture of any
article is carried on by way of trade or for purpose of gain and any
person is working under a contract of employment. If mechanical power
is used in aid of the process, the place is a factory; if not, as a
rule it is a workshop; but certain workplaces—_e.g._, tobacco works
and potteries—are factories, even if there be no power applied.