Another consideration which is of use in clearing up the chaos of historical evidence on these questions, is the immense variety in conditions from one factory to another. This is the case even at the present day, when the Factory Act requires a certain minimum of decency and comfort. The factory inspectors record the extraordinary difference still existing in these respects, and, as a personal experience, the present writer well remembers the extreme contrast between two match factories visited some years ago at a very short interval; the one crowded, gloomy, with weary, exhausted, slatternly-looking girls doing perilous work in a foul atmosphere; the other with ample s.p.a.ce, light, and ventilation, the workers cleanly dressed, and supplied with the best appliances known to make the work safe and harmless. Such an experience is some guide in helping the modern student to comprehend more or less why Fielden wrote of _The Curse of the Factory System_, while Ure could maintain: "The fine spinning mills at Manchester ... in the beauty, delicacy and ingenuity of the machines have no parallel among the works of man nor _in the orderly arrangement_, and the value of the products."
There is no doubt that the early factories were often run by men who, whatever their energy, thrift, and ability for business, did not mostly possess the qualities necessary to a man who is to have the control, during at least half the week, of a crowd of workers, many of them women and children. Men like Owen and Arkwright were working out a technique and a tradition, not only for the mechanical side, but for the human side of this new business of employment on a large scale. But not all employers were Owens or even Arkwrights. P. Gaskell writes: "Many of the first successful manufacturers were men who had their origin in the rank of mere operatives, or who had sprung from the extinct cla.s.s of yeomen.... The celerity with which some of these individuals acc.u.mulated wealth in the early times of steam spinning and weaving, is proof that they were men of quick views, great energy of character, and possessing no small share of sagacity ... but they were men of very limited general information--men who saw and knew little of anything beyond the demand for their twist or cloth, and the speediest and best modes for their production. They were, however, from their acquired station, men who exercised very considerable influence upon the hordes of workmen who became dependent upon them."
Here Gaskell has brought out a point which is singularly ignored by the writers of what may be called the optimistic school. We may fully agree with these last in their contention that the working cla.s.s benefited by the increased production, higher wages, and cheapened goods secured by the factory system, or "great industry," as it is called. But they overlook the point of the immense power that system put into the hands of individual masters, over the lives, and moral and physical health of workers. For the whole day long, and sometimes for the night also, the operative was in the factory; the temperature of the air he breathed, the hours he worked, the sanitary and other conditions of his work were settled by those in control of the works, who were not responsible in any way to any external supervising authority for the conditions of employment, save to the very limited extent required by the early Factory Acts, which were ineffectively administered. In a curious pa.s.sage the elder Cooke Taylor, who was in many ways a most careful and intelligent observer, shows how completely he fails to grasp the position:
A factory is an establishment where several workmen are collected together for the purpose of obtaining greater and cheaper conveniences for labour than they could procure individually at their homes; for producing results by their combined efforts, which they could not accomplish separately.... The principle of a factory is that each labourer, working separately, is controlled by some a.s.sociating principle, which directs his producing powers to effecting a common result, which it is the object of all collectively to attain.
Factories are therefore a result of the universal tendency to a.s.sociation which is inherent in our nature, and by the development of which every advance in human improvement and human happiness has been gained.
Every sentence here is true; but the combined effect is not true. Taylor ingenuously omits one important fact. The "a.s.sociating principle" is the employer working for his own hand, and the "common result" is that employer"s profit. Marx saw that the subordination of the workman to the uniform motion of machines, and the bringing together of individuals of both s.e.xes and all ages gave rise to a system of elaborate discipline, dividing the workers into operatives and overlookers, into "private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army." But it is not necessary to call in the rather suspect authority of Marx. Richards, the Factory Inspector, who by no means took a sentimental view of mill work, had written quite candidly:
A steam engine in the hands of an interested or avaricious master is a relentless power, to which old and young are equally bound to submit.
Their position in these mills is that of thraldom; fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen hours per day, is exhausting to the strength of all, yet none dare quit the occupation, from the dread of losing work altogether. Industry is thus in bonds; unprotected children are equally bound to the same drudgery.[14]
This cast-iron regularity of the factory system was felt as a terrible hardship, especially in the case of women, and often amounted to actual slavery.
Wholesale accusations were brought against the factory system as being in itself immoral and a cause of depravity. Southey said of the factory children, that:
The moral atmosphere wherein they live and move and have their being is as noxious to the soul, as the foul and tainted air which they inhale is to their bodily const.i.tution.... What shall we say then of a system which ... debases all who are engaged in it?... It is a wen, a fungous excrescence from the body politic.
Here we may as well admit that the agitators, though possibly right in their facts, did not represent them in a true perspective. Perhaps the worst feature of working-cla.s.s life at this time was the scandalous state of housing. The manufacturing towns had grown up rapidly to meet a sudden demand. The progress of enclosing, the decay of home industry, and the call of capital for labour in towns had caused a considerable displacement of population. The immigrants had to find house-room in the outskirts of what had but lately been mere villages. Sanitary science was backward, and munic.i.p.al government was decadent and could not cope with the rush to the towns. The immigrant population and the existing social conditions were of a type favourable to a rapid increase in numbers, economic independence at an early age not unnaturally tending towards unduly early marriage and irresponsibility of character. Dr. Aikin writes:
As Manchester may bear comparison with the metropolis itself in the rapidity with which whole new streets have been raised, and in its extension on every side toward the surrounding country; so it unfortunately vies with, or exceeds the metropolis, in the closeness with which the poor are crowded in offensive, dark, damp, and incommodious habitations, a too fertile source of disease.[15]
There is abundant evidence of equally bad conditions in other towns. Such circ.u.mstances are inevitably demoralising, and they served to give the impression that the factory population, as such, was extraordinarily wild and wicked. But these particular evils were not specially due to the factory system. In the matter of sanitation and housing there can be little doubt that the rural population was no better, perhaps even worse cared-for than the urban or industrial, the main difference of course being that neglect of cleanliness and elementary methods of sewage disposal are less immediate and disastrous evils among a spa.r.s.e and scattered population than they are in towns.
Much has been written and spoken about the evils of factory life in withdrawing the mother from the home, and causing neglect of children and infants. Yet even this, an evil which no one would desire to minimise, is not peculiar to factory towns. A report on the state of the Agricultural Population says that:
Even when they have been taught to read and write, the women of the agricultural labouring cla.s.s (viz. in Wilts, Devon, and Dorset), are in a state of ignorance affecting the daily welfare and comfort of their families. Ignorance of the commonest things, needlework, cooking, and other matters of domestic economy, is described as universally prevalent.... A girl brought up in a cottage until she marries is generally ignorant of nearly everything she ought to be acquainted with for the comfortable and economic management of a cottage ... a young woman goes into the fields to labour, with which ends all chance of improving her position; she marries and brings up her daughters in the same ignorance, and their lives are a repet.i.tion of her own.
Material progress had completely outdistanced the social side of civilisation. It was easy to see that old-fashioned restrictions on commerce needed to be swept away, as a trammel and a hindrance; but where was the constructive effort and initiative to shape the new fabric of society that should supply the people"s needs?
It was the misfortune of the factory system that it took its sudden start at a moment when the entire energies of the British legislature were preoccupied with the emergencies of the French Revolution.... The foundations on which it reposes were laid in obscurity and its early combinations developed without attracting the notice of statesmen or philosophers.... There thus crept into unnoticed existence a closely condensed population, under modifying influences the least understood, for whose education, religious wants, legislative and munic.i.p.al protection, no care was taken and for whose physical necessities the more forethought was requisite, from the very rapidity with which men were attracted to these new centres. To such causes may be referred the incivilisation and immorality of the overcrowded manufacturing towns.[16]
It is curious to compare the criminal neglect here indicated with the self-complacency of the governing cla.s.ses of this country, and the immense claims for admiration and respect often put forth on account of their control of home and local administration. In this tremendous crisis in the social life of the country, the complex changes of the industrial revolution, the cla.s.ses in power sat by, apathetic and uninterested, taking little or no pains to cope with the problem, or interfered merely with harsh or even cruel repression of the workers" efforts to combine for self-defence. Although Dr. Percival and Dr. Ferrier had drawn attention to the disease and unhealthy conditions existing in factories as far back as 1784 and 1796, it was not until 1833 that a Factory Act was pa.s.sed containing any administrative provisions that could be deemed effective.
Public health measures came later still. Much as the industrial employers were abused by the landowners, it is a fact that reforms and ameliorative projects were started originally by the former. Sir Robert Peel, who owned cotton factories, was the pioneer of factory legislation, and Robert Owen gave the impetus to industrial reform by the humanity and ability that characterised his management of his own mill, and the generosity of his treatment of his own employees.
_The Woman Wage-Earner._--The initiation of the factory system undoubtedly fixed and defined the position of the woman wage-earner. For good or for evil, the factory system transformed the nature of much industrial work, rendering it indefinitely heterogeneous, and incidentally opening up new channels for the employment, first, unfortunately, of children, afterwards of women.
In the case of spinning, the division of work between men and women was attended with considerable complications, and it appears that the masters confidently expected to employ women in greater proportions than was actually feasible. A comparison of the evidence by masters and men respectively given before the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery throws some interesting sidelights on the question, though it does not make it absolutely clear. Dunlop, a Glasgow master, had frequent disputes with the "combination" as the union was then called. He built a new mill with machinery which he hoped would make it unnecessary to employ men at all. In a few years he was, however, again employing men as before, and his account of the matter was that this change of front was due to the violence of the men"s unions. Two of the operative leaders, however, came up at a later stage to protest against Dunlop"s version. They showed that the persistent violence attributed to the men really narrowed down to a single case of a.s.sault some years before, when there was not sufficient evidence to commit the men accused. They denied the alleged opposition to women"s employment and declared that there was absolutely no connexion between the outrage complained of and the subst.i.tution of men for women, which had in fact been effected by Dunlop"s sons during his absence in America, and was due to the fact that the women could not do as much or as good work on the spinning machines as men could. Dunlop also had given an exaggerated account of the wages paid, making no allowance for stoppage and breakdown of machinery, which were frequent.
A few years later we find some interesting evidence as to the efforts of further developments in spinning machinery. A Mr. Graham told the Select Committee on Manufactures and Commerce that he was introducing self-acting mules, and did not yet know whether women could be adapted to their use, but hoped to get rid of "all the spinners who are making exorbitant wages," and employ piecers only, giving one of the piecers a small increase in wages. He was also employing a number of women upon a different description of wheels, and others in throstle spinning.
According to him the women got about 18s. a week, a statement which it would probably be wise to discount. Being asked whether the self-acting mules or the spinning by women would be cheapest, he replied that it was hoped the spinning by self-acting mules would be cheapest, as even the women were combining and giving trouble. In 1838, Doherty, a labour man, showed that although women were allowed to spin in Manchester, "whole mills of them," the number was being reduced, the physical strength of women being insufficient to work the larger wheels which had come into use. It is useful to obtain some idea of the views of the employing cla.s.s at a time of such complex changes, and it seems evident that some at least were almost taken off their feet by the exciting prospects opening out to them, and hoped to dispense very largely with skilled male labour, or even with adult labour altogether.
At the present time though there have been great developments in machinery, spinning is the one large department of the cotton industry in which men still exceed women in numbers. The employment of women in ring-spinning is increasing, but there are special counts which can only be done on the mule, which is beyond the woman"s strength and skill.
Between 1901 and 1911 male cotton-spinners increased in numbers 31 per cent, female 60 per cent. The totals were in 1911 respectively 84,000 and 55,000.
The introduction of the power-loom was a very important event in the history of women"s employment. Even in 1840 a woman working a power-loom could do "twice as much" as a man with a hand-loom, and the a.s.sistant commissioner who made this observation added the prophecy that in another generation women only would be employed, save a few men for the necessary superintendence and care of the machinery. "There will be no weavers as a cla.s.s; the work will be done by the wives of agricultural labourers or different mechanics." Gaskell, a writer who gave much thought and consideration to the problems before his eyes, and saw a good deal more than many of his contemporaries, also thought that machinery would soon reach a point at which "automata" would have done away with the need of adult workmen.
He says, however, on another page, that "since steam-weaving became general the number of adults engaged in the mills has been progressively advancing inasmuch as very young children are not competent to take charge of steam-looms. The individuals employed at them are chiefly girls and young women, from sixteen to twenty-two."
Gaskell attributed the employment of women in factories, not so much to their taking less wages, as to their being more docile and submissive than men.
Out of 800 weavers employed in one establishment, and which was ...
composed indiscriminately, of men, women, and children--the one whose earnings were the most considerable, was a girl of sixteen.... The mode of payment ... is payment for work done--piece-work as it is called.... Thus this active child is put upon more than a par with the most robust adult; is in fact placed in a situation decidedly advantageous compared to him.... Workmen above a certain age are difficult to manage.... Men who come late into the trade, learn much more slowly than children ... and as all are paid alike, so much per pound, or yard, it follows that these men ... are not more efficient labourers than girls and boys, and much less manageable.... Adult male labour having been found difficult to manage and not more productive--its place has, in a great measure, been supplied by children and women; and hence the outcry which has been raised with regard to infant labour, in its moral and physical bearings.
This pa.s.sage, involved as it is in thought and expression, is not without interest as a reflection of the mind of that time, painfully working out contemporary problems. Gaskell confuses women"s labour with child labour, and it is difficult to discover from this book that he has ever given any thought to the former problem at all. The family for him is the social unit, and women are cla.s.sed with children as beings for whom the family as a matter of course provides. He omits from consideration the woman thrown upon her own exertions, and the grown-up girl, who, even if living at home, must earn. It is not difficult to find other instances of similar _navete_; thus in the supplementary Report on Child Labour in Factories, it was gravely suggested that it may be wrong to be much concerned because women"s wages are low.
Nature effects her own purpose wisely and more effectually than could be done by the wisest of men. The low price of female labour makes it the most profitable as well as the most agreeable occupation for a female to superintend her own domestic establishment, and her low wages do not tempt her to abandon the care of her own children.
Here again, there is apparently no perception of the case of the woman, who, by sheer economic necessity, is forced to work, whether for herself alone, or for her children also.
It is hardly necessary to remark that the estimate quoted above, according to which the girl weaving on a power-loom could do twice as much as a man on a hand-loom, has since been enormously exceeded. Schultz-Gavernitz in 1895 thought that a power-loom weaver accomplished about as much as forty good hand-weavers, and no doubt even this estimate is now out of date.
Partly for technical, partly for other reasons, the woman"s presence in the factory is now much more taken for granted.
The girl who is to be a weaver begins work usually at twelve years old, the minimum age permitted by law, and may spend six weeks with a relation or friends learning the ways. She thus becomes a "tenter" or "helper," and fetches the weft, carries away the finished goods, sweeps and cleans. At thirteen or fourteen she may have two looms to mind, and will earn about 12s. a week. At sixteen she will be promoted to three looms, and later on to four, beyond which women seldom go; a man sometimes minds six looms, but needs a helper for this extra strain. The work needs considerable skill and attention. Often a four-loom weaver will be turning out four different kinds of cloth on the four looms. It is also fatiguing, as she is on her feet the whole ten hours of her legal day, sometimes, unfortunately, lengthened by the objectionable practice known as "time-cribbing," which means that ten or even fifteen minutes are taken from the legal meal times, and added to the working hours. It takes some years to become an efficient weaver, and the drain on the weaver"s strength and vitality is considerable. Where steaming is used, colds and rheumatism are very prevalent. It is noticed by the weavers that the sickness rate is lower in times of bad trade, and indeed slack seasons are regarded as times for much-needed recuperation. Women, although they equal or here and there even excel men in skill and quickness, fail in staying power. Many get f.a.gged out by three o"clock in the afternoon. The great increase in speed is also a factor in sickness. Weavers are now said to be doing as much work in a day as in a day and a half twelve or thirteen years ago, and the wages have increased, but not proportionately. The work involves not only physical, but mental strain, and many cases of nervous break-down and anaemia are known to occur among weavers. It should not be forgotten that many women and girls have domestic work to do after their day"s work in the mill is over, and the high standard of comfort and "house pride" in Lancashire makes this a considerable addition.
Another large cla.s.s of women cotton operatives are the card-room workers, officially described as "card-and blowing-room operatives." In this department men and women do different work. The men do the more dangerous, more unhealthy, and also the better paid work. Women"s work also is dangerous, and unhealthy from the dust and cotton fibre that pervade the atmosphere. An agitation is on foot to have a dust-extractor fixed to every carding-engine. The operatives suffer chiefly from excessive speed and pressure. They are continually pressed to keep the machines going, and not to stop them even for necessary cleaning, and I am a.s.sured by a card-room operative that in the card-room the highest percentage of accidents for the week occurs on Friday, when the princ.i.p.al weekly cleaning takes place, and the lowest on Monday, when cleaning is not required; also that the highest percentage of accidents during the day occurs on an average between 10 A.M. and 12 noon, when the dirtiest parts of the machinery are usually wiped over. The chief cause of these accidents is cleaning while the machinery is in motion. The present rate of speed produces extreme exhaustion in the workers, and some consider that card-room work is altogether too hard for women, and not suitable to their physical capacity. It is said to be done entirely by men in America.
The male weaver is by no means extinct, as the prophets we have quoted seemed to expect. Cotton-weaving offers the very unusual, perhaps unique example of a large occupation employing both man and woman, and on equal terms. The earnings of the male weaver are, however, very inferior to those of the spinner, and he cannot unaided support a family without being considerably straitened, according to the Lancashire standard. But, in point of fact, a weaver when he marries usually marries a woman who is also working at a mill, and if she is a weaver her earnings are very likely as good as his. In this industry women attain to very nearly as great skill and dexterity as do men; in some branches even greater. In Lancashire the standard of working-cla.s.s life and comfort is high, and a woman whose husband is a weaver will not brook that her next-door neighbour, whose husband may be a spinner or machine-maker, should dress their children better, or have better window-curtains than she can. She continues to work at her own trade, and the two incomes are combined until the woman is temporarily prevented working at the mill. An interval of some months may be taken off by a weaver for the birth of her baby, but she will return to the mill afterwards, and again after a second; at the third or fourth child she usually retires from industry. Later on the children begin earning. Thus the male weaver"s most difficult and troubled times are when his children are quite young, his wife temporarily incapacitated, and his earnings their sole support. When both husband and wife are earning, their means are good relatively to their standard; and again as the young people grow up, the combined income of the family may be even ample. The young children whose mother is absent at work are looked after in the day-time by a grandmother, or by a neighbour who is paid for the work. It was stated, half-ironically, perhaps, before the Labour Commission that there was a "standard list for this sort of business." Opinions differ as to whether the children are or are not neglected under this system. There is, however, evidence to show that many Lancashire women, at least among those who are relatively well paid, are good mothers and good housekeepers even though they work their ten hours a day. They go to work because their standard of life is high, and they cannot live up to it without working.
_The Industrial Revolution in Non-Textile Trades._--This subject, though sociologically of great interest, cannot here be treated at length; it must suffice to indicate a few points in regard to women, trusting that some later writer will some day paint for England a finished picture on the scale of Miss Butler"s fine study "Women and the Trades," of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.
The factory system has now invaded one manufacturing industry after another, and the use of power and division of work in numerous processes have opened a considerable amount of employment to women. There have been two lines of development; on the one hand, occupations have been opened for women in trades with which previously they had nothing, or very little to do; on the other hand, industries. .h.i.therto almost entirely in the hands of women, and carried on chiefly in homes or small workrooms or shops, such as dressmaking, the making of underclothing, laundry work and so on, have been to some extent changed in character, and have in part become factory industries of the modern type.
In 1843 the sub-commissioner who investigated Birmingham industries for the Children"s Employment Commission, was struck by the extent of women"s and children"s employment. Very large numbers of children were employed in a great variety of manufacturing processes, and women"s labour was being subst.i.tuted for men"s in many branches. In all trades there were at the same time complaints of want of employment and urgent distress, involving large numbers of mechanics. Mr. Grainger saw women employed in laborious work, such as stamping b.u.t.tons and bra.s.s nails, and notching the heads of screws, and considered these to be unfit occupations for women. In screw manufactories the women and girls const.i.tuted 80 to 90 per cent of the whole number employed. A considerable number of girls, fourteen and upwards, were employed in warehouses packing the goods, giving in and taking out work. Non-textile industries were as yet quite unregulated, and many of the reports made to this commissioner indicate very bad conditions as to health and morals. The sanitary conditions were atrocious, except where the employers were specially conscientious and gave attention to the subject; there was little protection against accident, and child-labour was permitted at very early years. Most of the abuses noted had to do either with insanitary conditions or with child-labour. The women and girls are described as having been often twisted or injured by premature employment, and as being totally without education. One witness who gave evidence considered that the lack of education was more disastrous for girls than for boys.
In 1864 the Children"s Employment Commission found that the number and size of large factories had grown since 1841, and the number of women in the Birmingham district employed in metal manufactures was estimated at 10,000.
In 1866, when the British a.s.sociation visited Birmingham, Mr. S. Timmins prepared a series of reports on local industries, the index of which gives no less than thirty-six references to women, which is some indication how widely they were employed. In the steel pen trade, for instance, which had developed from a small trade in hand-made pens, costing several shillings each, into a large factory industry, numbers of girls and women were employed, and a comparatively small proportion of men. In 1866, there were estimated to be 360 men, 2050 women and girls employed in Birmingham pen-works. Women were employed extensively in the light chain trade, also in lacquering in the bra.s.s trade, and in many other occupations.
Successive censuses show very rapid increases in the employment of women in the metal trades generally, though, of course, they bear a much lower proportion to men in these trades taken as a whole than in the textile trades.
Similar developments are taking place in food and tobacco trades, soap, chemicals, paper and stationery. The boot and shoe trade is a good example of the rapid opening-out of opportunities for women"s employment. At the time of the Labour Commission (1893) it was noted that Bristol factories were mostly not up to date or efficient. Since that time there has been a rapid extension of factory work for women, and the methods in the boot and shoe trade have been revolutionised by the introduction of the power sewing-machine, and by production on a large scale. The new factories in or near Bristol have lofty rooms, modern improved sanitary and warming apparatus, and the best are carefully arranged with a view to maintaining the health and efficiency of the workers.
In 1903 a committee of the Economic Section of the British a.s.sociation found in Sheffield that machinery had been displacing file cutlery made by hand for fifteen years past, and some women were already finding employment on the lighter machines. In Coventry the cycle industry employed an increasing number of women; watchmaking was becoming a factory industry, and the proportion of women to men had increased rapidly. Women are even employed in some processes subsidiary to engineering, such as core-making. But it should be remembered that these openings for women do not necessarily mean permanent loss of work for men, though some temporary loss there no doubt very often is. The rearrangement of industry and the subdivision of processes mean that new processes are appropriated to women; and it is likely enough that among factory operatives women are, and will be, an increasing proportion. But therewith must come an increasing demand for men"s labour in mining, smelting and forging metal, and in other branches into which women are unlikely to intrude.
In the clothing trades the industrial revolution has made some way, and is doubtless going to make still more way, but it is unlikely that the older-fashioned methods of tailoring and dressmaking can ever be superseded as completely as was the hand-loom weaving in the cotton trade.
Dress is a matter of individual taste and fancy, and much as the factory-made clothing and dressmaking has improved in the last ten or twenty years, it is unlikely ever to supply the market entirely.
Stay-making is a rapidly developing factory industry at Bristol, Ipswich and elsewhere. In underclothing and children"s clothing also the factory system is making considerable advances. It is startling to see babies"
frocks or pinafores made on inhuman machines moved by power, with rows of fixed needles whisking over the elaborate tucks; but if the resulting article be both good and cheap, and the women operatives paid much better than they would be for the same number of hours" needlework, sentimental objections are perhaps out of place.
In such factories as I have been permitted to visit, mostly non-textile, I have noticed that men and women are usually doing, not the same, but different kinds of work, and that the work done by women seems to fall roughly into three cla.s.ses. My cla.s.sification is probably quite unscientific, and indicates merely a certain social order perceived or conceived by an observer ignorant of the technical side of manufacturing and chiefly interested in the social or sociological aspect. In the first place, there is usually some amount of rough hard work in the preparing and collecting of the material, or the transporting it from one part of the factory to another. Such work is exemplified by the rag-cutting in paper-mills, fruit-picking in jam factories, the sorting soiled clothes in laundries, the carrying of loads from one room to another, and such odd jobs. I incline to think that the arrangements made for dealing with this cla.s.s of work are a very fair index to the character and ability of the employer. In good paper-mills, for instance, though nothing could make rag-cutting an attractive job, its objectionable features are mitigated by a preliminary cleansing of the rags, and by good ventilation in the work.
In ill-managed factories of various kinds the carrying of heavy loads is left to the women workers" unaided strength, and is a most unpleasing sight to those who do not care to see their sisters acting as beasts of burden, not to mention that heavy weight-carrying is often highly injurious, provoking internal trouble. In the case of trays of boiling fruit, jam, etc., it may lead to horrible accidents. In well-managed factories this carrying of loads is arranged for by mechanical means or a strong porter is retained for the purpose.
The second cla.s.s of work noticed as being done by women is work done on machines with or without power, and this includes a whole host of employments and an endless variety of problems. Machine tending, press-work, stamp-work, metal-cutting, printing, various processes of bra.s.s work, pen-making, machine ironing in laundries, the making of "hollow ware" or tin pots and buckets of various kinds; such are a few of the kinds of work that occur to me. Many of them have the interesting characteristic of forming a kind of borderland or marginal region where men and women, by exception, do the same kinds of work. It is in these kinds of work that difficulties occur in imperfectly organised trades; it is here that the employer is constantly pushing the women workers a little further on and the male workers a little further off; it is here that controversies rage over what is "suitable to women," and that recriminations pa.s.s between trade unions and enterprising employers. These kinds of work may be very hard, or very easy, they may need skill and afford some measure of technical interest, or they may be merely dull and monotonous, efficiency being measured merely by speed; they may be badly paid, but on the other hand they include some of the best paid of women"s industrial occupations. They are in a continual state of flux, responding to every technical advance, and change in methods; they represent the industrial revolution at its tensest and most critical point. And to conclude, it is here that organisation for women is most necessary and desirable in the interests of all cla.s.ses.
The third kind of work noted by the detached observer is more difficult to define in a word; it consists in the finishing and preparing goods for sale, and in the various kinds of work known as warehouse work. As a separate cla.s.s it results mainly from the increasing size of firms and the quant.i.ty of work done. Paper-sorting or overlooking in paper-mills is typical of this cla.s.s of work; it consists in separating faulty sheets of paper from those that are good, and is done at great speed by girls who have a quick eye and a light touch. It is said to be work that men entirely fail in, not having sufficiently sensitive finger-tips. In nearly all factories there is a great deal of this kind of work, monotonous no doubt, but usually clean in character, and less hard and involving considerably less strain than either of the two former cla.s.ses of work. In confectionery or stationery works, for instance, to mention two only, troops of girls are seen busily engaged at great speed in making up neat little packets of the finished article, usually with an advertis.e.m.e.nt or a picture put inside. In china or gla.s.s works girls may be employed wrapping the goods in paper, and similar jobs are found in many cla.s.ses of work. In a well-known factory in East London where food for pet animals is made or prepared, I was told some years ago that no girls at all had been employed until recently, when about forty were taken on for the work of doing up the finished article in neat packets for sale. It is noticeable that the girls who are thus employed are usually of a social grade superior to the two former cla.s.ses, though they by no means always earn better wages. They are very frequently the daughters of artisans earning good wages, and expect to marry in their own cla.s.s and leave work. The women employed in the second cla.s.s of work indicated, viz. chiefly on or about the machines, are on the whole more enterprising, and more likely to join unions. These again are socially superior to No. 1. No. 1 cla.s.s, those who do the rough hard kind of work, are mainly employed for the sake of cheapness, are often married women, and are probably doing much the same kinds of work that were done by women in those trades before the transformation of industry by machinery. (This is merely an inference of mine, and can scarcely be proved, but it seems likely to be true.) The more perfectly the industry develops and becomes organised, the more machinery is used and different processes are adapted to utilise different cla.s.ses of skilled effort, the less need will there be for cla.s.s No. 1 work to be done at all.
It should be noted before we leave this subject that No. 2 cla.s.s work is especially liable to change and modification, which means change in the demand for labour, and often means a demand for a different cla.s.s of labour, or a different kind of skill. There are some who think pessimistically that improved machinery must mean a demand for a lower grade of skill. No doubt it often _has_ meant that, and still does in instances. But it is far from being universally true. As the hand-press is exchanged for the power-press, the demand occurs for a worker sufficiently careful and responsible to be trusted with the new and more valuable machinery. Again, when a group of processes needing little skill is taken over by an automatic machine that performs the whole complex of operations, several unskilled workers will be displaced by one of a higher grade. The new automatic looms worked by electric power are, I am told, involving the employment of a cla.s.s of young women superior in general intelligence and education to the typical weaver, though not necessarily so in manual skill.