Women in the Printing Trades Part 10

Is there, then, evidence to show that any material displacement of women or girls in these trades followed the enforcement of factory legislation? Instances of dismissal must obviously be sought for soon after the Act of 1867, as the employer then knew on what terms he engaged his staff, and, except in a few cases where deliberate evasions of the law might be attempted, the effect of legislation would be to deter him from employing women, rather than lead him to dismiss them.

Owing to the lapse of time, it is difficult to find out from those in the trade the immediate consequences of this Act, nor does the Commission of 1876 give much a.s.sistance. Of 103 employers questioned by us, not half a dozen remembered dismissing women in consequence of the new enactment.

One employer turned off ten or twelve women "folders" and introduced machinery, alleging as his reason the want of elasticity in the Factory Act. His ordinary hours were from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., but on certain days in the week it was necessary to begin work at 6 a.m. He made arrangements that the total number of hours should not exceed those sanctioned by the Act, but the variation was not allowed. If his women began work at 6 a.m. on any day, his hours had to be regularly 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., except in the case of thirty nights in the year when overtime was permitted. As this did not suit his business, he dismissed the women and had recourse to folding machines. Personally he gained, as the machinery proved an economy, but it told hardly on the women, whom otherwise he would have kept on as they were old hands.

Another employer told a similar tale regarding the introduction of folding machinery, but stated that he had been obliged to dispense with female operatives by reason of the strict enforcement of the regulations regarding overtime only.

In both these cases it is clear that the state of the trade was such that it required only a very slight disability on the part of the worker to make it worth while for the employer to use machinery.

Quite apart from any effect of legislation the machine was destined to supplant manual labour; its advent was merely accelerated by the Act.

Its first introduction caused isolated cases of hardship, but its ultimate results were beneficial. Thus at the present day women and girls are largely employed upon the very machines which once seemed to threaten their industrial existence.

[Sidenote: The case of women compositors.]

In the _Economic Journal_ of 1899 an interesting paper by Miss Bradby and Miss A. Black discusses the position of women compositors in Edinburgh, and deals with the subject of legislation. After an exhaustive investigation, no single instance was discovered of the displacement of a woman by a man owing to the Factory Acts.

The chief contention of those who oppose special factory legislation on the ground that it limits the usefulness of women compositors is, that women are not employed on newspaper work, and they give the legal prohibition of nightwork for women as the reason. Careful enquiry has shown that reason to be purely imaginary. Women are not employed on evening papers, though the factory law does not stand in their way. In the provinces women set-up one or two weekly or bi-weekly journals, the firms employing them preferring them solely on the ground of cheapness.

Experience shows that women are not suited for newspaper work, unless the paper does not appear more frequently than, say, twice a week, and if the factory code disappeared to-morrow, morning daily newspapers would afford to women compositors no fresh openings.

[Sidenote: Have their opportunities been limited?]

As regards the further point whether more women would be employed if they were unprotected by law, the views of representative employers and managers of labour are here set forth.

Out of thirty-five,[65] twenty-eight were emphatic in their a.s.surance that the Factory Acts did not affect the question. Seven, on the other hand, were inclined to think otherwise. Of these, five were unable to say that they really would employ more women if freed from restrictions, but two of them thought that "there might be something in it," though the point had "never occurred to them before." Only three of them were of the opinion emphatically that legislation was certainly one amongst the obstacles to the employment of women.

[Footnote 65: These are the firms interviewed by Miss Bradby and Miss A.

Black as above.]

When, on the other hand, we turn to the opinions of those acquainted with the conditions of the trade, either as workers (chiefly women) or Trade Union officials, we find practical unanimity. The eighteen persons[66] of this description questioned were strong in their declarations that the employment of women was not affected by the Factory Acts. To most of them, indeed, the idea of any harmful connection between the two was novel and ridiculous. This of course proves nothing; but if legislation had, to any considerable extent, hampered the work of women, the women themselves would doubtless have become aware of it.

[Footnote 66: Compositors only.]

The evidence available leads to the conclusion that, except in a few small houses, the employment of women as compositors has not been affected by the Factory Acts.

[Sidenote: Legislation and home work.]

The earlier stages during which the protection conferred by the Legislature was enforced, were marked by attempts on the part of certain employers to evade the spirit of the law by means of home work.[67]

[Footnote 67: See pp. 99-101.]

One example of this practice was given by the Rev. H. W. Blunt in his evidence before the Commission of 1876. He says that much work was sent to be completed after factory hours. For instance, in one book-folding firm which had occasional rushes of work, a girl was employed till 11 p.m. on the Monday before Christmas. She was then told with the other girls that they must take home 1,000 quarto sheets to fold by the morning. Several did so, but she refused, because her mother was on the point of death, and the doctor said there must not be a light in the room. She was consequently dismissed at once. Mr. Blunt says further that religious "weeklies," the sheets of which came off the press at 12 o'clock at night, were sent out to be folded by 8 a.m. They were taken away in perambulators, children being employed to do this every week.

[Sidenote: Work sent to "folding houses."]

Another immediate result of legislation was the expedient of sending out work to "folding houses" which did not come within the definition of a factory or workshop. Such places may be premises belonging to a factory and yet separate from it. Mr. Henderson, of the Factory Department, in giving evidence before the Commission of 1876, says: "Some years ago I came across Messrs. X., where newspapers were folded wholesale by steam machinery, and I thought it was a factory. Messrs. X. resisted the idea.

Boys were employed at irregular hours, but the Crown officers decided that it was not a factory." Christmas card packing and sorting are in the same position. Miss Deane, a lady factory inspector, who made a special investigation into the conditions of the Christmas card industry as recently as 1899, points out that many of the workplaces are outside the operation of the Act.

In the Report on Factories and Workshops for 1899, she says: "A large number of Christmas cards, almanacs, etc., are made in Germany and are sent to England, where girls are employed in sorting and repacking and arranging them, for the purpose of being sold wholesale. Such places, unless attached to some factory or workshop, being unregulated by the Act, the girls are without the protection afforded by the law regarding length of hours, meal-times, etc. It was impossible not to be struck by the difference between the conditions found in one such place and those found in the large airy sorting rooms of a publishing factory close by--yet the girls in the stuffy workroom of the former were without the protection given by the law in the latter workplace. A curious instance arose in connection with one such place where about forty girls had been employed in packing and sorting for illegal hours. The occupier took to employing some of them in affixing a minute bow of ribbon to the cards, and during this temporary employment all the girls could claim and were accorded the protection of the Factory Acts. Excessive hours in hitherto unsuspected workrooms were also found to be worked in the processes of adapting and preparing bonbons for sale. In some cases, baskets, boxes and bags, were trimmed for the reception of these articles, in others they were merely selected and arranged in patterns in fancy boxes subsequently tied up with ribbon. In the first case clearly, and in the last also probably, the definition of workshop under the Act applies.

Instructions were given and better conditions have gained the day."

Speaking of these unregulated workplaces, in the same report, Miss Deane remarks: "In the course of some inspections after midnight last winter near the City, I came across several of these workplaces where women, girls and children, were then at work under deplorable conditions--dirty rooms, foul, ga.s.sy air, and overcrowding. In one of them I was met by the observation that 'I might come in if I liked, but I could do nothing there.'"

The experience of two of our investigators corroborates the above statement. One of them says: "At about 2.45 a.m. we went to see newspapers folded by women in the City. It was done in an old tumble-down room opposite a printing shop. We peeped in through a c.h.i.n.k in the shutters--it was a boiling night, and the shutters were closed--and we could see a man carrying in a load of paper from time to time. When we entered we found four women streaming with perspiration in the foul hot atmosphere, folding away at the ... _News_. They were quite friendly and communicative, and told us they came every Thursday night about 11 p.m. and stayed till they had done. They were paid three times as much as day-workers and did no regular work in the daytime. Before beginning work they had a cup of tea. They said they liked the work and were glad that the Factory Act could not stop them; the police had been round to them and also two young ladies, but nothing had happened; and they considered that they were quite old enough to do nightwork if they liked."

Folding houses are growing fewer in number owing, no doubt, to the fact that rent is so high in the City and s.p.a.ce so valuable, that it is not worth while to erect them separate from a factory. Viewed also with dislike by factory inspectors as a means of evading the law, their tenure of life is not likely to be long.

[Sidenote: Nightwork.]

Employers admit that the effect of the Factory Acts has been to make them reduce nightwork. In criticising the Act before the Commission of 1876, Mr. Bell, of the firm of Darton, Bell and Thomas, bookbinders, says: "The Factory Act of 1867 has been a boon to employers and employed, because it has enabled us to put pressure on customers. Now we can say to the public 'We can't go beyond certain hours,' and, therefore, work not new has to be sent in earlier."

Mr. Darton, of the same firm, adds: "We have persuaded booksellers to give out stock work in June and July instead of September or October, and so begin the work earlier and avoid nightwork." This stimulus is undoubtedly good, and these views are echoed by other employers.

The whole question of how far the practical prohibition of overtime for women has limited the volume of work available for them, and thus diminished their aggregate wages, needs very careful consideration, as mistaken conclusions may easily be formed. The matter was carefully considered by a Committee of the Economic Section of the British a.s.sociation, appointed in 1901, to enquire into the effect of special legislation on women, and the following extracts from its final report[68] are of some interest:--

"A very important, perhaps from the economic point of view the most important, effect of legislation has been to spread the period of work more uniformly through the week, month, and year than had been the case before regulation" (p. 5).

"The tendency to put off giving orders to the last moment is easily checked when the customer can be met with a universal legal prohibition"

(p. 7).

"Restriction is met by adaptation of manufacture or rearrangement of numbers employed and time at which work is done, women being still employed at the work" (p. 13).

"Except for a few complaints as to the abolition of the possibility of payment for overtime, which, as has been pointed out, by no means prove any loss of earnings ... the Committee have no record ... of any loss of wages or earnings traceable to the [Factory] Acts" (p. 25).

[Footnote 68: Presented at Southport in 1903.]

Thus, it will be seen that the loss of overtime is not necessarily a loss of work, but a re-distribution (and an economical one, too) of the times at which work is done, and does not therefore mean a loss in income, but a steadying and regulation of income.

Nevertheless, before the re-organisation which has been consequent on Factory legislation, overtime and nightwork were necessary in order to turn out a certain volume of trade by a certain number of workpeople, and the influence of restrictive legislation has been shown in the following directions:--

1st. An increase in the cla.s.s of workers called "job hands";

2nd. An enlargement of the permanent staff;

3rd. A rearrangement of the employment of male and female labour.

The third of these changes we have found to be practically imperceptible, whilst the second has affected women most beneficially.

[Sidenote: The job hand.]

On the margin of casual and regular labour the job hand stands--the reserve battalion of this section of the labour army. She is generally a married woman, and commonly the wife of a faulty husband. She does not want regular work, and only desires to earn a certain limited wage. When she goes to a factory in search of work, she has to wait idle for hour upon hour, but she generally stays at home until summoned by her forewoman. Certain kinds of cheap seasonal work as, for instance, penny almanacs, are almost exclusively done by her,[69] and she is commonly employed either periodically, _e.g._, for weekly papers and monthly magazines, or casually, _e.g._, prospectus work, for rushes. A notice in certain public-houses, or information supplied to certain known agents, brings her to the place where she is wanted.

[Footnote 69: "The majority of the almanac makers are married women who stay at home from February to July": Leeds.]

Job hands existed before 1867, but at that time they did not hold quite the same position in the trade as they do now. They were the _hands_ who went to different firms for two or three nights a month to help in a recognised rush of work which occurred regularly. In the Commissioners'

Report for 1876, mention is made several times of job hands who were employed quite regularly for definite pieces of work at definite times during the month. Firms publishing certain weekly papers were in the habit of employing women in folding during the early hours of the morning before distributing the papers to the newsagents. Firms which printed monthly magazines needed women to fold all night for two or three nights or more at the end of each month. Such employment naturally came to an end as soon as the Act of 1867 came into operation; but the job hand only changed her hours. It became necessary during rushes of work to call in extra hands, in order to comply with the clauses of the Act, and many firms solved the difficulty by employing job hands during the day instead of at night, for a few days to meet the emergency.[70]

This work was generally taken up by married women who had served in the trade before marriage, and who were glad to get a few days' employment from time to time.

[Footnote 70: But this is not the invariable rule. A manager of a firm dealing largely in magazines and periodical issues says: "The effect of legal restrictions on our business is to make women work hard for two weeks and slacken off for two weeks. There is no thought of giving the work to men, or of sending it home, or of employing job hands."]

[Sidenote: Increase of permanent staff.]