Women in the Printing Trades Part 11

The second method of solving the difficulty--by employing a larger permanent staff--involves the erection of more extensive premises, and can only be adopted by firms whose financial position enables them to meet a considerable outlay. It is probably the best means for ensuring that work shall be done efficiently for the employer, and conducted under the most favourable conditions for the employed.

[Sidenote: Nightwork and overtime.]

But there still remains a slight residuum of nightwork which has to be done by men. To this extent, and to this extent only, can restriction be said to have hindered the employment of women.

We have tried to ascertain how much this really means to the women workers. Thirty-three firms stated that work of the same character as that performed by women in the daytime was sometimes given out to men at night. We cannot, however, a.s.sume that the work is always given to men on account of legal restrictions, and it does not follow that the abolition of such restrictions would induce all masters to introduce women for nightwork. Several of them, indeed, emphatically deny that they would adopt this practice; and in some instances we have been told that it was not observed in the best firms before the law prohibited it, _e.g._, "Mr. A. remembers the time before the Act of 1867 (he has been in the trade since 1851). He could have worked women at night, but never would because of questions of morality."

These statements are, however, only part of the case, because nightwork is generally overtime, and we must consider how far employers care to practise it.

There seems to be an almost unanimous opinion against overtime, and any mention of factory legislation appears to suggest overtime at once to both employers and employed. Experience has driven it home to them that overtime is a most uneconomical method of work;[71] and as there does not appear to be any demand for women's labour at night except occasionally as overtime, the factory law in this respect is only a protection to the employee engaged by the employer who is still experimenting with this unproductive use of labour.

[Footnote 71: "When the factory (now a large provincial lithographer's, almanac maker's, etc.), was a small one, and it employed only a few hands, they used to work a great deal of overtime. They used all the time they were allowed by the Factory Acts and sometimes tried to get in more. But now they do not find it pays to work overtime."--It is of some importance to note that a responsible spokesman for the men engaged in London houses informed one of our investigators that when men are put on at night to fold "they take it easy, and six men do in two hours what two women do in two hours. They don't bother to walk up and down gathering, but sit at it in a row, and hand sheets on from one to the other."]

[Sidenote: Testimony of employers.]

Some employers, like Mr. Bell,[72] admit candidly enough that legislation enables them to be more humane (and humanity in this respect pays) than they could otherwise afford to be. The Act is "a great relief," such an employer has said. "Legislation is an excellent thing; existing hours are quite long enough. If a person has not done her work by the time they are up, she never will do it." "The Factory Acts are a very good thing," another has said. "Long hours diminish the output"; or again: "Factory legislation is a capital thing; I only wish it could be extended to men." "Women are not so strong as men, and therefore the law rightly steps in." "I think it would be very inadvisable to employ women at night. I think legislation a very good thing. Overtime is not really worth it." "Legislation is a very good thing. I don't believe in long hours. Employers are often shortsighted and think that workers are like machines--the longer you work them the more they do, but this is not really the case; if they work from 9 to 7 they have done as much as they are good for." "The good done by the Factory Acts has quite outweighed any evils or hardships." Another employer remarked: "I shouldn't like my own daughter to do it, and I don't see why other women should do so. I should think it a very bad thing for women to go home in the early hours of the morning." On hearing that restrictions were objected to on the score that they hindered the employment of women, he replied scathingly that it was rubbish, but that "ladies must have something to talk about."

[Footnote 72: _Cf._ p. 78.]

From this it is evident that protection is viewed favourably by many employers, on the specific ground that it prevents systematic overtime.

On the whole, they are of the opinion that nightwork is harmful to women, and that after overtime the next day's work suffers. Some are doubtful whether they would employ women at night even if the law permitted it. Nightwork, they a.s.sert, is unfit for women, not merely on account of the harm to health, but because of the insult and temptation to which they are exposed in going home. Whether these views would have been held so generally before the pa.s.sing of the Factory Acts it is not possible to say; probably the results have justified the Act, and experience has provided moral reasons for legal limitations.

Such in the main is the att.i.tude of employers towards legislation. Of 103 who expressed an opinion, twenty-six stated that legislation had not affected women's labour at all, sixty considered it to have been beneficial, and seventeen looked on all legislation as grandmotherly and ridiculous--one among these thinking that legislation was all very well, and much needed in the City, but that Southwark should be free from interference. The att.i.tude of those employers who objected to interference was expressed generally in some such way as that it was "unnecessary" for their trade at least, even if desirable for others.

Pressed to explain what "unnecessary" meant, they said that women could take care of themselves; that protection was all very well for young girls, but when women arrived at the age of forty or fifty they could do what they liked; that it was hard on women that they should not be allowed to work day and night as well; that women could stand overtime just as well as men; and, finally, that legislation pressed very severely on the employer, who had to use the more expensive medium for doing nightwork, viz., men.

Such is the att.i.tude of these employers, and it is fairly well expressed in the following quotation from _The Stationery Trades' Journal_, September, 1880:--

"We report in another column a case in which Messrs. Pardon & Co. were summoned for an offence under the Factory Acts. Four women were employed during the night to fold a periodical which is printed by Messrs. P. The youngest of the four women was a married woman of thirty-five, whose husband is unable to work, and she, like the rest, prized the job because it afforded the means of earning a little extra money for the support of her family. Under the pretence of protecting these women, the law steps in and says: 'Your families may starve or go to the workhouse, but you shall not work overtime or go beyond the limits prescribed by the Act. You cannot be trusted with the care of your own health. You may fast as much as you like; it will do you good and help your children to grow up stalwart men and women--but you shall not endanger your health by working too many hours at a time.' This in substance is what the law does for women. As regards the employment of children and young persons, the Act is no doubt beneficial, but surely women of thirty-five and forty do not need the same legislative protection as children. A great deal of sentimental nonsense is written and spoken by benevolent busybodies without practical knowledge of the subjects with which they meddle; and one of the results is the application of the Factory Acts to women who are old enough to judge for themselves. In the case alluded to there was more real benevolence in providing work for women than in limiting their hours of employment." As a contrast to these opinions, the views on overtime expressed in the Factory Inspector's Report for 1899 are worth noting:--

"The prohibition of overtime for young persons imposed by Section 14 of the Factory Act of 1895 has, in my opinion, proved to be the most beneficial clause of that Act. It has, moreover, been carried out without any serious interference with trade and without causing much difficulty to the inspectors.

"The further restriction in the same clause of the overtime employment of women by reducing the number of times on which it may be worked in any twelve months from forty-eight to thirty was also a step in the right direction. If overtime were abolished altogether except for preserving perishable articles, the season trades would soon accommodate themselves to doing without overtime in the same way that the cotton, woollen, linen and silk manufacturing trades have done, for they also are season trades."

[Sidenote: Opinion of employees.]

Among the older workers in the trade are men and women who remember conditions before the pa.s.sing of the 1867 Act, and the experience of some of them and the comparison they make between work done before and after the Act is worthy of note.

A. used to work till 10 every night when she first entered the trade.

She was glad when the Act was pa.s.sed to get home early, and never liked working late.

B. used to work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. regularly, including Sat.u.r.days.

Frequently she had to work till 10 or 12 and sometimes to begin at 5 a.m. The "young governor" used to take her and some of the other girls home at night as they were afraid to go alone. She disliked overtime, was tired out at the end of a day's work, and thought the other women were too, and she had often noticed how badly the work was done after eight or nine hours at it. Later on, as a forewoman, she noticed that the girls after overtime always loafed about the next day and did not work well. Some women liked overtime, but she noticed it was always those who spent the extra money earned on drink. She did not think that work had gone from the women in consequence of factory legislation, but thought that married women were employed for a little while during a rush of work where before the regular hands were kept working late. She remembered how tiresome it was for the married women to get home in time to fetch their babies from the _creches_ when the hours were from 8 to 8.

C. has often heard her mother-in-law say that as a girl she constantly worked all night and then had to work just the same the next day. She used to consider that to get home at 7 on Sat.u.r.day was early, and now every young lady looks forward to her Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Workpeople have a much better time than they used to. There were no proper meal hours. She used to get "just a snack between her work."

D. remembers that when they were busy they had to work all night and all the day before and the next day too. They used to work on Sundays and were given a gla.s.s of gin. She never knew anyone who wanted to do nightwork, and thinks eight and a half hours quite long enough for anyone to work, especially when there is housework, too, when one gets home.

E. remembers the time when he was a boy and women were kept at work all night; he remembers shops where they worked regularly all night after working all day, for two or three times a week.

F. a bookbinder, remembers women who worked all night frequently. They were very poor, very rough, and of very low moral standing. "Some of the women who worked could hardly be said to belong to their s.e.x."

Respectable girls would not come for such low wages, and also because they had to go home alone through the streets. After the Factory Acts the moral tone and respectability increased greatly; wages were no lower and there were fewer hours of work.[73]

[Footnote 73: This is an interesting comment on the relation between low wages and long hours on the one hand and character on the other.]

G. says, "We used to have to come in at 6 in the morning and work till 10 or 11 at night, and then be told to come back again at 6 next day. I often used to faint; it took all my strength away." She considers the Factory Act an unmixed blessing.

H., before the Factory Act, has worked from 9 to 7, 8, 9, or 10. Often as a learner she stayed till 11 or 12, and once till 12 several nights running. Once she remembers being turned out in a thunderstorm at midnight, and how frightened she was. Occasionally she worked all night; they used to be given coffee at 2 a.m. Once or twice she worked from 9 a.m. one day to 2 p.m. next day; "Excitement keeps you up." They were allowed to sing at their work and be as merry as they could; "We didn't count it much of a hardship." Some women after leaving the factory would go and work all night in printing houses; one woman would leave at tea-time and go to spend the night at the "Athenaeum" until 7 a.m. After the Factory Act no one might stay beyond 10 without special permission.

Once she did work all night; they put out the lights in the front and worked at the back. The only result of the Factory Acts that she could see was that employers had to have larger premises and employ more hands, instead of working a small staff hard.

J. says "I entered the trade in 1863 when I was thirteen. Boys and porters came at 6 a.m.; journeymen at 8 a.m. (sixty hours a week); women at 8 or 9 a.m. All had to stay as long as they were wanted, _i.e._, till 10 or 11. Boys were frequently kept till 11 p.m. I was never kept all night. Conditions have improved for both s.e.xes, men's owing to Trade Unionism, women's to factory laws."

[Sidenote: The opinions of forewomen.]

The testimony of the forewomen is to the same effect. A. a forewoman, used to work often till 10, 11, or 12 at night, sometimes all night.

Sometimes she was obliged to keep her girls all night when there was work that had to be finished, but usually she gave them a rest the next day. She thinks it a very good thing that they should not be allowed to work all night; the work is piecework and long hours don't do any good, for they mean that you work less next day: if you work all night, then you are so tired that you have to take a day off; you have gained nothing. She used to find that so herself.

B. a forewoman, thought the Factory Acts a very good thing. Girls grumbled if they had to stop till 8, and she never heard of any of them wanting to stay longer. "If you work till 8 for many weeks you get used up; there is no change in your life, and as soon as you get home you have to go to bed, you are so tired."

C. is a forewoman. As a girl she used to work from 8.30 a.m. to 9 or 10 at night every day from September to Christmas. She had to stay till 2 a.m. one night and come again just the same next day; she had to work from 3 a.m. one Good Friday morning and sometimes had to come to work at 1 on Sunday mornings. This nightwork was only occasional, but she thinks it a very good thing that it has been stopped; she never found it pay; the girls were so tired the next day.

Another forewoman gave it as her deliberate opinion that when overtime is worked the piece workers do not make more as a rule, for they get so tired that if they stay late one night, they work less the next day.

This is the unanimous view held by the forewomen, and it comes with considerable force from them, as it is they who have to arrange to get work done somehow within a certain time. They are the people who have to put on the pressure, and are in such a position as to see how any particular system of getting work done answers.

[Sidenote: Exceptions.]

Among the younger women--the girls who have had no experience of conditions before 1867, the opinion about overtime is not so unanimous.

Some few like what little overtime is allowed to them and say they would not mind more. One such worker was met, just arrived home from her factory late one Sat.u.r.day afternoon. She had been working overtime as a consequence of the Queen's death--the envelope makers and black borderers were all working late just then. It was a bleak and wet afternoon, and she came in in high spirits, evidently regarding all life as a joke, and frankly confessing that factory life especially was a joke, particularly when they had overtime. "It is 'larks' working late, and the governor he up and spoke to us so nice. He says, 'Girls, you won't mind doing a bit of overtime for the sake of our dear Queen?' and we says 'No.' _I_ shouldn't mind doing overtime every day of the week. I like the factory and should hate to be out of it." A few such girls there are who are in excellent health, like the work and don't find it monotonous, and, above all, enjoy the larger life that they meet in a factory just as girls in another social scale enjoy public school or college life. It is these who revel in their day's work and are not tired at the end of it, but how in actual fact they would like longer hours or systematic overtime it is impossible to say. It is probably the rarity of it, the stimulus and excitement of working against time for once in a way, the being put on their mettle by the "governor" himself, that make the enjoyment. We must also remember that the younger hands are those who take the most anti-social views of work and care least about industrial conditions. But even by these few, when the idea of all night work is suggested, it is scouted with horror. On the whole, the view adopted is that when you have done your day's work, you have done enough. A worker in the stationers' trade a.s.sured us that overtime means a doctor's bill, so you don't really make anything by it. The experience of two women who had tried nightwork illegally was also instructive.

[Sidenote: Overtime experience.]

A. an apparently strong woman was once offered a night job when she was hard up, and thought that it would be a "lark" to take it. She went in about 8 a.m. on Friday and worked on with intervals for meals till 3 p.m. on Sat.u.r.day, being paid piece rates for the day hours and 6_s._ for the work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. She was utterly done up in consequence of this work and lost more money next week than she made by the whole job.

B. once worked all night in a City shop for 5_s._ and got no good out of it, for she was so done up that she could not work at all next day, and very little the day after.

Three girls working at the same factory, and speaking of conditions there, said that when they were busy after 9.30 p.m. men were put on to do the card mounting. These girls ridiculed the idea that they disliked this or wanted to stay. "You feel quite done for by 9 o'clock. Girls sometimes cry, they get so tired in the evening." None of the three had ever heard of any girls who objected to the Factory Acts. "The little ones do not mind overtime so much because they get 3_d._ an hour the same as the full hands, but the full hands do mind. Overtime, _i.e._, till 4 p.m., on Sat.u.r.days is not so bad because you ain't so worn out."

C. thinks it a very good thing that women may not work at night--"hours are quite long enough as it is--you feel quite done up after working from 8 a.m. to 9.30 p.m."

D. is very much opposed to the idea of women working at night; she hears that in some places they work till 9 p.m. and thinks that dreadful. She has never heard anyone grumble that they cannot work longer, and scoffed at the idea. She herself hates overtime.

E.'s views are that if you've had work from 9 to 7 that is quite as much as you can do properly. She never likes her daughters to work overtime, because it only tires them out. It is sometimes rather provoking when a job comes in late after you've been sitting idle and you have to leave it, but thinks that it is better on the whole. Some women wouldn't mind working "all the hours that G.o.d gives," but it is very selfish of them.

Most can't stand it. If she had to be at the factory by 8 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., she never did any more work, because she was so tired.

So the instances could be multiplied. There is no mistaking the note of relief that runs through the experiences of the workers who have worked both before and after 1867. Forewomen, employers and factory inspectors, who are in the position of the "lookers-on at the game," from different standpoints are nearly unanimous in agreeing that protective legislation is beneficial.

The thirty-three firms, the authorities of which are returned as having stated that they give men at night work done by women during the day, consist for the most part of printing houses, and the work done by women was folding. The result produced by legislation is that men do the folding at night and on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, when there is a press of business, but in one or two cases, a regular staff of night workers is employed. As the men are slower workers than the women, and charge a far higher price for their labour, it is to the employer's interest to reduce nightwork to a minimum. Prospectuses, however, and weekly newspapers have to be folded during the night, and this must fall to the men's lot. In two firms, men occasionally do relief stamping for Christmas cards when there is a great press of work, and in one firm they do card mounting. In none of the above firms is there any question of employing men instead of women in the daytime. In one of the remaining two--a printing house--the manager said that perhaps he might have more women for folding; and in another the employer distinctly said that he would employ women for feeding his printing machines were it not for the limitations on their hours, which renders it impossible to keep them when a press of work comes in. These few cases can scarcely claim to const.i.tute a serious hindrance to women's employment; nor, in view of the chorus of grat.i.tude for factory legislation, can they be regarded as a serious indictment against that legislation.