Women Wage-Earners Part 9

tells us that toward the end of the reign of Louis Philippe the wage of a woman varied ordinarily from twelve to twenty-five sous, exceptionally from twenty to forty; that of children being from six to fifteen sous; of men from thirty sous for ordinary laborers, to forty or forty-five for skilled work.

The census for 1851 gave for Paris 112,891 workwomen, 60,000 of whom were sewers. Convent sewing, that of the prisons and reformatories, and the compet.i.tion of women who had homes and worked simply for pin-money, kept the wage at a minimum; and these conditions still operate toward that end, precisely as they do for all countries where the needle is a means of support, the evil being felt most severely in our cities. The facts in the life of a French seamstress are much the same as those of the Englishwoman. To earn two francs a day she must make eight chemises, working from fourteen to sixteen hours daily to accomplish this. The income of the average sewer does not exceed, at the best, five hundred francs, and most usually falls below. Rents are so high that a garret requires not less than one hundred francs a year. In his researches into conditions, Jules Simon[32] found that this sum compelled deprivations of every order. Expenses were as follows: Rent, 100 francs; clothing, bedding, etc., 115 francs; washing, 36 francs; heat and light, 36 francs. These sums amounted to 286.50 francs, the amount remaining for food being 215.50 or a little less than twelve sous a day,--the amount expended by two of our own seamstresses in New York in 1887, the items being given by the earner.[33]

Existence on French soil, whether in Paris, the manufacturing towns, or the provinces, has come to mean something very different from the facts of a generation ago. Then, with wages hardly above "subsistence point,"

the thrifty Frenchwoman not only lived, but managed to put by a trifle each month. Wages have risen, but prices have at the same time advanced.

Every article of daily need is at the highest point,--sugar, which the London workwoman buys at a penny a pound, being twelve cents a pound in Paris; and flour, milk, eggs, equally high. Fuel is so dear that shivering is the law for all save the wealthy; and rents are no less dear, with no "improved dwellings" system to give the most for the scant sum at disposal. Bread and coffee, chiefly chiccory, make one meal; bread alone is the staple of the others, with a bit of meat for Sunday.

Hours are frightfully long, the disabilities of the French needleworker being in many points the same as those of her English sister. In short, even skilled labor has many disabilities, the saving fact being that unskilled is in far less proportion than across the Channel, the present system of education including many forms of industrial training.

Generations of freer life than that of England, and many traditions in her favor give certain advantages to the woman born on French soil. It is taken for granted that she will after marriage share her husband's work or continue her own, and her keen intelligence is relied upon to a degree unknown to other nations. Repeated wars, and the enrolment of all her men for fixed periods of service, have developed the capacity of women in business directions, and they fill every known occupation. The light-heartedness of her nation is in her favor, and she has learned thoroughly how to extract the most from every centime. There is none of the hopeless dowdiness and dejection that characterize the lower order of Englishwoman. Trim, tidy, and thrifty, the Frenchwoman faces poverty with a smiling courage that is part of her strength, this look changing often for the older ones into a patience which still holds courage.

Thus far there is no official report of the industries in which they are engaged, and figures must be drawn from unofficial sources. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the noted political economist, in his history of "The Labor of Women in the Nineteenth Century," computes the number of women at work in the manufactories of textile fabrics, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk, as nearly one million; and outside of this is the enormous number of lace-makers and general workers in all occupations. There are over a quarter of a million of these lace-workers, whose wages run from eighty and ninety centimes to two francs a day; and the rate of payment for Swiss lace-workers is the same.

During the Congres Feministe held in the autumn of 1892, Madame Vincent, an ardent champion of women wage-earners, presented statistics, chiefly from private sources, showing that out of 19,352,000 artisans in France, there are 4,415,000 women who receive in wages or dividends nearly $500,000,000 a year. Their wage is much less in proportion to the work they do than that of men, yet they draw thirty-five per cent of the entire sum spent in wages. In Paris alone, over 8,000 women are doing business on an independent footing; and of 3,858 suits judged in 1892 by the Workingman's Council, 1,674 concerned women. In spite of these numbers and the abuses known to exist, the Chamber of Deputies has refused practically to extend to women workers the law for the regulation of the conditions of work in workshops. The refusal is disguised under the form of adjournment of the matter, the reason a.s.signed being that the grievances of women are by no means ripe enough for discussion. Women themselves are not at all of the same mind; and the result has already been a move toward definite organization of trades, and united action for all women engaged in them,--a step hitherto regarded as impossible. The first effect of this has been a protest from Paris shopgirls against the action of the Chamber of Deputies, and the formation of committees whose business will be to enlist the interest and co-operation of women throughout the entire country,--a slow process, but one that will mean both education and final release from some at least of the worst disabilities now weighting all women workers.

"La femme devenue ouvriere, n'est plus une femme," wrote Jules Simon in a burst of despair at the conditions of the Paris workwoman; and he repeated the word as his investigations extended to manufacturing France, and he found everywhere the home in many cases abolished, the _creche_ taking its place till the child, vitally dependent upon a care that included love, gave up the struggle for existence, rendering its tiny quota to the long list of infant mortality. M. Leroy-Beaulieu had described years before the practical extinction of the family and the government interference[34] brought about by the discoveries made by the government inspecting committee, upon whom consternation seized as they found decadence of morals, enfeebled physique, and that the ordinary girl-worker at sixteen or seventeen could not sew a seam, or make a broth, or care for a child's needs or the simplest demands of a home.

Appalled at these conditions, France set about the organization of industrial schools, and these have altered the whole face of affairs.

Generations of abuses had made, up to the time of the investigation, the history of the working-cla.s.s in France. One of their best-known scientific observers, the statistician Villerme, examined in person, and as one of the government inspecting committee reported on the condition of dwellings in Lille, Amiens, and other manufacturing towns of France.

The weavers and spinners of Lille lived in caves, of which thirty-six hundred were found occupied by families,--father, mother, and children as soon as old enough, employed in the mills, and returning at night to these dens, where filth and darkness periodically did their work of decimation, and where infant mortality had reached the maximum.

Horrified at the discoveries made, three thousand of these dwellings were at once destroyed. But for unknown and quite inscrutable reasons six hundred were allowed to remain and receive double the original number of tenants.[35] Years pa.s.sed before the last cave was filled up, the children born in them providing an enormous percentage for prison and galleys. At Douai, Rouen, Roubaix, and many other points, such hideous filth marked the homes of the working-cla.s.s that Villerme reported: "The walls are covered with a thousand layers of ordure." The women, exhausted and depleted by a day's labor of from twelve to fourteen hours, had no time to think of cleanliness. In fact, its meaning had never been taught; and though industrial schools increase, hours are now shortened, and inspection is active, it remains true that almost the same conditions perpetuate themselves at many points,--the descriptions given by the great realist, Zola, of women and children in the mines, and the hideousness of their home life, being very literal and unexaggerated fact.

As to conditions of the work itself, many trades and occupations require for their proper carrying on methods and surroundings absolutely destructive to health. In all preparation of hemp and oak.u.m dust is excessive; far beyond that of the cotton-mill, which itself breeds consumption. In the spinning of flax great heat and water are both necessities. "Nothing is more wretched," writes Jules Simon, "than a linen-spinner's surroundings. Water covers the brick floor. The odor of the linen and a temperature often exceeding twenty-five Reaumur fill the workroom with an intolerable stench. The majority of the workwomen, obliged to put off most of their garments, are huddled together in this pestilential atmosphere, imprisoned in the machines, pressed one against the other, their bodies streaming with sweat, their feet bare to the ankle; and when a day, nominally of twelve hours but really of thirteen and a half, is over, they quit the workroom for home, the rags they wear barely protecting them from cold and damp."

Details of the same order abound in the work of the political economist M. Leroy-Beaulieu,[36] who seeks at all points to give the most favorable impression possible. In each and every case the great authorities appear to be of one mind as to the disastrous effects upon the children born to these mothers. That the _creche_ is now practically a part of every factory makes little or no difference.

"The _creche_," writes Jules Simon, "abolishes maternity in all save its pains. The working mother is defrauded of her own means of growth, bound up in the training of the child; and the child loses its right to be loved and guarded by love." In short, for all continental countries, as well as for England and our women, the question of child labor and the destiny of the child are inextricably bound up in that of the working mother, and are vital factors in working out the problem of woman as a wage-earner. What proportion of wage-earning women recruit the ranks of prost.i.tution, is a question often asked. In Paris, which is in one sense the focus of French labor, its many opportunities drawing to it a large contingent from the provinces, it is popularly supposed that the ranks of the sewing-women give large proportion to houses of prost.i.tution.

This opinion is the prevailing one for all large cities, whether in Europe or America, yet is disproved on all sides. For Paris Parent-Duchalet states that in the statistics given by the prefecture of police, in a table including forty-one categories, women with no occupation had first rank as prost.i.tutes, domestic service giving the second, and sewing-women the smallest proportion. This is the more surprising when one considers that their wage is often below the point of subsistence, and that temptation of every order waits upon them. At the best the wage falls far below that of men, even when both engage in the same work. The present movement toward organization is the first step toward a general bettering of all trades and their wage; and for fullest details of this, and work in connection with the admirable Bourse du Travail, one of its most important features of working life to-day in Paris, the reader must turn to the reports themselves, beginning with the first one, issued in 1887-88.[37] The same facts may be said to form the story of labor in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Italy, and at all points where women or children are at work, whether in factory or mine or workshop. For Belgium the situation is summed up in a very important and minute report of the government inquiry commission into the labor of women and children,--the first made in 1867 and followed by one in 1874, the latest having been made in 1891.[38]

A comprehensive law, promulgated Nov. 2, 1892, and regulating the labor of women and children in factories and mines, was amended in May, 1893, by the addition of very specific regulations as to all employments affecting health and morals. The Presidential decree consists of two parts,--the first dealing with the employment of women and children in connection with machinery when in motion, or in which the dangerous parts are not fully protected, in gla.s.s-blowing and in carrying weights.

The second part of the decree consists of three tables, of which A enumerates certain industries, chiefly the manufacture of acids, dyes, chemicals, etc., also manures and gla.s.s, crystal, and metal polishing, in which female and child labor are prohibited; B those in which children under eighteen must not work, chiefly the manufacture of explosives; and C, a large variety of other industries in which female and child labor is only allowed conditionally. The great majority of these are industries involving special risk through the disengagement of dust-particles or vapors; while a few are ranked as dangerous, owing to risk of fire and the contraction of special diseases, etc.

Belgium, French in feeling and in methods, has known some of the worst abuses discoverable on continental soil, thousands of women and children in her mines having toiled from twelve to sixteen hours a day, with often no Sunday rest, for a wage at bare subsistence point. In "Germinal," Zola, who spent months observing every phase of their life, has given a picture, unsurpa.s.sed in any literature, of the misery and degradation of the worker. An investigation in 1874, and indignation at some of the conditions then discovered, brought about modifications of the law. That of the general congress of 1891 accomplished much more; but work must still be done before any very marked advance becomes discernible.

Pa.s.sing to Germany, a good two-thirds of the women are at work in field or shop or home, the proportion of women in agriculture being larger than in any other country of Europe. Her schools furnish better training than those of any other nation. In all these points Prussia leads, though till recently legislation has been in behalf of child-workers, and women have been practically ignored. But factory regulations are minute and extended; and the questions involved in the labor of women, and its bearing on health, longevity, etc., are now coming under consideration. In Silesia, as early as 1868, women were excluded from the salt-mines; and the Labor Congress of 1889 brought about many changes of the laws on this point for Belgium and Germany. In Italy, in which country industrial education is now receiving much attention, the labor of women, continuous, severe, and underpaid, as it is known to be, finds small mention, save among special students of social questions.

Russia has practically no data from which judgment can be formed. In short, it is only in English-speaking countries that really efficient action as to the labor of women has taken place; while even for them the work has but begun, and new and more radical forms will be necessary for any real progress toward final betterment. Toward such end the labor bureaus of our own country are working diligently; and it is with them that we have next to do, the investigations already made and incorporated in their reports being full of suggestion for future workers.

The census of 1882 gave for Germany, in a population of 45,222,113 persons, 23,071,364 women, of whom 1,109,530 were widows, and 5,467,730 unmarried, a large proportion of both these cla.s.ses being self-supporting. An immense number of these were agricultural laborers.

In Prussia in 1867 the census gave the number of women agricultural laborers as 1,054,213. Woman's wage for a day's labor, always twelve and often fourteen hours, is from twenty to twenty-five cents, about a third of that received by men doing the same work. Bra.s.sey, the great railroad contractor, found throughout Germany that her wage was always a third and often a quarter less than that of men.

For united Germany the description given by Villerme in 1836 is still true for many points. "The misery in which the cotton spinners and weavers of the upper Rhine live," he writes, "is so profound that it produces the saddest results. In the families of manufacturers, drapers, merchants, etc., half the children born attain their nineteenth year, this same half ceasing to exist before the age of two years in the families of weavers and workers at cotton-spinning."

As to numbers employed in trades and industries, it is difficult to secure them with exactness. The census of 1871 reported three tenths of the population as agricultural, the males employed in agriculture being 2,338,174, and the females 4,426,573. Household service had 840,000 women on its rolls. In 1875 the cotton-mills employed in weaving and spinning 95,934 women; the woollen manufacture, nearly 193,000; linen, hemp, and jute, 190,000. The labor of women and children was hardly recognized, and statistics had to be disentangled as best they might be from general tables of occupations. Through the persistent efforts of the Centre in the German Reichstag, a gradual betterment of the working-cla.s.ses has been brought about, and thus indirectly that of women and children,--the first combined and determined effort being made in 1889, when three bills were brought up for discussion. The first made the working-day not to exceed eleven hours; the second demanded the suspension of industrial labor on Sunday, save in exceptional cases, when five hours' labor was to be allowed; the third concerned the labor of women and children, and with some modifications is practically the law to-day. Night and Sunday labor in mines, smelting-works, rolling-mills, and dockyards is entirely forbidden, nor can married women work more than ten hours a day. The Federal Council has the right also to forbid the employment of women and children in all factories and establishments where health and morals are exposed to exceptional dangers.

At the period at which the investigations which brought about the agitation of the question were made, the number of child laborers had increased in two years from 155,000 to 192,000, children hardly more than babies being in the factories. At present the law forbids the employment of any child under twelve, and not less than three hours'

schooling daily is compulsory. Abuses exist at all points, women workers in mines faring, even with shortened day, in very evil case,--the wage at or below subsistence point and the general conditions of the most hopeless order. Constant agitation goes on in the Reichstag, and organization among the women themselves will in time bring about needed reforms; but as a whole the German woman is in many points less considered than the women of any other civilized nation.

Though Italy is pre-eminently an agricultural country, and men, women, and children are alike employed in agricultural pursuits, there has been no trustworthy record of numbers engaged. In manufacturing there are more statistics, but interest in the woman's share in labor is of recent date. In the silk manufacture, in which Italy ranks second only to China, and far beyond all other compet.i.tors, 81,165 women and 25,373 children were employed in 1877, chiefly in unwinding coc.o.o.ns, the number at present having increased nearly ten per cent. In the cotton industry there were employed, at the time of the same census, 2,696 women and 2,520 children; and a proportionate increase in numbers has taken place.

In the flax and hemp industries nearly seventy thousand workers used hand-looms at home, the larger proportion of these being women. In the factories it was found that 2,565 women and 1,227 children were at work as spinners, and 3,394 women and 1,020 children as weavers. Women are steadily employed in the manufacture of straw hats and bonnets, in jute in many forms, in cigar and cigarette making, and in many other industries, cheap clothing leading. Of the thirty millions and more of population, not quite half are women; and of these nearly half are wage-earners, the majority in unrecorded forms of labor,--chiefly household service or the care of their own homes, with some petty industry adding its mite to the yearly income. But industrial training has but begun for Italy. The wage is pitiably low, the conditions of living hard and full of privation; nor can these facts alter till better education and organization have been brought about. The latest Italian census is not yet published; but proofs of tables of the comparative wage for twenty years in some of the princ.i.p.al industries have been sent me through the courtesy of Signor Luigi Bodio, the minister of agriculture, commerce, and general statistics. From these tables it is found that the daily wage of women cotton-spinners has risen from sixty centimes, in 1871, to one franc twenty-six centimes in 1891, this being the equivalent of one lire twenty-six centissimi. The wage for weaving has risen from eighty centimes, in 1871, to one franc twenty-six centimes in 1891. Spoolers in 1871 received eighty-eight centimes as against one franc thirty centimes in 1891. In hemp-spinning the wage has fallen from ninety to eighty centimes, but has risen from ninety-eight centimes to one franc thirty centimes for twisting; the wage in the cases cited being a little more than a third that of men. In paper-making experienced workers now receive one franc fifty-two centimes as against sixty-six centimes in 1871; and in making of stearine candles one franc as against seventy-eight centimes in 1871.

Running through the tables of every industry, the average is about the same,--the wage for women, even when doing the same work, hardly more than a third that for men, and the amount for either at bare subsistence point.

In Russia the woman's wage is but a fifth that of men, with working conditions, save at a few points where the work of Professor Janzhul and his confreres has told, at the very worst,--the day being from twelve to sixteen hours long even in the best-managed factories, while in the village industries, which, owing to the peculiar conditions of Russian life, make up the larger proportion of her industries, it is for many workers almost unending, the merest respite being given for sleep.

As yet but few authentic figures as to the numbers employed are given, though on the first investigation into domestic industries made a few years since it was found that over 890,000 were engaged in them, and also at the same time in agriculture. Manufacturing in Russia concentrates about Moscow and St. Petersburg, which represent more than two fifths of the whole production of the empire. The requirements of nine tenths of the Russian people are met by domestic manufacture in the villages, and home-weaving for the market employs over two hundred thousand workers, other textiles, leather, etc., being dealt with in the same way.

In the other northern countries of Europe,--Norway, Sweden, and Denmark,--manufactures are at a minimum, fisheries and agriculture being the chief industries. Women are employed in both; and in the few factories there is a small proportion of women and children, working at a wage much less than that given to men. Sweden has a most admirable system of industrial education; and Norway and Denmark, though far less in population, have adopted the same methods. But the limitations of all wage-earning women are felt here in the same manner as elsewhere, the summary for all countries being much the same. The Northern workwoman has the advantage of training and of as keen a sense of economy as the Frenchwoman; but her wage is most usually at or below subsistence point, and her difficulties are those of the worker in general,--long hours, insufficient pay, and fierce compet.i.tion.

As to the present laws concerning the length of the working-day, a general abstract is found in a return issued in reply to an address from the House of Commons, an abstract of which was given in "St. James'

Gazette":--

"In France the hours of adult labor are regulated by a series of decrees, of which the earliest, promulgated September, 1848, enacts that the workingman's day in manufactories and mills shall not exceed twelve hours of 'effective' or actual labor. A decree issued in May, 1851, made exceptions, so that more hours might be worked in certain trades. In 1885 a circular was issued stating that the limit of twelve hours _per diem_ was not to be imposed where hand-power was employed, but was to be confined to manufactories and mills in which the motive power was machinery. No workshops were to come under the clauses of the act that did not employ more than twenty hands in any one shed. The report says: 'It is likewise to be borne in mind that there is in France no compulsory observance of Sunday, and no day of habitual rest.'

"The reports of the French inspectors of labor appear to show that the Act of 1848 is very loosely interpreted. It is even doubtful whether the section limiting the actual working-day to twelve hours was intended to include or exclude hours of rest. Practically the legal time is made to exclude rest. This makes the working-day so much the longer. Thus one of the French inspectors states that the hours of attendance in factories under the Act of 1848 are from five in the morning until seven in the evening, or a total of fourteen hours, out of which there are twelve hours of 'effective labor.' But the same authority also states that 'effective' time often extends to thirteen and fourteen hours in many weaving-establishments. Finally, we are told that, as a rule, it may be taken that Frenchmen employed in factories are present in the shops at least fourteen hours out of every twenty four.

"Among the countries having no laws affecting the hours of adult labor, Germany is conspicuous. Employers, however, cannot force their servants to work on Sundays and feast-days. Employment of youthful or female labor in certain kinds of factories, which is attended with special danger to health or morals, is forbidden, or made conditional on certain regulations, by which night labor for female work-people is especially forbidden. In Germany, as in other countries also, women may not be employed in factories for a certain time after childbirth. In Hesse-Darmstadt the medium duration of labor is from ten to twelve hours,--the cases in which the latter time is exceeded being, however, more frequent than those in which the former is not exceeded. The normal work-day throughout Saxony in all the princ.i.p.al branches of industry is from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M., with half an hour for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and half an hour for supper. In the manufacturing industry there are departures from these hours, the period of work in spinning and weaving mills not infrequently being twelve hours.

"In Austria the law provides that the duration of work for factory hands shall not exceed eleven hours out of the twenty-four, 'exclusive' of the periods of rest. These are not to be less in the aggregate than an hour and a half. The rule can be modified by the minister of commerce, in conjunction with the minister of the interior, allowing longer hours. The hours have been so extended to twelve hours in certain industries, such as spinning-mills, and even to thirteen in silk manufactories. Sunday rest is enforced. In Hungary there is no limit laid down by law, but the hours are not generally longer than in Austria.

"Concerning the actual hours of adult labor in Belgium, some difficulty is said to be experienced in getting at the facts. The evidence given before a Belgian royal commission showed that railway guards are sometimes on duty for fifteen and even nineteen and a half hours at a stretch; and the Brussels tram-way-drivers are at work from fifteen to seventeen hours daily, with a rest of only an hour and a half at noon. Brick-makers work during the summer months sixteen hours a day. In the sugar refineries the average hours are from twelve to thirteen for men and from nine to ten for women. The cabinetmakers, both at Ghent and Brussels, a.s.sert that they have often to work seventeen hours a day.

"In Switzerland the law provides that a normal working-day shall not exceed eleven hours, reduced on Sat.u.r.days and public holidays to ten. Power is reserved for prolonging the working-day in certain circ.u.mstances. Except in cases of absolute necessity Sunday labor is prohibited, and in establishments where uninterrupted labor is required, each working hand must have one free Sunday out of two.

Women cannot under any circ.u.mstances be employed in night or Sunday labor. Italy has not legislated for adults, but has made regulations for child labor. Sweden is in the same position. Spain and Portugal have done nothing. The general rule in the latter country, applying to old and young, is to work from sunrise to sunset, an hour and a half being allowed for meals. In the Netherlands a law was recently promulgated to prevent excessive and dangerous work by grown-up women and young persons. In Turkey the working-day lasts from sunrise to sunset, with certain intervals for repose and refreshment. In Russia, where there are no laws affecting the hours of adult labor, the normal working-day in industrial establishments averages twelve hours, though it is often extended to fourteen and even sixteen."

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Histoire des Cla.s.ses Ouvriers en France depuis 1789 jusqu'a nos Jours, par E. Leva.s.seur.

[32] L'Ouvriere, par Jules Simon.

[33] Prisoners of Poverty, p. 118.

[34] Le Travail des Femmes au XIX. Siecle, par Paul Leroy-Beaulieu.

[35] L'Ouvriere, p. 158.

[36] Le Travail des Femmes aux XIX. Siecle.

[37] Annuaire de la Bourse du Travail. Volumes from 1887 to 1892 inclusive.

[38] Rapport sur l'Enquete faite au nom de l'Academie Royale de Medecine de Belgique, par la commission chargee d'etudier la question de l'emploi des femmes dans les travaux souterrain des mines, Bruxelles, 1868.

Doc.u.ments nouveaux relatifs au travail des femmes et des enfants, dans les manufactures, les mines, etc, etc. Bruxelles, 1874.

CHAPTER IX.

GENERAL CONDITIONS AMONG WAGE-EARNING WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES.