CHAPTER IV.. _men and Women As Workers._

MEN AND WOMEN AS WORKERS.

One of the most important questions relating to women as workers is the exact relationship between their work and that of men, i.e., how far they are rivals in competition and how far they are helpers in co-operation. In some of these trades, such as that of the lithographic artists, this question has never arisen, because women have rarely entered the trade. Only five instances of women working as lithographic artists are known to the head of St. Bride's Institute. But that men and women have been rivals from time to time is placed beyond doubt, although it must always be remembered that the same work nominally is not always the same work actually.

Gold laying for cloth binding has, within the last quarter of a century, become the work of women who have taken the place of old "finishers" in some bookbinding firms, and at Dunstable women are reported as doing binding throughout. Women are employed as compositors much more frequently in the provinces than in London. In Edinburgh and Aberdeen, for instance, women are reported as being engaged in every process, except making-up and the heavy work of carrying type, in which men alone are employed. Type-setting and distribution of type are often done by women in Scotland. In some of the Edinburgh printing establishments women do practically the same work as men. The extensive employment of women during the compositors' strike in Edinburgh in 1872 to secure a fifty-one hours' working week was the result of the determination of the employers to defeat the Typographical Association, and at least one firm in London tried the same policy during the bookbinders' strike for an eight-hours' day in 1902 though apparently with no success. The enthusiasts for the introduction of women into the printing trades had for some time been trying to get a hold upon Edinburgh printing offices, but had failed until the strike of 1872. An enterprising employer then trained some girls from the Merchant Company's Schools--a better class of girls whom we find described sometimes as "stickit teachers"--to compose. The results were satisfactory, and the example was speedily followed. The strike failed and the displacement of men continued.

Something similar happened in Perth, where twenty-five years ago four girls were taken into the newspaper department of the offices of the Perthshire Advertiser. About seven years ago they were introduced into a commercial printing office, and a year later the Perthshire Constitutional began to employ them on general bookwork and setting-up newspaper copy, the proprietor claiming that he had the same right as the other offices to have cheap female labour. Thus the practice threatened to spread throughout the other commercial printing offices, and the men's Union thought it was time to bestir itself. It decided that the women must either be paid the same rates as the men or be got rid of altogether. This ultimatum was sent to the employers. The Constitutional complied with the demands of the Union and dismissed its women workers. The Advertiser at first proposed gradually to replace the girls by men in the commercial department, but to continue to run the newspaper department by female labour. The proprietor contended that this would not give him an unfair advantage over the other firms, as they employed linotype machines. The Union then decided to strike, and took thirty men out of the Advertiser office. Four remained in, and some other non-Union men were also engaged. The office continues to work under this system.

There has also been trouble in Grimsby (1899), owing to the employment of women on a bi-weekly newspaper, at Redhill (1898-1900), and at Reading (1902). Other places where the Typographical Association report women to be employed are, Louth (Lincolnshire), Aylesbury, Beccles, Fakenham, Warrington, etc.; whilst in Birmingham the experiment was tried about 1890, but has been abandoned. They are also employed at Bungay, but in decreasing numbers, because their proofs require so much more correcting than the men's that the valuable time thus lost is not compensated for by the cheapness of their labour. The same is true of Edinburgh, where their wages have fallen from a rate of 1s. 6d. to 1s. per average page. In Leicester a firm tried to employ women in distributing type at low rates of pay, but a protest from the local executive of the Typographical Association led immediately to the experiment being discontinued. There is an almost unanimous chorus of opinion that women's work as compositors is so inferior to men's that it does not pay in the long run. From the days of Miss Faithfull's experiments, the men have been able to boast that women could not touch them at the case. In Aberdeen the unwillingness of boys to submit to a long apprenticeship and the fear of parents that the linotype has spoiled the typographical trade, are said to be the main reasons necessitating the employment of women compositors.

Men in these trades have never looked upon women competitors with a friendly eye, the reason being that so many branches are just on the margin line of those occupations which are so light and easily picked up that women can supplant men in them altogether. The Typographical Association for over a quarter of a century has had to carry on a constant struggle with the employers in order to protect the journeymen printers against three forms of cheap labour--apprentices, unskilled men and women. Employers in a small way of business, maintaining establishments on little capital, where efficiency is not high, employ women on work done in larger and better equipped establishments exclusively by men. Here there is rivalry and competition, and women are preferred mainly because they accept lower wages, and because they are not members of Unions; and their lack of technical skill is not found to be a sufficient counterpoise to these advantages. But in these places an inferior kind of work is done, and if men were employed they would either have to accept wages below the generally enforced scale, or the whole character of the work and organisation of the business would have to be changed.

In the better equipped houses, where women are employed on work generally done by men, as in composing, only parts of a compositor's duty are performed by women, and the heavier or the more technical duties, such as carrying about the formes or imposing, are done as a rule by boys or men. So that here the rivalry is but partial, and, moreover, the employment of women does not always pay. It appears that in some cases, particularly in bookbinding, the application of machinery makes it possible for the less skilled and lower paid women to do work formerly done by men, so that men regard women plus the machine as their competitor. On the other hand machines have displaced women and have made new openings for men, as in the case of one of the most recently introduced folding machines which feeds itself. But the re-organisation of the workshop which follows the introduction of the machine cannot be regarded merely as a substitution of men's labour by women's or the opposite, for what really happens is an all-round shifting of the distribution of labour-power and skill, and a re-arrangement of the subdivision of labour. Men are transferred from one kind of work to another, owing mainly to a change in the volume of production; women are introduced not so much to take men's places as to fill places created by the re-organisation of work; youths also find a footing more often at the expense of women than of men. At certain points the machine simplifies processes and abolishes the need of paying for skill in the worker; at others it makes skill (sometimes, perhaps, a new kind of skill) more necessary; at one point it abolishes the need of paying for strength, at another it makes a new opening for strength. Thus the displacement which occurs, and the competition set up are often more apparent than real.

In the more miscellaneous trades over which this enquiry ranged a considerable mass of evidence points to the displacement of men by women. General statements to this effect are common in the evidence of both employers and employed. In firm A. it is alleged that women do the same work in card mounting as used to be done by men, and are paid 2s. for work which used to be paid for at 10s. Paging and numbering used to be men's work, but is now almost exclusively done by women. Plain relief stamping and black bordering have also drifted into the hands of women, whilst in various directions, such as the making and binding of cases, wrappering, or feeding printing and particularly lithographic machines, women are beginning to encroach upon men. These displacements are very often only local. Manchester has one experience; Edinburgh another. Leeds was agitated because women were displacing men on a French ruling machine, whilst elsewhere no similar move was taking place. But it must be emphasised again that in many of these instances careful enquiry shows that when men were employed they did something that the women do not now do, and that the employment of women was owing to an increased volume of trade, when new machinery or some other change had made a greater subdivision of labour possible and profitable. In some cases girls displace boys for no other reason than that boys cannot be found to do the work; this was the case in Manchester some ten years ago, when girls took the place of boys in letterpress work.

Generally, the results of our investigations show the following summary of the advantages and disadvantages of women's labour to the employer, and their employment in preference to men depends upon how far in any given case or under any given circumstances the balance of these advantages and disadvantages is on the side of the women--or, it must also be said, how far the employer is bound by conservative use and wont so as to be protected against any impulse to employ the best organisation for the efficient conduct of his business.

The advantages of the woman worker are:--

1. That she will accept low wages; she usually works for about half the men's wages.

2. That she is not a member of a Union, and is, therefore, more amenable to the will of the employer as the absolute rule of the workshop.

3. That she is a steady worker (much emphasis must not be placed upon this, as the contrary is also alleged), and nimble at mechanical processes, such as folding and collecting sheets.

4. That she will do odd jobs which lead to nothing.

Her disadvantages are:--

1. That she has less technical skill than a man, and is not so useful all round.

2. That she has less strength at work and has more broken time owing to bad health and, especially should she be married, domestic duties, and that her output is not so great as that of a man.

3. That she is more liable to leave work just when she is getting most useful; or, expressing this in a general way, that there are more changes in a crowd of women workers than in a crowd of men workers.

4. That employers object to mixed departments.

One interesting point must be noted in connection with these conclusions. In London, where women mainly work on the more unskilled and irregular processes, it is often difficult to see what industrial influence they are exerting. In Edinburgh or Aberdeen that is not so much the case. And one thing which is observable in these places is that the employment of women of itself leads to those minute subdivisions of labour characteristic of machine industry. "There are more subdivisions of labour amongst women than amongst men in the printing trade. For example, one girl will set-up the type, another will "brass-out" (put in heads and finish it), or two may sometimes be employed in finishing it."

Cheap, mechanical and light work consequently tends to be done by women, whilst the men enjoy almost undisputed possession of the rest. The woman worker, for instance, competes with the man in binding the cheap light note-book, whilst she rarely interferes with him in binding heavy ledgers. On the other hand, in some of the more mechanical departments, such as examining sheets of paper by touch, she attains a wonderful dexterity.

"The department where girls are beginning to encroach on men is in cloth-case work, that is, making the cases and putting them on. In the higher reaches of the trade the women do not show themselves to be so skilful. As yet the men's Unions have not shown much active opposition to women's work in this branch, provided always that one man is set to work with every five girls employed on it. The making of a 'case' is divided into five sections and illustrates the modern development of the division of labour system.

1st girl glues. 2nd girl lays on boards. Man cuts corners. 3rd girl turns in ends. 4th girl turns in fore-edge. 5th girl (young) puts it through rolling machine."]

We have also to note how very effectively conservative notions about women's sphere and chivalrous prejudices about protecting them, influence certain employers in determining what work they ought to do.

We have endeavoured to ascertain how far technical training would increase the pressure of competition between men and women, but in the present rudimentary state of such training there are few data to guide us to any very positive conclusion.

It is difficult, however, to see how in these trades the technical training of women would threaten men, except perhaps in the artistic branches. The use of the various mechanical type-setting machines has already led to some displacement of labour, and though the technique of setting and spacing might be taught to women in trade classes, the greater regularity of the male worker, and his remaining longer at the trade must always, in so skilled an industry as this, give him advantages over his female competitor. Nor would classes for women in bookbinding injure men bookbinders. For in this as in other trades women are not handicapped only by a want of skill, and if they attended classes, presumably they would be taught chiefly the arts and crafts side of bookbinding, and thus be led into branches of the trade at present undeveloped.

Moreover, a curious fact has to be kept in mind. Women workers are so lethargic that they are largely governed by use and wont. No remark is more frequent in the investigators' reports, than one to this effect, "That is men's work. Why? We do not know, but it is men's work, and we do not think about it." In some instances this use and wont is based on experience; in others, as in the backwardness of London employers in putting women to feed lithographic machines, its rational explanation is not obvious. In this respect the women themselves are very "loyal." "Once the employer wanted her," writes an investigator, "to varnish books, and offered her 5s. a book: she has a steady hand and could have done it quite well. It meant following a delicate zig-zag pattern with a paint brush. She refused indignantly, and said, 'I know my place and I'm not going to take men's work from them.'" And, again, a rigid sense of propriety, based on a certain amount of good reason, seems to determine many employers to separate male from female departments without further question.

So much is heard of women as rivals of men that we forget that women themselves are often preyed upon by still cheaper rivals, and the real value of technical training for women seems to lie in the fact that such training might protect them against these. Owing to the unskilled nature of their work, however, even technical education can afford to them only an unsatisfactory security against younger and cheaper persons. One of the investigators, for instance, reports:--

"It is the regular custom in A.'s now to have little girls at 3s. and 4s. a week doing work which women at 11s. and 12s. ought to do. They put a little girl beside a regular hand, and as soon as the little one masters the work [show-card mounting is being reported upon], they discharge the big one. When the little one asks for a rise, they give her 6d. or 1s. more, and when she wants still more, she goes." Figures follow showing that just under one-ninth of the women employed in this department at A.'s are "old hands." Then the report proceeds: "A. discharged about forty hands on the plea of slackness a little while ago, and then put up bills for learners." The investigators found that amongst the employées there was a very widespread opinion that "the learners always get all the best work," and that one of the regular features of the trade is, that it employs a large fluctuating number of learners, whilst a smaller number of skilled hands are kept in tolerably regular work.

The old hands occasionally object to teach the young ones, but nothing comes of their opposition to a system by which they are compelled to train their own executioners.