The economic position of women

by Academy of Political Science in the City of New York

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In 1870, the earliest year for which statistics are available, 14.7%, and in 1900 20.6% of the female population 16 years of age and over were breadwinners.

[2] In 1870, 58.1% and in 1900 only 39.4% of all females 10 years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations were in the division “domestic and personal service.”

[3] Boston Courier, July 13, 1829.

[4] From the proceedings of the National Trades’ Union, published in the National Laborer, Nov. 12, 1836, and reprinted in the Documentary History of American Industrial Society, vol. vi, pp. 285-6.

[5] In 1870 nearly 20% of all females 10 years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations were in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits and only 1% in trade and transportation, but in 1900, while the proportion of women in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits had increased to 24.7%, the proportion in trade and transportation had increased to 9.4%.

[6] Carey, Miscellaneous Pamphlets, Phila., 1831, “To the Ladies who have undertaken to establish a House of Industry in New York,” and “To the Editor of the New York Daily Sentinel,” Select Excerpta (A collection of newspaper clippings made by Matthew Carey, now in the Ridgway Branch of the Library Company, Philadelphia), vol. 13, pp. 138-142; Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land, 3d ed., p. 15.

[7] Quoted in Carey, Miscellaneous Pamphlets, No. 12, Philadelphia, 1831.

[8] New York Daily Tribune, July 9, August 19, 1845.

[9] Fincher’s Trades’ Review, Nov. 21, 1863.

[10] Industrial Leader, July 9, 1887.

[11] Workingman’s Shield, Cincinnati, Jan. 12, 1833.

[12] Workingman’s Advocate, Chicago, June 6, 1868.

[13] Mitchell, History of the Greenbacks, p. 307.

[14] Montgomery, Practical Detail of the Cotton Manufacture of the United States, 1840, pp. 173-174.

[15] Montgomery, op. cit.

[16] Massachusetts House Document, no. 50, 1845, p. 3.

[17] Quoted in the Voice of Industry, a labor paper published in Lowell, Nov. 28, 1845.

[18] New York Sun, Dec. 3, 1877.

[19] Lynn Record, Jan. 1, 8, March 12, 1834.

[20] The American Workman, Boston, Aug. 7, 1869; Workingman’s Advocate, Chicago, April 28, 1866; The Revolution, N. Y., Oct. 8, 1868.

[21] Carey’s Select Excerpta, Vol. 4, pp. 11-12.

[22] Baltimore Republican, Oct. 2, 1833.

[23] Peoples’ Paper, Cincinnati, Sept. 22, Oct. 6, 1844.

[24] New York Daily Tribune, July 31, Sept. 11, 1851; June 8, 1853.

[25] Mechanics’ Free Press, Phila., Jan. 17, 1829; New York American, Jan. 5, 1829; National Gazette, Phila., Jan. 7, 1829.

[26] Baxter, C. H., History of the Fall River Strike, 1875.

[27] Voice of Industry, Feb. 20, 1846.

[28] Gray, Argument on Petition for Ten-Hour Law, 1873, pp. 21-22.

[29] In that year it was said that a man and two women working together from twelve to sixteen hours a day earned a dollar among them, and that the women, if they did not belong to the family, received each about $1.25 a week for their work. Workingman’s Advocate, July 27, 1844.

CHANGES IN WOMEN’S WORK IN BINDERIES[30]

MARY VAN KLEECK

Committee on Women’s Work, New York City

“Bookbinding is a very uncertain trade,” said a forewoman who had held her position fourteen years; “I wouldn’t advise any young girl to go into it. There is so much machinery now. Where a girl used to make eight or nine dollars, she now makes five or six, and that’s not a living. Also you never know when you’ll be laid off. Take the magazine binderies. They don’t keep the girls a full month. Ten days is their month. Twelve days is a long month. It’s a bad arrangement to do thirty days’ work in twelve. You have to pay board every week.”

Remarks like these were made by many girls employed in the bookbinding trade in New York. For the most part they did not see reasons or remedies for the conditions which they faced, but by daily experience they had learned this fact of change as it appeared in numerous guises, irregular employment, irregular hours, hit-or-miss methods of learning, cuts in wages, and the displacement of workers by the coming of machines. If their impressions be correct, more important than any photographic description of their economic position, regarded as a static thing, is an account of changes in conditions and their effect on women workers.

If we attempt to verify the statements of the workers by the official figures in the census, showing the proportion of men and women employed in binderies at successive enumerations,[31] we shall be surprised and somewhat bewildered. In 1870 30% were women, 70% were men; in 1880 39.7% were women, 60.3% were men; in 1890 48.5% were women, 51.5% were men; in 1900 51.6% were women, 48.4% were men.

This rapid shifting of the relative proportion of men and women would lead the statistician to suppose that in this trade was to be found a perfect example of the displacement of men by women. Behind the figures one seems to read the story of a struggle in which men have been the losers. Yet the comments of workers and employers, and the conditions actually witnessed in binderies in New York contradict this reading of census figures. Evidently more facts are needed in order to understand what is happening in the trade.

The bindery trade in New York employs about five thousand women, a third of all the women at work in binderies in the United States. A few are at work in hand binderies, where craftsmen of two or three centuries ago would find tools and methods not entirely unfamiliar. Others work in “edition binderies,” where machines bind books by the thousands. Others work in pamphlet binderies, or magazine binderies. The methods and conditions differ in these different branches of the trade.

Whether a book is bound by hand or machine, whether it is covered with levant or paper, whether it is sewed with linen thread or stitched with wire, certain processes are necessary. The sheets must be folded into portable size, the folded sections must be held together in proper order, and the whole must be covered. It is in the matter of the covering that the branches of the trade differ most widely. The making of the hand-bound book, designed to last longest, demands the most numerous processes. At the other extreme is the paper-covered pamphlet.

The machine method of binding books omits many processes of hand binding, and combines others into one simple operation. In hand binding, one book is the center of attention until it is finished, and each volume requires slightly different treatment. In machine binding, the method is to repeat one process thousands of times, adopting the factory system with its division of processes and its labor-saving machines. A pamphlet should be folded and its sections placed in proper order as accurately as a book bound in cloth or morocco, but as it is to be covered only with heavy paper, it requires no such careful pressing, trimming, and retrimming, rounding and backing, glueing, lining-up, drawing-in, and all the other diverse manipulations by which the artistic binder assures the preservation of the sheets in a solid and substantial cover made by hand. A periodical is a species of pamphlet, but it is distinguished by uniformity of size week after week or month after month. Thus it lends itself admirably to machine production.

Women are standing on the threshold of the bindery trade. All the work of preparing the sheets is theirs, folding, placing them in sequence, and attaching them together with paste, thread or wire. In pamphlet binding they put on the covers, but in edition binderies, they have no share at all in the important work of the forwarding department, and they enter the finishing department only in order to lay the gold on the covers and to examine and wrap the completed volumes. Will the process of change give them greater or less opportunities?

The machine is the great fact which looms large before the eyes of bindery women, when they describe changes in their trade. They accept it as they would accept a rainy day but it usually spells “out of work” for someone in the bindery, and the calamity of unemployment is more immediate and real to the workers than are the advantages of better methods of production.

The different methods of folding sheets illustrate the development of machinery. Often these different methods are found together in one workroom. For example, in an edition bindery in New York the sheets are fed into one of the six point folding machines or placed in the automatic folder or, very rarely, folded by hand. In the first case, girls sitting on high stools feed each separate sheet into the machine, placing the printed dots on needle-like points, which serve as guides, while their helpers, the learners, take out the folded sections and “jog” them straight on tables. If the pages are to be folded by the automatic machine, they are placed in the proper position under two rubber knuckles, which push them toward the folding rollers. The forewoman, in addition to her other work, keeps watch to see that the folding is properly done, but no hand work is required except to pile the sheets under the rubber fingers and to lift the folded sections from the boxes into which the machine delivers them. Between the “point” machine and the “automatic” was another invention not found in this bindery. In it the points gave place to automatic gauges, and the girl who fed it need only flick the sheet from the pile so that the machine could grip it. By dispensing with the points on which each sheet must be fitted much time was saved. Obviously the next step was to supply an automatic feeder.

The stories of displaced workers illustrate what happens when new machines are introduced. One girl had been employed in bindery work three years. As a learner, she had “knocked up” sections folded by the “point” machine. She was paid three dollars a week, and continued the same process one year. Then when a vacancy occurred, she was given a chance to operate the machine. It was not easy to learn, nor could it be done in a day or a week. At first she received a weekly wage of four dollars and fifty cents, but “advanced rapidly” until she was earning nine dollars.

One day an automatic machine appeared in the workroom and proved so successful that it was used in preference to the point folders. This girl was given hand folding, which is “terrible work.” It is hard to earn a living wage by hand folding. The worker is paid a cent or a cent and a half for folding one hundred sheets if one fold is necessary. If the sheets are large and heavy like those in a dictionary the work of folding is very exhausting, although the pay may be higher. If one is paid four cents for one hundred sheets, she must fold nearly three thousand sheets in a day or seventeen thousand five hundred in a week to earn seven dollars. Moreover, each sheet must be folded three times, and each fold creased smooth by drawing the bone folding knife across the heavy paper. This girl was paid four cents a hundred for folding the pages of an encyclopedia, but she could not earn more than seven dollars a week, in spite of her efforts to work rapidly. She left because she was not needed for hand folding and the forewoman thought that there would be no more work for “point feeders.” She advised her to learn some other process.

An employment bureau sent her to a bindery where a point feeder was needed, but the machine was not the same make as the one which she had been operating, and therefore she was not employed. After a fruitless search for work in her trade, she was employed by a manufacturer of neckwear as a learner without wages. Later, as an experienced operator, she earned seven to nine dollars a week.

Another girl had operated a point folding machine in a large edition bindery. Newer inventions were introduced, and gradually more and more work was transferred to them. This girl was a piece worker, and her wages were depressed steadily as the machine which she was operating fell into disuse. She had learned only two other processes, hand folding and filling the boxes of the gathering machine. There was no gathering machine in this bindery, and the prices for hand folding were not high enough to yield a living wage. This girl and her sister, also a bookbinder, lived alone, and were dependent on their own earnings. She had decided to look for work in another bindery, when the forewoman offered to teach her to gather by hand. Gathering is not easy work. “At first,” she said, “I was so tired at night I could hardly keep my eyes open at supper. I said yesterday I wished I had one of those things you put on your feet to measure the distance you walk; I’d like to know how many miles I walk in a day. There’s no boys to carry our work. The folding machines are at the other end of the bindery, and we carry the work the distance from one street to another. That’s a block. If there are forty sections in a book, we walk it forty times for that one book.” Nevertheless her experience in handling sheets made it possible for her to learn the new process easily, so that by the end of six months she was earning approximately ten to eleven dollars a week piece work, whereas the point folding machine had yielded her a maximum of nine or ten dollars.

An expert wirestitcher in a magazine bindery sometimes earned twenty-four dollars in the busiest week of the month when she worked overtime. When a combined gathering and wirestitching machine was introduced for binding small magazines, she was transferred to work on a weekly periodical whose pages were too large to fit the new machine. Her work was inserting during part of the week and mailing during the rest of the time. She earned ten to eleven dollars piece work, and had steadier employment than if she had continued to stitch the monthly magazine.

A gatherer, who had had long experience, “made a fuss” when the gathering machine was introduced, and was given an opportunity to operate it at a wage of eighteen dollars, the regular rate paid to men for this work. Young girls were employed to fill the boxes. The other gatherers were obliged to learn other processes in this establishment or seek work elsewhere.

The important fact common to these stories is that there was no systematic effort to prevent the maladjustment which was due not to the inefficiency of the workers but to change in industrial organization. The displaced employes had not been in a position accurately to foresee these changes; the appearance of the machine in the workroom was usually their first warning that they must seek other occupations. Time was lost in the effort to make the required readjustments. It does not appear that this loss of time was a necessary evil. On the other hand, it is evident that solutions were possible, and that the suffering of the workers was due to the fact that readjustments were matters of chance rather than forethought.

There is another fact, almost as important as the introduction of machinery, and that is the failure to introduce it. Of the 306 binderies visited in the course of this investigation, including temporary departments of printing offices, lithographing establishments and other branches of the industry, there were only nine in which no handworkers were employed.

In 234 some machine was used.
In 66 no machines were used.
In 6 the use of machines was not ascertained.
In 20 a gathering machine was found.
In 269 no gathering machine was found.
In 17 the use of a gathering machine was not ascertained.
In 112 a folding machine was found.
In 181 no folding machine was found.
In 13 the use of a folding machine was not ascertained.

Several employers discussed the use of machinery and gave their reasons for not introducing it. Small firms could not run the risk of investing capital in machines which might change soon again. It was better to be a specialist in one process and give out part of the work to other establishments. Others did not have large enough orders to keep a machine for one process in motion all day. High rents prevented others from providing larger space for machinery. Others were inert. As long as there were girls willing to take low wages for handwork, it was just as well to continue in the old way.

This failure to introduce machines brings about a diversity in methods which is very confusing to the worker. It prevents the establishment of a standard and makes necessary a different bargain in each factory. “You see every bindery is a little different,” said one woman; “when you go to a new place you never can tell what it will be like.” In so far as machines compel uniformity, they help to standardize both processes and conditions of work.

The way in which machinery breaks up a trade into establishments making a specialty of one branch of work has been noted. The other form of specialization is illustrated in the case of employes who practise only one process in the workroom. This sort of specialization does not seem to be inevitable. In a bindery in New York where there were machines for every process, “all round” workers were in demand, and those who could turn from one process to another were not laid off. But, however great may be the demand for employes experienced in more than one line of work, it is the tendency of machinery to force a worker to practise only one. If you are a piece-worker, to lose practise means to lose wages. On the other hand, the machine will not yield its maximum profit unless it be kept in constant operation. Thus while general practise in all branches of the trade brings to the worker the desirable power of adjustment to changing conditions, nevertheless the employer’s wish to keep his machines in motion, and the piece worker’s eagerness not to lose the speed which comes from constant practise, both tend to organize the bindery force in separate departments, whose workers are not interchangeable. The same demand of the machine, that it be fed with enough work to keep it in constant motion, forces the employer either to specialize in one department, or to secure more orders and to enlarge his establishment.

It is obvious that the larger the establishment, the more successful will be the attempt to keep every machine in motion throughout the working day. The feeder of the machine will then have little opportunity to practise other processes. “Establishments are now so large that a woman learns only one process,” said one superintendent; “for example, she becomes a sewer and does nothing but that.” In the light of this fact, the census figures showing the size of establishments are significant. In New York State in 1905, 53.9% of the total number of wage earners were employed in 26 binderies, 8.6% of the total number of establishments in the trade. There were 6 more binderies counted in New York State in 1905 than in 1900 (304 in 1905, 298 in 1900) while wage earners increased 11.6% or 832 in number.

Specialization shows itself in another way, namely, in an inability to turn from one kind of product to another. There is a large bindery in New York where several periodicals are bound. A girl employed there complained of the irregularity of her work. “It seems pretty hard on a girl,” she said, “to have to stay home two days in the week and then have to work so hard the other days.” Her employment was due to the different methods of binding different periodicals. Two weekly magazines were brought to the bindery on Tuesday and must be mailed on Thursday. Hand folders and wirestitchers were needed to bind them. An engineer’s magazine must be bound between Tuesday and Friday. The work on this was hand folding, gathering by machine, and sewing by machine, instead of wirestitching. Another publication was brought from the printer on Friday and issued on Monday. It was folded by machine and wirestitched. On Friday evening and Saturday there was no work for a hand folder or an operator of the sewing machine. Wednesday was the busiest day in the bindery; two magazines must be completed for the mailers on Thursday. Overtime was usual on that day. This girl could fold by hand, fill the gathering machine and operate the sewing machine. She worked from Tuesday to Friday. The issues of the magazine had been smaller than usual and her earnings were reduced. She reported that at hand folding, if there were plenty of work, she could earn seventy-five cents or a dollar a day. For filling the gathering machine the rate was eighteen cents an hour or one dollar fifty-three cents a day. But there had been so little work that her earnings in the past three weeks had been:

January 4th-10th, $3.19;
January 11th-17th, $7.75;
January 18th-26th, $3.21.

If she had been steadily employed, she could have earned five or six dollars a week as a hand folder, or nine dollars and nine cents for filling the gathering machine. “There isn’t much chance for a sewer any more in magazine binderies,” she said; “you know nearly all the magazines used to be sewed, but now they are wirestitched.”

When different kinds of orders demand different processes, the specialist must be prepared to face not only change in machinery, but change in the size or character of her employer’s orders. This sort of change may affect the organization of the workroom. Recently a magazine, which had been gathered by machine, was enlarged by doubling the size of its pages. Thereafter a force of inserters was employed, and there was no work for gatherers. It may affect the process and its demands on the worker. In one bindery a little girl was employed to cut off books for one machine, earning four dollars. “I can keep up with the machine when the books are the right size,” she said; “but it’s awful when they’re thin.” It may affect wages. One girl who had been employed to operate the sewing machine in the book department was transferred to the magazine department where her work was to look over sheets folded by machine and to fill the boxes of the gathering machine. Her pay was reduced from ten dollars to a wage varying from five to seven dollars according to the kind of work assigned to her. This transfer from work on one product to another requiring different processes was due to the fact that much of the book work formerly done by this firm was withdrawn by a large publishing house which had recently organized its own bindery.

If we trace the history of the folding machine or the gathering machine we find that with the development of automatic feeding devices the tendency is to dispense with the work of women and to employ men to care for the machines. It is not a displacement of women by men; it is rather the substitution of rubber fingers or other automatic feeders for women’s hands, and as a result a reorganization of the force.

What then is the meaning of the census figures which tell us that in 1870 30% of the bookbinders were women and 70% were men, while in 1900, 51.6% were women and 48.4% were men? In the absence of any data as to the number employed in different branches of the trade in 1870 and in 1900, the answer must be in part merely hypothetical. Judging by present tendencies in the trade the cause of change in the proportion of men and women would appear to be twofold. It has been pointed out that the share of women in hand binding is relatively small, that they do only the folding, gathering and sewing, and that the numerous processes of forwarding and finishing are usually in the hands of men. Hence in the early days of the trade, when hand binderies predominated, men were in the majority. In the development of the industry two important changes have taken place. With the introduction of machinery, many processes of forwarding and finishing were omitted, while others were combined in one simple operation. At the same time there was a great increase in the production of pamphlets, which need only to be folded, gathered, stitched and covered. The first decreased the relative number of men needed in edition binderies; the second increased the demand for the processes always performed by women. Thus it would appear that without any shifting of the line between men’s work and women’s work, the proportion of women steadily increased between 1870 and 1900.

If during the three decades between 1870 and 1900 there was a struggle between men and women and a transfer of processes to women, it seems to have left no trace on present trade conditions. The instances of this kind of transfer are so scattered as to seem the exceptions that prove the rule. The possibility of carrying on more processes than their present share in the trade does not appear to be a burning question among the women. One employer, in charge of an edition bindery, said that the issue had never been raised. “The women would just say, ‘It’s men’s work.’” One girl, who had fed a ruling machine, work requiring no skill, was asked if she had ever wished to learn to operate the machine. “Oh, no,” she said; “ruling is gentlemen’s work. There are no lady rulers. The gentlemen have their hands in the ink pots all day, and no lady wants to get her hands inked like that.” “A woman can learn to feed the ruling machine in a day,” said another; “she doesn’t need to bother with managing it.” “The smell of the glue is awful,” said another, speaking of covering; “it’s men’s work.” Another, describing a machine which could fold, gather and insert, said, “It’s men’s work,” although each one of these processes formerly had belonged to women.

Nor do employers appear to have given much thought to the question. One, an “art binder,” said that the work of women was restricted only by the trade union, and that they were capable of doing men’s work. He added, however, that a woman would find it difficult to do the work fast enough to make it profitable. Another, the superintendent of an edition bindery, said that the work of women was restricted by capacity, not by the rule of any organization; they would not have strength to handle the machines which the men operate. Another, a “job binder,” said that he employed women for temporary work only, because they were not strong enough to lift books and be “generally useful.” “If you employ a woman, you can’t give her anything but sewing,” said another job binder; “while a man can turn his hand to other things.”

But the superintendent of a magazine bindery said that there was no process in his workroom which could not be done by women. “I could put a girl to work operating the cutting machine,” he said, “if I paid her eighteen dollars a week. I could have a woman tend the large folding machines if I paid the union scale. I don’t know why I don’t, except that I don’t see any good reason why I should.”

In the course of the inquiry, there have been more numerous instances of the transfer of women’s work to men and boys. Men have been found operating folding machines and sewing machines, feeding the ruling machines and folding and sewing by hand. Boys have been found emptying boxes of the folding machine, sewing by hand, cleaning off the books after they have been stamped, and operating the wirestitching machine. The development of automatic feeding devices for the folding machine and the invention of gathering machines and covering machines have caused these processes to be transferred to men in many binderies. Indeed, the census of 1905 showed that in the five years since 1900 the number of bindery women had not increased so rapidly as the number of men, and that women no longer outnumbered men.

A woman who had fed a point folding machine and was displaced by the “automatic” tended by a man, remarked, “A man is paid according to what he knows, and not according to what he does.” It is certainly true that the tender of a large complex machine, with all the devices for feeding itself, must be one who knows rather than one who does. Women, without mechanical training, have small chance of adjusting themselves to new occupations.

In view of these changes, the future of women’s work in binderies is hard to predict. In art binding a few well-educated women have proved themselves capable of performing every process from the folding of the sheets to the tooling of the cover. There would seem to be an opportunity for growth in this branch of the trade, and it is the opinion of some binders that women could be trained to carry on this work in all its departments. In machine binderies it would seem to be largely the lack of mechanical skill, or of opportunity to acquire it, which prevents women’s adjusting themselves to new inventions.

The bookbinding trade is not an example of extraordinary industrial evils. Its significance is to be found rather in its illustration of the common lot of women in many occupations. It is not alone in binderies that conditions of industry change rapidly; that machines cause a reorganization of work and then give place to new inventions and new conditions; that speed seems to be the most essential requirement; that women work exhaustingly long hours in the busy season; that specialization appears inevitable, although the continual repetition of one process weakens the power of adjustment which is most needed in a changing environment; that irregularity of employment means loss of all or part of the wages in the dull season; and that the income at best is scarcely sufficient for self support. The experiences of bindery girls illustrate these conditions, yet they also point to several possible methods of improvement.

The encouraging facts in connection with women’s work in binderies in New York are, first, that the state has already begun a policy of deliberate intervention. It has prohibited the employment of children under fourteen years of age. It has safeguarded them between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, limiting their working hours to eight in a day. It has made increasingly strict demands regarding the sanitary conditions of factories. It has recognized the principle of limiting the hours of labor of women, however faulty its provision may be for this purpose.

Second, there is a growing interest in industrial education in public schools.

Third, more than twelve hundred bindery women in New York are members of the women’s local of the bookbinders’ union, while a league of employers has been formed to deal collectively with the union and thus to “abolish in the bindery trade the system of making individual labor contracts, and to introduce the more equitable system of forming collective labor contracts.”

The bindery girls’ experiences indicate that in so far as adaptation to change is a matter of chance, women are not profiting by changes or gaining new opportunities. On the contrary their standard of living is menaced by uncertainty. The danger to be feared is the danger of neglect. The remedy would seem to be the substitution of forethought for chance, the safeguarding of minimum standards by education, organization and legislation.