2. WHY WOMEN DO NOT TRAIN.
Some explanation is required for the fact that women have so little ambition to become skilled, especially seeing that their lack of technical knowledge and their willingness to remain at work which is merely mechanical, i.e., folding, etc., explain their low wages, casual employment, and careless organisation.
Marriage as an industrial influence.
The physiological differences between men and women have sociological results. These differences have no doubt been exaggerated and emphasised by traditions of propriety, and the change of opinion indicated generally by the expression, "the woman movement," has done a great deal to bring down those differences to their natural proportions and relations. If certain claims of equality, such as women's suffrage, were generally accepted, men and women might tend to occupy a much more equal industrial status. But when all false emphasis and exaggeration have been removed, a considerable residuum of difference must remain.
The special status of the married woman will no doubt survive all readjustment of traditional modes of thought, and will tend to withdraw her mind from the steady pursuit of industrial efficiency, because she will never consider wage earning to be her special task in the world. That has tempted her hitherto to steer off from the currents in the mid-stream of industrial life, and float upon those that flow more sluggishly by the margin. Hence she has entered industry, not with expectations of long employment, but with hopes of a speedy release, and she has therefore been in haste to earn money at once, and unwilling to sink capital (either in time or money) in making herself efficient. She is found in the more mechanical and more easily acquired branches of work, and also in those which provide no future for men,[62] and her willingness to take low wages has been her great protection against competing machinery. She has preferred to remain incompetent. "Out of twenty-six girls," is the report from the manager of a well-known firm for high-class artistic bookbinding, "not one could he trust as a forewoman."
[62] An interesting illustration of this is afforded by the recent employment of women in typefounding in London. London has not been a place where women were much employed in this industry. For twenty or thirty years girls have been employed in Edinburgh typefoundries, at certain processes through which the type, when cast, has to go, but they have been introduced only within the last year or two in London, to take the place of boys who could not be got because the work offers no very satisfactory prospects for them, and because the introduction of the linotype and mono-type threatens the future of the typefounding industry. Cf. Aberdeen, p. 47, Manchester and Birmingham, p. 50.
The lack of openings and ambition.
Moreover, this enquiry has shown that there is but little chance for women in these trades to improve themselves. Openings for responsible employment are few, and the ambition of the woman is not stirred by the possibility of material improvement as the reward of skill and industry. When responsible places become vacant, it is sometimes difficult to get women to consent to fill them. They seem to have little of that divine discontent which is the mainspring of progress. "They never ask for a rise as a man would, ... though after a time when they are useful, the firm would be quite willing to give one." "He finds that girls want to earn a certain wage. As a rule they will not take less, and they don't trouble to earn more." A Manchester correspondent reports: "There is very little chance of rising, and no particular desire for it, on the part of the ordinary girl, whose main aspirations are otherwise directed."
Reporting generally on her enquiries, an investigator writes: "The progressive young woman, eager to show that she is man's equal and can do man's work, seems to be a product of the middle classes. I never met girls with ambitions of that sort among the employees I talked with. On the other hand, I have met with cutting reproofs from forewomen and others in the bookbinding houses when I tried, in my innocence, to find out why they did not turn their hands to simple and easy processes which were being done by men. 'Why, that is man's work, and we shouldn't think of doing it!' is the usual answer given with a toss of the head and a tone insinuating that there is a certain indelicacy in the question." Another investigator reports: "In a paper-staining department an attempt was once made to have a forewoman instead of a foreman over the girls, but she was not successful in watching the colours and had to be replaced by a man. The employer in consequence came to the conclusion that such a feat was beyond a woman's power, and the workers themselves are of the same opinion and scorn the idea of a forewoman."
Sex reputation.
Women in slowly increasing numbers seem to be settling down to a thorough industrial training, but except when they start businesses of their own, the general reputation of woman as workers, especially their liability to marry and leave, must permanently handicap the most efficient in search of employment.
Even the woman who has paid a premium of £50 or £100 for thorough instruction in the art of bookbinding is warned that "a worker cannot be taken on anywhere, but has to set up on her own account," and even then she often does not enter the regular open competitive market, but attaches certain customers to herself, owing to her special work.
The exceptional woman will always have to bear the burden of the average woman.
The questions put to employers upon this point received very emphatic replies: "It does not pay us to train women," they said in some form or another; "We only want them for simple processes such as folding, and if we tried to make them skilled in more complicated work they would leave us before we got the same return for our trouble as we get from men."
Physique, hours, etc.
The low standard of women's living also diminishes their stamina and strength, and though in the course of this enquiry we have not discovered any very serious complaint that women were irregular at their work owing to ill-health (a common complaint against women in offices), yet the drawback has been mentioned.
Moreover, it must be noted that when a girl's work in the workshop is finished she has often to go home to commence a new round of domestic tasks from which a boy is exempted. This aggravates the seriousness of her long hours of mechanical work as a wage-earner, and increases the difficulties placed in her way should she desire to attend evening technical classes. The directors of several educational institutions and the teachers of technical classes for women have strongly urged this point upon us.
We have to face the fact that, for various reasons, in modern industrial society there is of necessity a tendency to specialise the work of men and women and centre the one in the workshop and the other in the home, and to incline women to take a place in industry second to their male relations. Hence, in the workshop women have hitherto been adjuncts to machines; they have taken up simple mechanical processes, and have shown little interest in complete series of industrial operations. They have picked up the arts, but have shunned the sciences. The factory and the workshop have been to them the scenes of "meanwhile" employment.
Gentility in trade.
In such circumstances one is not surprised to find such considerations as conventional gentility determining the branches of trade taken up by the women. The printing trades generally do not attract the most genteel girls, but there are grades within them. One informant says, "In Manchester, up to 1870, to be a folder was looked upon as being next door to being on the streets;" but now folders look down upon feeders. "Folding and sewing girls look down on the machine girls tremendously, and would not sit at the same table with them for anything." Perhaps the manager who said in a shocked tone of voice that "The women never care to talk of the Sunday's sermon" was hypercritical, but undoubtedly certain sections of these trades are staffed by rather rough specimens of women.
Then again, a folder, despised herself by those above her, is reported to "look down upon the litho and bronzing girls. They are of the very lowest class (she says), with hardly a shoe on their feet. They are on quite a different floor and have nothing to do with the folders." Or again, for reasons of gentility, girls prefer to become book-folders, where the hours are longer and the pay lower, rather than to become paper-bag makers. The distinction between these various sections is not similar to that between skilled and unskilled labour. The simple explanation is that amongst women engaged in industry convention is particularly potent in determining what trades are desirable and proper and what are not, so that when certain employments acquire a reputation for gentility, the others will be filled by a goodly proportion of unassorted girls, and will ultimately acquire characteristics which appear to justify the feminine prejudices against them. It has been suggested that these notions of gentility have, as a matter of fact, a deeper significance, and that the favoured trades are the lighter ones. To some extent this is true. The heavier employments are staffed by a rougher class of women. But, as in the case of the Manchester folders cited above, fashions change, and we must recognise that reputation for gentility is a very important factor in determining the distribution of character amongst the trades. This appears to be the main reason why high wages do not always attract the better class of girls to certain kinds of employment, and also why there is a reluctance on the part of many self-respecting girls to enter a course of industrial training.