A miscellaneous survey.
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,[43] 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.
[43] An Edinburgh employer put that in this way: "If women were paid the same rates as men they would have to pay for their overseers and assistants."