Family health.
As regards the effect of work in these trades on family life, again the evidence is sparse, but so far as it is clear it tends to show that the employment of women makes little difference to the ordinary state of things. The work is not unhealthy, and the woman worker does not do much of the heavy tasks, such as lifting formes, using presses, and so on. The instances where she does this are rare, and the men have always, in this respect, turned their chivalrous instincts to industrial purpose and to protect their own interests. One investigator reports that a girl suffers from weak knees on account of long spells of standing at a machine for making envelopes, and that a vellum-folder complains of having to lift heavy weights. Another reports against "powdering" in bookbinding; and employment in typefoundries, where girls handle type, is dangerous, since it may lead to lead-poisoning. Another says that bronzing, even when the bronzing machine is used and the precautions specified by the Factory Act are taken, is unhealthy. A case is given of a woman permanently injured by the excessive strain of working a guillotine cutting machine.
The bookbinders have always been ready to point out that certain parts of their work are too heavy for women, and the compositors have done the same. The latter also show that consumption is a trade disease amongst them, and recently have defended their attempts to exclude women from working the linotype on the ground that the fumes and gases which are generated by its typefounding arrangement are injurious to health. They also maintain that standing for long periods at a stretch is injurious to women, but in at least one large printing firm in the provinces women were seen by our investigators setting type whilst sitting on stools in front of the case. The conditions of some wallpaper factories seem to be unhealthy, partly owing to the hot air, the smell, and some of the material used, especially the arsenic. Some reports state that the constant "standing about" necessary in these trades gives headaches and produces anæmia. What valid objection there is against married women leaving their homes and children for long periods at a time during the day, must of course be added to this, in common with all other kinds of continuous work in which married women engage, but there is no special danger to life or health in these industries from which the coming generation may suffer.
[CHAPTER X.] WAGES.
We have succeeded in getting the authentic records of wages from about eighteen firms in London, representing every branch of work in connection with printing, binding, and despatch, and employing together 1,000 hands—more in busy, less in slack weeks. We have also less detailed information about some half-dozen other firms.
These studied together and apart will no doubt give a correct general impression of the amount and variability of wages paid, but circumstances have made it very difficult to group them so as to give a simple bird's-eye view of the whole.
These circumstances are partly due to the very great differences between the class of work done by the various firms, and the difficulty of tabulating the workers under a few definite heads; partly to the difficulty of collecting records. Our investigators were recommended:—
i. To get complete wage sheets for as many weeks as their time and the courtesy of the manager allowed, making the record as complete as possible for 1899, and extending their researches back as far as the books existed, choosing the wage sheets of one week in every month.
ii. To trace individual workers through as long a period as possible, choosing workers who would best illustrate all the various conditions of employment.
iii. To note any other information.
As regards i., we have the wage sheets for some 470 separate weeks, in addition to the complete lists of two very small firms for one and four years respectively; ii., the complete earnings of about 130 hands for periods varying from one to fourteen years.
Owing to the fact that it was impossible to get the complete lists through 1899 for many firms, and that the periods of slackness and full work were not the same in different places, it proved very difficult to handle the wage lists. At last the plan was adopted of getting complete lists of one busy week, one typical week, and one slack week in 1899, leaving the employers to choose the weeks, unless our investigators could make a complete record. In the following analysis we have endeavoured to bring out the salient features of the statistics of each firm separately, and we have then grouped together all the typical weeks, either chosen by the employer or selected by us from the series; and it is believed that this grouping gives an adequate idea of the wages at a time which the trade regards as ordinary.
The earnings of the 130 individual hands is a very valuable and, it may be, almost unique record. Many interesting facts are brought out by their study, and the records should have a place in sociological literature apart from their interest in the present connection.
It has been necessary to make a technical use of averages in collating and tabulating the material, and we offer the following explanations. Where the word "average" is used without qualification, it is the ordinary arithmetic average, obtained by dividing the total by the number of payees. This is the best for general quantitative measurements.
In most cases the median and quartiles and sometimes the dispersions have been calculated. They may be explained as follows. Suppose the wages of, say, sixty persons to be arranged in ascending order, e.g., 5s., 5s. 3d., 6s., 6s. 1d. ... 11s. 9d., 12s., 12s. 6d., then the wage halfway up the list is the median wage; thus, there are as many individuals above the median as below it. The wages halfway from the ends to the median (i.e., fifteenth and forty-fifth from bottom), are the quartiles, so that between the quartiles half the wages are grouped. Thus, if the median and quartiles in the above list were 7s. 6d., 10s. 6d., 12s. 6d., there would be fifteen earning less than 7s. 6d., fifteen more than 12s. 6d., thirty between 7s. 6d. and 12s. 6d., thirty below and thirty above 10s. 6d. For a single measurement of the grouping of the wages about their median, the distance between it and the quartiles is significant: in this example 3s. and 2s. are these distances. The more convenient way of stating this is to express half the distance between the quartiles (2s. 6d.) as a fraction of their average 10s., which is generally very nearly the median. This fraction (1/4 or ·25) we call the dispersion, and it enables us to study the changing character of a group in a very simple and efficient manner.