Value of women's work.
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,[36] 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.
[36] Women were introduced into Warrington newspaper offices early in the decade beginning with 1880. They have been found to be quicker than men in plain setting-up and simple straightforward work. They do not stay very long—the eldest girl compositor employed, when our investigator called, being only twenty-five. They are not employed in locking the formes; nor curiously enough are they employed in the machine-room to feed the printing presses, though they are so engaged in Manchester. The women compositors are paid one-third of the men's rate. Here it was definitely stated that the cheapness of women's labour made it unnecessary to introduce linotypes.