Artistic Crafts.—The artistic crafts proper are hardly followed at all by women. With the decay of domestic industries they lost what skill and knowledge they once possessed, and technical education has not yet restored them to their rightful position as skilled workers. If women are employed as jewellers, potters, or even photographers, it is only in the least skilled, and consequently worst paid portions of the work. Thus in the jewellery manufacture they are employed in unskilled operations, such as stringing pearls; and their earnings do not rise above £1 a week, while the skilled labour of men brings in from £3 to £6 a week. At electrotyping, in Birmingham, their wages are not more than 25s. a week, and the same might be said of those engaged in the electro-plate manufacture in Sheffield.
A few women are employed in chromo-lithography, but not many lithographers are willing to take women as apprentices. Wood engraving employs rather larger numbers, and the work is fairly well paid. In an office in which four women engravers work the wages earned per head during three months were, on an average, £2 18s. 5d. weekly, the highest wage earned being £3 3s. 4d., and the lowest £2 13s. 7d., representing a payment of 1s. 1d. an hour. At another office the average weekly wage is £1 18s. 9d., the highest being £2 3s. 9d., and the lowest £1 7s. 11d., representing an average payment of 10d. an hour. The entrance of women into such crafts has been materially aided by the Society for the Employment of Women, in Berners Street, which endeavours to find both means of training and business openings for its clients. In artistic crafts which require an apprenticeship women have much opposition to encounter; their entrance is generally opposed by the workmen employed, who fear, and not without reason, that the women will undersell them and bring their wages down. If women hope to gain a footing in skilled occupations they must conciliate opposition, by showing that they have no intention of underselling their fellow workmen.
General Conclusions.—It will be seen that in almost all the occupations here considered women have special difficulties to contend with—imperfect training, amateurish habits, social customs or prejudices, and the opposition of those who, sometimes from prejudice and sometimes from a well-grounded fear of injury, oppose the industrial employment of women. Time and good counsels may be trusted to diminish these obstacles, if not to do away with them entirely. Meanwhile it remains to give women the opportunity, by thorough training, of showing the extent of their capacity for different kinds of work. Disquisitions as to what women can do, or cannot do, are irrelevant at the present moment, when facilities for training and employment have not been open long enough to test their powers in any direction. In these matters it is safer to prophesy after the event, and it is certain that competition will eventually drive women out of any calling for which they prove themselves really unfitted.
CHAPTER II.
WOMEN’S WORK: CLERICAL AND COMMERCIAL.
Routine Clerical Work: Type-writing and shorthand—Secretaryships—Clerks and Book-keepers—The Civil Service: The Post Office—Number of women employed—Clerkships—Sorterships—Telegraph Learnerships—Counter-women and Telegraphists—The Telephones—Complaints against women—Commerce: Subordinate position of women—Shopkeeping—Trade as a Career—Shop Assistants and their condition: Wages—Deductions from Wages—Fines—Forms of Agreement—Long Hours—“Counter and Bed”—Select Committee on Mr. Provand’s Bill—Evidence from different places—Select Committee 1888—Standing all day—Effect upon health—The Lancet on the provision of seats—Combination of assistants necessary—Insanitary Surroundings—Living in—Evils of the system—Bad food and insufficient accommodation—No social life—Hurried meals—Sunday arrangements—Personal Narratives—Warehouses—Combination among assistants—Objects of the different Societies—Legislation and its probable effects—Addendum: The Reports of the Lady Assistant Commissioners to the Labour Commission—Miss Collet’s summary.
Routine Clerical Work. Type-writing.—There has been a great increase of late in the variety of routine clerical work open to women. The type-writing machine might have been designed for their especial benefit, since it has brought within their reach a number of occupations well suited to their capacities. The lady typist and shorthand writer is a recognised institution in American commercial houses; American women, with their superior adroitness, having promptly seized upon an opening so favourable to their interests and adapted it to their own use. The difficulty as to the two sexes working together is not as much felt in America as here, and where special arrangements have to be made or accommodation provided for women clerks it is done without demur. For type-writing to be satisfactory as an occupation it should be combined with shorthand, for a typist pure and simple can seldom rise beyond a clerkship in a type-writing office, and must not expect more than clerk’s pay; and in this case her weekly wages will certainly be counted by shillings, not by pounds. The addition of shorthand renders many kinds of secretarial work available, and here, as in other occupations, any special skill or knowledge may lead to a considerable increase in wages. An industrious typist who can secure a good connection may make a fair, though not a large, income by working on her own account. Authors and journalists often dictate their work to a shorthand writer and typist, receiving it back in a few hours in a handy and legible form. The usual fee is from 2s. to 3s. 6d. an hour. Doctors, literary and public men, often give permanent employment to a typist, and this kind of work is specially suited to women. Here again, however, brains as well as manual skill are needed. Mere routine work can never earn more than low wages.
Clerks and Book-keepers.—Female clerks and book-keepers are largely employed in retail houses of business. To judge from their rapidly increasing numbers it would seem as if their work were quite as satisfactory as that of men, and yet their wages are invariably lower. Herein, it is to be feared, lies the only difference between them and the male clerks whom they supersede. From 15s. to £1 a week is probably as much as a woman can expect in this employment; but, on the other hand, a girl with an aptitude for business may sometimes make a clerkship the stepping-stone to a forewoman or manager’s post, thus leading, of course, to much higher wages. A well-known shipping firm in Liverpool has for many years employed a lady to take charge of all the ship linen and furniture. Under her is a large staff of clerks and needlewomen, who carry on their work in comfortable and well-arranged premises not far from the Docks. It is probable that as women come to receive a more practical and thorough education they will be more largely employed in posts in which care and attention to small details is important. At present the capacity which women undoubtedly possess in this direction is often neutralised by slovenly business habits.
The Civil Service.—Of clerkships those in connection with the Civil Service are perhaps the most important. From the eagerness with which women compete for its posts, indeed, the Civil Service would seem to be a very El Dorado for its employés, a conclusion which is hardly warranted by an examination of its conditions. The work, however, is light, demands only moderate abilities, and is performed on the whole under agreeable conditions. Wages are not high, but pensions are attached to the most important branches, an advantage which hardly any other employment open to women possesses. A woman who has worked for forty years in the Post-office may retire with a pension equal to two-thirds of her salary. Even after ten years of service a pension of one-sixth is available. The respective amounts, in the case of Post-office clerkships (to be described immediately), would probably be about £80 and £15 per annum respectively, and a woman must be earning exceptional wages in any other employment to put by sufficient to bring in an income of even these modest dimensions. It is unfortunate that in this, as in so many other occupations, women are willing to undersell men. The clerks in the Post-office naturally look with anything but favour upon the influx of women clerks at a lower wage, knowing that it means their own gradual supercession. It is sometimes said that the less robust health of women, and their consequently less regular attendance, forms sufficient justification for a lower rate of pay; but the alacrity of the public departments to engage female clerks seems to shew that any disabilities on the score of health are more than balanced by diminished salaries. Where the advantages to the employer are equal there is seldom any eagerness to prefer the labour of women. A similar displacement of men is going on in other Government departments; at the War Office, in Special Commissions, and elsewhere, women are being engaged for routine clerical work, and almost always at a lower rate of payment than men.