*Weavers. Yeadon, Guiseley, and District. H. Lockwood, North Terrace, Yeadon. 276.
Whitworth Vale Branch of N.C.A.W. Secretary, Ralph Earlwood, Market Street, Shawforth.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TEXTILE TRADES.
Centres of Textile Industry: Lancashire and Yorkshire—Changes in general conditions—Reforms not final—Extent of Combination: Mixed Unions—Equal wages paid to weavers in the cotton trade—Contrast between Lancashire and Yorkshire—Lower scale for women in Yorkshire—Fines—Supervision: Immorality—System of Fines: Deductions from wages—Sanitation: Defective arrangements—High temperature in cotton mills—Dangerous machinery—Labour of Married Women: Child labour—Reforms needed—Other Textile Trades: Crape—Silk—Ribbons—Carpets—Hosiery—Lace—Linen—Unhealthy Conditions—Wages.
Centres of Textile Industry.—By far the largest demand for women’s labour, next to household service, comes from the textile industry; and it is in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire, where the cotton and woollen trades are carried on, that women’s labour under the Factory system can best be studied. There are several departments of the textile trades, such as the silk industry, crape manufacturing, and carpet making, in which women are also largely employed; but it is in the great cotton mills of Rochdale, Oldham, Burnley, and Blackburn, the woollen mills of Huddersfield and Dewsbury, and the worsted mills of Bradford, that the great majority of women are to be found.
Changes in General Conditions.—The grievances of the women and children employed in the mills in the cotton trade were the subject of general discussion fifty years ago, and it was the exposure of the terrible conditions under which they worked, the excessive hours, the insanitary conditions, and their complete helplessness, that forced the hand of the various governments of the day, and enabled Lord Ashley to introduce his factory legislation. Since that time the country has heard but little of the lot of the mill operatives, but from time to time it appears that all is not as it should be. For instance, evidence was laid before the Labour Commission which shewed that the currently-accepted picture of the prosperity and comfort of the mill operatives was much too highly coloured. The representatives both of the women and of the men brought forward a mass of evidence shewing that the grievances to which the workpeople were exposed were of the most real and vital kind. The wages in certain districts and departments might be good, but the over-driving, the speeding up of machinery, the high temperature maintained in the mills, the utterly inadequate provision made for the health of the workpeople, and the prevalence of fines, all pointed to the conclusion that the factory legislation contemplated by Lord Ashley and his successors, and followed up from time to time almost to the present moment, presented no finality. The conditions of labour have, it is true, been transformed since those early days when we read of the operatives’ deputation to Lord Palmerston. In order to demonstrate that working a mule was not an easy matter the operatives induced the Prime Minister to push a chair up and down the room in imitation of a spinner’s motions. The hours of labour have been shortened, but the intensity of labour has increased at an even higher rate. The strain upon the muscle and bodily strength may be less, but the nervous wear and tear, the mental strain, the storm and stress of the mill, have been also steadily increasing. The history of the troubles of the Lancashire and Yorkshire operative is not then a closed chapter; for that matter no department of industry in these days is or can be. Changes and improvements in manufacturing processes and machinery are so constant and sweeping that the worker is ever face to face with new problems, many of which, indeed, are directly due to the rising standard of his own life.
Extent of Combination.—Whilst Lancashire and Yorkshire afford the most instructive field for studying the influence of factory legislation upon labour, the information that may be gleaned there respecting combination as an element in the economic and social life of women is no less instructive. Side by side with one another you find two great kindred industries—the woollen and the cotton—and the level of one, so far as women are concerned, is far below that of the other. No explanation based on competition, either in commercial or labour markets, can account for this difference. The explanation must be sought, not in the ability of the individual or the working of the market, but in the extent and direction of the combination which exists among the operatives. It is certain that the operatives of Lancashire and Cheshire have shewn themselves far more alive to the benefits of combination than those of Yorkshire. The worker in the cotton mill, whether male or female, is a Trade Unionist almost as a matter of course, and though, as in the best organized of trades, a certain number still remain outside the pale of the union, those who are inside are sufficiently strong, both in numbers and in practical effectiveness, to formulate the labour policy of the trade. There is a wide difference between formulating a policy and carrying it out in practice, but the organizations of the spinners, weavers, and cardroom-workers have been successful in making the two very nearly synonymous. Their leaders have been fully alive to the absurdity of attempting to carry through an heroic policy in the absence of effective co-operation on the part of the majority. To ignore the women workers would have been fatal in an industry which numbers them by tens of thousands. Accordingly the policy of the Unionists has been to bring men and women together into the same organization; to treat their labour as one and the same; and to provide equal rules for the remuneration and protection of all. The most notable result has been that women weavers in the cotton trade are paid precisely the same wages as the men; though indeed the fact is scarcely second in importance that the co-operation of the women workers in every branch of the cotton industry is absolutely secured for every trade movement.