Child Labour.—Much attention has been given to the age of admission of children to work in the textile trades. At the Berlin Conference twelve was fixed as a sort of international minimum at which children should be allowed to enter upon factory labour. The age fixed by the British factory legislation of that time was ten for half-timers and fourteen for full-timers, or thirteen if the child had passed the prescribed educational standard. Our representatives, however, with the concurrence of the Government, endorsed the proposal for raising the age to twelve. When however the Factory Act of 1891 was being passed through the House of Commons, the opposition of Lancashire and Yorkshire overcame the good intentions of the Government. Instead of proposing to raise the age to twelve, they refused to alter the then existing law, with the result that they were beaten on Mr. Sydney Buxton’s amendment to raise the age to eleven. And most people—except of course directly interested parents and employers—who are acquainted with the unhealthy surroundings of mill life, are of opinion that eleven is too young an age at which to begin work, even as a half-timer. It is true that the certifying surgeon is empowered by the Factory Act to refuse a certificate to any child who appears to him to be from physical causes unfit for work; but the children are only submitted for examination once, either upon, or immediately after beginning work, so that their fitness for employment must therefore be more or less a matter of speculation. They are not again examined till they have become “young persons,” and a certain number whose employers manage to evade the law are never examined at all.
Other Textile Trades.—The other branches of the textile trades, and the other districts in which those already referred to exist, are, with the exception of the linen trade, comparatively unimportant. Of those in the woollen-cloth trade, or such of it as still survives in the West of England, we find women who work in the factories at Trowbridge and Stroud earning about two-thirds of the wages of the Yorkshire women. There is no effective combination either amongst the men or the women. Wages have been fixed by custom, and they scarcely ever fluctuate. The low-water mark of factory wages is to be found in the Essex crape industry, where the women are in receipt of about 5s. a week.
The silk trade is carried on mostly at Macclesfield and Leek. The wages earned by women vary according to the districts and employers. They are for the most part very low; and as employment in the silk trade is more intermittent than in any other textile industry, the average wages per week for the year are miserably low. In the silk-throwing trade of Macclesfield they amount to about 6s. a week if calculated throughout the year. Women working power looms can command about 12s. a week during the good season. Taking the various departments together, the average wages in Leek are 11s. 6d., Derby 10s., and Congleton 7s. In Coventry, which is the principal centre of ribbon weaving, much of the work is done by outdoor weavers; their looms are driven by an engine which supplies the power to each block of houses. The weaver owns the loom and pays rent for house and power together at the rate of about 10s. per week; home workers are able to command better prices than the factory workers.
In the carpet manufacture, of which Kidderminster is the centre, a large number of women are employed, the wages ranging from 6s. a week for the simplest work to 14s. 6d. for the more difficult. Men are employed in the heaviest work and in the most skilled departments, and they have been able to resist the introduction of women’s labour Fourteen years ago an attempt was made to introduce women at the same wages as those paid in Yorkshire, about 15s. a week, but the men held their ground, and still retain the old standard of 35s.
The hosiery and lace trades, which are carried on in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, give employment to several thousand women. There is no standard rate of wages in Nottingham; the small firms pay lower wages than the large ones, whilst in the adjoining country districts the rates are considerably lower than in Nottingham. A great deal of finishing work is given out by middlemen to people in these districts, and is paid for at a very low rate.
The lace trade is characterised by extreme irregularity of employment. Wages range from 4s. a week for “dressing” lace to 24s. for making it up. A quantity of work which was formerly done inside the factories is now given out, with the result that prices have dropped heavily. As in the hosiery trade, the sanitation and ventilation of the factories vary very greatly. No standard appears to be recognized or enforced, and as is the case in so many other industries, a few employers have spared no trouble or expense to ensure the health and comfort of their workpeople, whilst the majority have done little or nothing.
Belfast may claim to be the centre of the linen trade, which finds habitation as well throughout the north of Ireland, and in the little Scotch towns of Forfar, Brechin, and Dunfermline. But in Scotland the linen industry and the jute industry are largely carried on together, whilst in Belfast the linen trade almost unsupplemented holds the field, and provides work for nearly 30,000 girls and women. The processes of manufacture closely resemble those of the cotton industry, but the wages are much lower, the unhealthy conditions far more marked, the protective agencies supplied by the workers themselves in the shape of trade unions altogether wanting, and a law similar to that which regulates the heat and humidity in the weaving sheds of Lancashire non-existent.[16]
It is extremely difficult to give the actual wages earned, for although the supply of employment is usually regular, much loss of time is occasioned by the exhausting and unhealthy nature of the work, and a considerable lessening of wages is consequent upon the deductions and penalties which are enforced. Thus if a woman loses half a day she is deprived of half her bonus, whilst the loss of a whole day means the disappearance of the bonus altogether. This so-called bonus on regular employment is really a part of the time wages of the workers. In most of the factories and mills it is 1s. 6d., in some 1s. a week. As it is exceptional for a woman to be able to work the whole week through, this bonus rarely finds its way in its integrity into her pocket. In addition to this there are fines and deductions for damaged work, just as there are in the cotton and woollen industries. Taking all this into account, the average wages of the women can scarcely amount to more than 8s. or 9s. a week. Further reference is made to the grossly insanitary condition of the trade and the mills in another chapter. So far no labour movements on the part of the women have ever had the slightest success. The employers have been in the habit of meeting any movements of the kind by the threat of a lock-out, which has been carried into effect more than once.
[16] The linen trade has since been classed among “dangerous trades,” and is now under “Special Rules.”