Whatever may have been the social misery and disorder brought about by the industrial revolution, one striking result was an increase in the earning power of women. Proof in detail of this statement will be given in [Chapter VI.]; for the present it will suffice to point to the fact. The machine, replacing muscular power and increasing the productivity of industry, does undoubtedly aid the woman in quest of self-dependence. In the era of the great industry she has become to an increasing extent an independent wage-earner. Low as the standard of women’s wages is, there is ample proof that it is on the whole higher under the factory system than under other methods, and as a general rule the larger and more highly organised factory pays higher wages than the smaller, less well-equipped. The cotton industry, which took the lead in introducing the factory system, and is in England by far the most highly organised and efficiently managed among trades in which women predominate, has shown a remarkable rise of wages through the last century, and is now the only large industry in which the average wage of women is comparatively high. Another point is that factory dressmaking, which has developed in comparatively recent years, already shows a higher average wage than the older-fashioned dressmaking carried on in small establishments, and a much smaller percentage of workers paid under 10s. a week. Monsieur Aftalion, in a monograph comparing factory and home work in the French clothing trade, finds wages markedly higher under the factory system. Yet another instance is offered by Italy, where women’s wages are miserably low, yet they are noticeably higher in big factories than in small.
The development of the single young woman’s position through the factory system has been obscured by the abuses incidental to that system, which were due more or less to historical causes outside industry. The absence of any system of control over industrial and sanitary conditions undoubtedly left many factories to become centres of disease, overwork and moral corruption, and the victims of this misgovernment and neglect are a reproach that can never be wiped out. On the other hand, later experience has shown that decent conditions of work are easier to secure in factories than in small work places, owing to greater publicity and facility for inspection. The very fact of the size of the factory, its economic importance, and its almost dramatic significance for social life, caused attention to be drawn to, and wrath to be excited by, evil conditions in the factory, which would have been little noticed in ordinary small work places.
The initiation of the “great industry” resulted in a kind of searchlight being turned on to the dark places of poverty. State interference had to be undertaken, although in flat opposition to the dominant economics of the day, and the better sort of masters were impelled by shame or worthier motives to get rid of the stigma that clung to factory employment. Now the girl-worker has profited by this movement in a quite remarkable degree. Domestic service is no longer her only outlook, and the conditions of domestic service have probably considerably improved in consequence. Her employment is no longer bound up with personal dependence on her own family, or personal servitude in her employer’s.
The wage contract, though not, we may hope, the final or ideal stage in the evolution of woman’s economic position, is an advance from her servile state in the mediaeval working class, or parasitic dependence on the family. The transition thus endows her with greater freedom to dispose of or deny herself in marriage, and is an important step towards higher racial ideals and development. Grievously exploited as her employment has been and still is, the evolution of the woman wage-earner, her gradual achievement of economic individuality and independence, in however limited a degree, is certainly one of the most interesting social facts of the time. The remarkable intelligence and ability of Lancashire working people was noticed by Mrs. Gaskell in Mary Barton, as long ago as 1848. And to this day the Co-operative Movement and the Trade Union Movement flourish among Lancashire women as they do not anywhere else. The Workers’ Educational Association draws many of its best students from these women who toil their ten hours in the mill and use their brains for study in the evening after work is over.
CHAPTER III.
STATISTICS OF THE LIFE AND EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN.
No very detailed or elaborate statistics will be here employed, the aim of this chapter being merely to draw attention to certain broad facts or relations disclosed by the Census and the Registrar-General’s Report.
The Surplus of Women.—It is a well-known fact that in this country women exceed men in numbers. The surplus increased slightly but steadily from 1851 to 1901, and remained almost stationary from 1901 to 1911. In 1901 and 1911 there were in every 1000 persons 484 males and 516 females. The excess of females varies at different ages. The number of boys born exceeds the number of girls in a proportion not far from 4 per cent, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But boy infants run greater risks at birth and appear to be altogether more susceptible to adverse influences, for their death-rate is usually higher up to 3, 4 or 5 years old. The age-group 5 to 10 varies from time to time; in 1901-1910 the average mortality of girls was the higher: in 1912 the average mortality of boys was very slightly higher. From 10 to 15 the female death-rate is higher than the male.