| Weekly Payments. | Benefits. | ||||
| 1d. | per week | (Tenters). | 1/6 | per week. | |
| 3d. | " | 7/6 | " | ||
| 4d. | " | 11/ | " | ||
| 5d. | " | 13/6 | " | ||
| 6d. | " | 16/ | " | ||
The Weavers’ Unions do not, as a rule, pay sick or maternity benefit save under the Insurance Act. On the other hand, funeral benefit appears to be the invariable custom, and disablement through accident also entitles members to benefit. A penny per member per week is paid to the Amalgamation towards a Central Strike Fund, the remainder of the contributions being in the hands of the local branch.
The unusual strength of this Union, combining men and women in a single organisation, seems to be due in the first place to the increasing local concentration of the industry. In towns where many large mills are placed near together the ease and rapidity with which a secretary can call a meeting is surprising. In the second place, it must be remembered that the organisation of women has been of great importance to the men, the women forming the majority of the workers. It has been worth the men’s while to consider the women, and so far at least as the economic position is concerned, they have done it with considerable effectiveness. The organisation is utterly dependent on the membership and solidarity of women, and it has successfully safeguarded their economic interests, but it has been built up mainly by the initiative and under the control of a minority of men.
As a general rule, in spite of the exceptional success of the Weavers’ Unions in retaining the continued membership of women, the fact remains that it is still unusual for women to be actively interested in the work of organisation. As a general rule the women rarely attend meetings unless they have a special grievance to be removed, and they seldom nominate one of themselves for the Committee. There are places where no woman has ever been nominated at all. This is a subject of regret and surprise, not only to the secretaries, but to those women here and there who are themselves keenly interested. These would fain see women representatives on the Committee, and some proportion of women acting as secretaries and collectors. Such women feel strongly that “we need the two points of view,” and it is disheartening and incomprehensible to them to find that they cannot get their women friends to turn up at meetings and support the nomination of a woman. There appears to be little ground for the supposition that men would object to share their Committee labours with women, and even if they did, it is obvious that in an industry where women predominate, the latter could have no difficulty in packing the Committee with their own representatives. In all these weavers’ Unions the women have precisely the same rights and privileges as men. All positions are open to women, and women command a majority of votes. It is not the men’s fault that the management so often is mainly left in their hands.
If we enquire as to the reasons for this apathy among women-workers, a great many can be given. One is the danger of victimisation, which may fall very hardly on collectors and Committee members. Another is the fatigue of the long day in the mill, the natural desire for a little amusement, or the amount of house-work to be done. Lancashire women are “house-proud” to an extraordinary degree, and cannot be satisfied without a high standard of comfort in such matters as cleanliness, food, and furniture. All this means work, and though the high wages current in the cotton towns might seem to make it possible to pay for household help, such help is not very easy to come by. Domestic service has hitherto been demanded only by a limited class in the community, because very few outside that class could afford to pay for it. A highly paid industry like the cotton trade makes servants scarce, and anything like a general demand for domestic help on a broad democratic scale could not possibly be satisfied as things are now. Even help in washing is not easily had. So the Lancashire woman or girl contrives to work her ten hours in the mill, and come back to a second day’s work in the evening, with such assistance as may be given by the older members of the family. Lancashire is really suffering from the service question in an acute form, so acute that it is taken for granted it cannot be answered. A surprising part of the matter is that a class of women so intelligent, so industrious, and comparatively so well-paid, should not ere this have made a concerted demand for better labour-saving devices in their houses.
But after all the domestic difficulty does not explain the whole problem of woman’s apathy and indifference in Trade Unions. Supposing the meeting occurs only once a quarter, as in some places, house-work cannot be an insuperable obstacle to attendance at such rare intervals. One weaver told me she had been “bread-winner, nurse, and cleaner” at home, and yet had found time to attend meetings. Probably the real explanation of the attitude of women generally towards the Union is to be found in their education and outlook. Lloyd Jones, in his life of Robert Owen, explained the failure of the early co-operative societies by the fact that at that time the working-class had no habit of association. The old forms had gone; the new had been legally suppressed. Under the changed conditions of modern life the working-class has had to evolve a new set of social habits and a new code of social duty. The habit of association has developed more slowly among women than among men, because to some extent it does undeniably come in conflict with the traditional moralities of women. To a great many women the idea of home duty means duty within the home; they are only beginning to find out by slow degrees that their home is largely dependent for its very existence on outside impersonal forces about which it is incumbent on the home-maker to know something, even if she has to go outside to get knowledge. The Weavers’ Secretary, even in Lancashire, still finds that “females are a deal more arduous to organise than males”; he supposes, because “they’ve been brought up to be different.” They cost more in collecting expenses, and the propensity of girls to get married, to leave work or change their occupation is a constant source of anxiety. “They are always on the move,” and perpetual watchfulness is needed to enrol the young ones as they enter the mill. Tact and diplomacy are expended in inducing the women-workers to keep an eye on the younger members, to bring them in as early in their industrial careers as possible. Even such homely arguments as “it saves your money from stamps,” are not disdained in the effort to persuade the women to use their own personal influence to keep the flame alive. Small commissions are given to a member of a Union who brings in a new member. But without commissions women do a good deal of recruiting in the mills. The Lancashire cotton Unions do not run themselves; their efficiency is very largely the result of constant watchfulness and patient effort on the part of the officials, backed up by the pluck, tenacity, and high standard of comfort of the Lancashire woman herself.
A strong feeling, however, is now arising that there is a need for organisation of women within the Union, to induce them to come out more, to take more pains to understand the civic machinery of life which so largely controls their work, their livelihood, and the possibilities of health and strength both for themselves and their children. There is always a splendid remnant in Lancashire who feel themselves to be citizens; but a more general movement seems now to be beginning. This movement is partly due to economic changes in the distribution of the industry. Some mills nowadays employ scarcely any men. Such are mills or sheds for ring-winding, cop-winding, reeling and beaming, occupations exclusively appropriated to women. In such mills there will be a man employed as overlooker, and a mechanic to repair or look after the machines, and there is or should be a man or strong lad to carry the “skips,” But the industry itself is here carried on by women, and in such cases women often develop powers hitherto latent for undertaking the Committee work and management of the Union. The same thing happens in districts where the demand for male labour in other occupations is sufficiently urgent to draw men away from weaving altogether.
At Wigan the Committee is wholly staffed by women. At Stockport all but the president, secretary, and one member are women. At Oldham about half the Committee are women. In the largest centres of the industry things are moving more slowly. In one very large and important Union the first woman representative has recently been elected to the Committee. At Blackburn two places on the Committee are now appropriated to the winders and warpers, who are all women; this has the effect of reserving two places exclusively for women. Here also the practice obtains of appointing a worker in each mill as a representative of the Union, to keep the secretary in touch with what is going on, and about twenty women, chosen chiefly from the winders, now fill the post of mill representative. The Insurance Act also has had the indirect effect of bringing in a certain number of women as sick visitors or pay stewards. Women are thus gradually being drawn forward, with results that indicate that custom is to blame for their previous isolation, rather than any inherent incapacity or unwillingness on their part.
There is a good deal that men might do to meet the women half-way. The secretary may regretfully remark that the women members make no use of the handsome institute and comfortable rooms that are at the disposal of all members of a Union, but the women complain privately that there is no room appropriated to their use. This is felt as a difficulty by women, while it is unnoticed and unconsidered by men. However heartily one may agree that men and women would be better for the opportunities of social intercourse such as an institute provides, however much one may wish to see women making use of its amenities yet, as a beginning, perhaps always, it would obviously be advisable to set apart for them a sitting-room of their own. Women would like to go in to look at the papers and so on, but are deterred by the idea that they are not expected, or not wanted, or that their appearance may cause surprise in the minds of their male colleagues. “They did stare a bit, but they weren’t a bit disagreeable,” one woman weaver remarked after having valiantly entered her own institute and read her own magazines. Pioneers may do these doughty deeds; the average young woman, even in Lancashire, is singularly shy in some ways, however much the reverse she may appear in others. There is no doubt that social life in England suffers from the unwholesome segregation of women from the affairs of the community. They are too much cut off from the interests of men, most of which ought rather to be the interests of human beings. The beginnings of better things are now being made, but comradeship and consideration on both sides are needed.