I am fully conscious of an inadequacy of treatment and of certain defects in form. Women’s industry is a smaller subject than men’s, but it is even more complicated and difficult. There are considerable omissions in my book. I have not, for instance, discussed, save quite incidentally, the subject of the industrial employment of married women or the subject of domestic service, omissions which are partly due to my knowledge that studies of these questions were in process of preparation by hands more capable than mine. There are other omissions which are partly due to the lack or unsatisfactory nature of the material. A standard history of the Industrial Revolution does not yet exist (Monsieur Mantoux’s valuable book covers only the earlier period), and the necessary information has to be collected from miscellaneous sources. In dealing with the effects of war, my treatment is necessarily most imperfect. The situation throughout the autumn, winter, and spring 1914-15, was a continually shifting one, and to represent it faithfully is a most difficult task. Nor can we for years expect to gauge the changes involved. With all our efforts to see and take stock of the social and economic effects of war, we who watch and try to understand the social meanings of the most terrible convulsion in history probably do not perceive the most significant reactions. That the position of industrial women must be considerably modified we cannot doubt; but the modifications that strike the imagination most forcibly now, such as the transference of women to new trades, may possibly not appear the most important in twenty or thirty years’ time. Even so, perhaps, a contemporary sketch of the needs of working women; of the success or failure of our social machinery to supply and keep pace with those needs at a time of such tremendous stress and tension, may not be altogether without interest.
I have to express my great indebtedness to Mr. Mallon, Secretary of the Anti-Sweating League, who has given me the benefit of his unrivalled knowledge and experience in a chapter on women’s wages. I have also to thank Miss Mabel Lawrence, who for a short time assisted me in the study of women in Unions, and both then and afterwards contributed many helpful suggestions to the work she shared with me. To the Labour Department I am indebted for kind and much appreciated permission to use its library; to Miss Elspeth Carr for drawing my attention to the “Petition of the Poor Spinners,” an interesting document which will be found in the Appendix; and to many Trade Union secretaries and others for their kindness in allowing me to interview them and presenting me with documents. Miss Mary Macarthur generously loaned a whole series of the Trade Union League Reports, which were of the greatest service in tracing the early history of the League. I regret that Mr. Tawney’s book on Minimum Rates in the Tailoring Trades; Messrs. Bland, Brown, and Tawney’s valuable collection of documents on economic history; and the collection of letters from working women, entitled “Maternity,” all came into my hands too late for me to make as much use of them as I should have liked to do.
B. L. H.
Hampstead, September 1915.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| PART I | |
| [CHAPTER I] | |
| Sketch of the Employment of Women in England before the Industrial Revolution | [1] |
| [CHAPTER II] | |
| Women and the Industrial Revolution | [31] |
| [CHAPTER III] | |
| Statistics of the Life and Employment of Women | [75] |
| [CHAPTER IV] | |
| Women in Trade Unions | [92] |
| [CHAPTER IVa] | |
| Women in Unions—continued | [154] |
| [CHAPTER V] | |
| Summary and Conclusion of Part I. | [178] |
| PART II | |
| [CHAPTER VI] | |
| Women’s Wages in the Wage Census of 1906 | [213] |
| [CHAPTER VII] | |
| The Effects of the War on the Employment of Women | [239] |
| APPENDIX TO CHAPTERS II., IV., AND VII. | [267] |
| AUTHORITIES | [299] |
| INDEX | [305] |