Women in Modern Industry

by B. L. Hutchins

Printing offers some of the most difficult problems connected with the organisation of women.[30] Men in these trades have undeniably offered serious obstacles to the inclusion of women. In 1886 a Conference of Typographical Societies of the United Kingdom and of the Continent, held in London, being “of the opinion that women are not physically capable of performing the duties of a compositor,” resolved to recommend their admission to societies upon the same conditions as journeymen, to be paid strictly the same rate. This resolution was adopted by the London Society of Compositors, and it became practically impossible for a woman to join the society, as women could not keep up to the standard and efficiency of men. One woman joined in 1892, but subsequently left. The women were practically excluded from the Compositors’ Union by the fixing of equal rates of pay. This was not so much discrimination against women because they were women, as a demonstration against the black-leg competition of the unskilled against the skilled. It is stated that women compositors are regarded as so inferior to men that only among employers in a small way of business, working with small capital, where low wages constitute an advantage sufficient to counter-poise the lack of technical skill, can they find employment. In 1894 a militant Union of women was organised, and struck for increased wages and improved conditions, the women going out to show their sympathy with the men, who had been locked out. In recognition of the women’s sympathy the men gave some help and support to this Union, which, however, after increasing to 350 began to decline. It was subsequently recognised as a branch of the Printers, Stationers, and Warehousemen.

In the cigar trade, as in printing, it has to be owned that women came in “not for doing more, but for asking less.” Their labour was at first employed chiefly for the less skilled branches, a small number only being employed in skilled work; but in both divisions they worked for a lower rate than men. It was not until 1887 that a Union for women was established. They still, unfortunately, continued to undersell men, until at last the men, who at first were hostile to their female competitors, saw that it was hopeless to try and keep them out, and that for their own sakes amalgamation was the wiser course. The adjustment of the wage-scale was a problem of some delicacy. To raise the scale of women’s wages to the same as men’s would probably have meant driving the women from the trade; to leave them on the lower scale would mean that women would contrive to undersell men. It was finally decided to take the highest existing rates of pay for women as the basis of the women’s Union rates. After the Amalgamation had been achieved, women’s wages rose 25 per cent, and the recognised policy of the Union was to make advantageous terms with each employer opening a new factory. Women are not, on the whole, such valuable workers as are men; they are slower, and often do not remain very long in the trade.[31] Lower rates of pay, as long as they are not permitted to fall indefinitely, are a distinct advantage to women in getting and keeping employment. The numbers in Unions in food and tobacco were only 2000 in 1910, and have since fallen slightly.

There are also a good many small Unions of women only, some of which are affiliated to the Women’s Trade Union League. The numbers of women organised in the trades especially their own, such as dressmaking, the needle trades, and domestic work, are disappointingly small. It has to be remembered, however, that such occupations as these are still for the most part carried on either in the employers’ or the workers’ homes. The factory system has begun to make some way in dressmaking, but not to a considerable extent. It is not surprising that the workers in these industries are behind the factory workers in learning the lesson of combination for mutual help and protection.

Unions in the lower grade industries, which till lately have been unorganised, will be treated in a later section.

The Women’s Trade Union League.—The Society now known as the Women’s Trade Union League was founded mainly by the efforts of a remarkable woman named Emma Smith, afterwards Mrs. Paterson (1848-1886). She was the daughter of a schoolmaster and became the wife of a cabinet-maker. Her life from the age of eighteen was devoted to endeavours on behalf of the working class and especially of women. Being a woman of natural ability and remarkable concentration of purpose, she succeeded in starting pioneer work of a difficult and unusual kind. She was secretary for five years to the Workmen’s Club and Institute Union, and afterwards secretary to the Women’s Suffrage Association. She was the first woman admitted to the Trade Union Congress, and attended its meetings from 1875 until 1886, with the exception only of one year, in which her husband’s last illness prevented her attendance. Although the name of the League has been altered, and its policy considerably widened and in some measure modified, it is pleasant to note that it still keeps up a continuity of tradition with Mrs. Paterson’s Protective and Provident League. Her portrait, as foundress, hangs upon the office wall, and the annual Reports are numbered continuously from the start in 1875.

Sick benefit was the main feature of the propaganda initiated by the League in its early years. The first society formed was for women employed in the printing trade. The need of a provident fund had been badly felt by these women during a trade depression three years previously, and there was no provision for the admission of women as members of the men’s societies, even if women’s wages had been (as they were not) sufficient to pay the necessary subscription to the men’s society. Mr. King, Secretary of the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders, however, promised to support and assist the efforts to organise women in this trade. The appeal for a separate organisation of women met with a ready response. Some hundreds of women employed in folding, sewing, and other branches of the bookbinding trade, attended the first meeting, held in August 1875; a provisional committee was formed, and in October the society was formally established with a subscription of 2d. per week, and an entrance fee of 1s. Its history, however, was uneventful. It refused to join with men in making demands upon the employers, and its representatives at Trade Union Congresses and elsewhere were imbued with Mrs. Paterson’s prejudice against the Factory Act, and resisted legal restrictions upon labour. Employers have been known to urge the formation of “a good women’s Union,” on the ground that the fair-minded employer was detrimentally affected by the “gross inequalities of price” that existed. The backwardness and narrow views of the Women’s Union were resented by the men, and in the time of the eight hours agitation, 1891-1894, would not take part, and there was considerable ill-feeling between the two sections. This society was mainly a benefit club, and the same remark holds good of other early societies established by the Women’s Protective and Provident League, which included societies for dressmakers, hat-makers, upholsterers, and shirt- and collar-makers. The foundress, although a woman of unusual energy and initiative, whose efforts for the uplifting of women-workers should not be forgotten, was in some degree hampered by the narrow individualism characteristic of what may be designated as the Right Wing of the Women’s Rights Movement. She was an opponent of factory legislation for grown women, and did not lead the Unions under her control to attempt any concerted measures for improving the conditions of their work. The first Report of the League indicates her attitude in the remarks which she reports (evidently with sympathy) from a Conference held in April 1875: “It was agreed” (viz. at this Conference) “that any further reduction of hours, if accompanied by a reduction of wages, as it probably would be if brought about by legislation, would be objectionable.” (Italics added.) In the same Report (pp. 14-15) the writer, doubtless Mrs. Paterson herself, sums up the advantages to be obtained for women through union. The League is to be a “centre of combined efforts” to “improve the industrial and social position of ... women”; it is “to acquire information which will enable friends of the working classes to give a more precise direction than at present to their offers of sympathy and help. Without interfering with the natural course of trade, the Societies will furnish machinery for regulating the supply of labour....” (Italics added.) “The object of the League is to promote an entente cordiale between the labourer, the employer, and the consumer; and revision of the contract between the labourer and employer is only recommended in those cases in which its terms appear unreasonable and unjust to the dispassionate third party, who pays the final price for the manufactured goods and is certainly not interested in adding artificially to their cost.” No direct action for raising wages is suggested.

Delegates from three Women’s Societies—shirt-makers, bookbinders, and upholsterers—were admitted to the 8th Annual Trade Union Congress, held at Glasgow, October 1875.[32] At the meeting of the T.U. Council in 1879, five women representing Unions were not only present but took an active part in the proceedings, successfully moving a resolution for additional factory inspectors, and for the appointment as such of women as well as men.

In 1877, the Amalgamated Society of Tailors having been asked by one of its branches to resist the increasing employment of women in that trade, resolved instead that the work of women should be recognised, and the women organised and properly paid. The League was asked to co-operate in forming a Union, and a Tailoresses’ Union was subsequently formed. At Brighton a Union of Laundresses was formed. Various other societies were formed in these early years, many of which are now defunct.

Mrs. Paterson died in 1886, at the sadly early age of thirty-eight. During the years following, the policy of the League was enlarged and developed in a very considerable degree. Miss Clementina Black was secretary for a few years, and her second Report (1888) contains interesting remarks on the position of women: “All inquiry tends to show more and more that disorganised labour is absolutely helpless; good wages, lessened hours, better general conditions, and, on the whole, better workmanship prevail in the trades that are most completely organised. It also tends to show the injury done to men and women alike by the payment to women of unfairly low wages.... Even in employments in which the work can be done by women at least as well as by men, the wages of women are greatly inferior to those of men. And in those branches in which superior efficiency is shown by the male workers, the inferiority of the wages of the female employees is altogether out of proportion to the difference in the character of the work done by the two sexes. From this cause—the payment of unfairly low wages to women simply because they are women—arises a desire on the part of grasping employers to reduce the wage-standard by engaging women in preference to men, while in many cases the conditions of female employment are onerous and oppressive to an extent which involves the greatest danger to health.”

In 1889 the representation of the Society of Women Bookbinders at the Trade Union Congress, held at Dundee, moved a resolution in favour of the appointment of women factory inspectors, which was adopted. In the same year, at the International Workers’ Congress, held in Paris, the representative of the London Women’s Trade Council, Miss Edith Simcox, moved the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted by the representatives of all nationalities: “That the Workmen’s Party in all countries should pledge itself to promote the formation of trade organisations among the workers of both sexes.”