Frau Gnauck is in agreement with Frau Braun as to the advisability of common organisation, for if the women cannot join the men’s Unions, they are helpless, and if they form a Union of their own, they will probably be too weak to avoid being played off against the men. She takes, on the other hand, a much more favourable view than Frau Braun of the various philanthropic clubs and societies formed by women of a superior class. These organisations do not of course do anything to improve the economic position, they cannot in any way take the place of Trade Unions, but they provide a kind of preparatory stage, a training in association, an opportunity for discussion, and in the present circumstances, with the isolated condition in which working women and girls so often have to live, all these experiences are a means of development and an educational help to more serious organisation later on. This is borne out by Dr. Erdmann,[39] who, whilst opposed to the Catholic Unions as reactionary, admits that even in these Unions the workers soon begin to feel the need of Trade Union organisations, and often end by joining the Socialist Union.

Numbers of Women in Unions—Germany.

Largest Occupation Groups.Number.Per cent of Total.
Freie Gewerkschaften.
(Total women, 216,462.)
Textile workers53,36324·6
Metal26,84812·4
Factory workers25,14611·6
Tobacco17,9188·2
Bookbinders15,9797·4
Christian Unions.
(Total women, 28,008.)
Textile workers12,81145·7
Home workers8,18829·2
Tobacco3,08811·0
Hirsch-Duncker Unions.
(Total women, 4950.)
Textile workers1,88038·0

The Outlook.—It will be seen from the preceding chapter and section that a general view of women in Unions presents a somewhat ambiguous and contradictory picture. In one industry, cotton, there are in England two large Unions of remarkable strength and effectiveness, in which women are organised with men, and form a majority of the Union. The women cotton weavers and card-room operatives form nearly 70 per cent of all the organised women. In the other textile industries, in the clothing trades, and some others, a comparatively small number of women are organised, either with men, or in branches closely in touch with the men’s Unions, but these Unions are of various degrees of strength, and in no case include a large proportion of the women employed. There are also some women organised in Unions of general labourers and workers, and their numbers have increased rapidly in the last few years, but are not as yet considerable. We also find many small Unions of women only in various occupations, but it is a curious fact that women have so far evolved very little organisation in their most characteristic occupations such as domestic service, nursing, dressmaking and millinery. Unions of some kind in these occupations are not unknown, but they are quite inconsiderable in comparison with the numbers employed. Yet the strategic position of the workers in some of these occupations is in some respects strong. A fairly well-organised strike of London milliners in the first week in May, or of hotel servants and waitresses along the south coast, say about the last week in July, would probably be irresistible. The same applies to women in certain factory processes when the work is a monopoly of women and cannot be done by men’s fingers. Paper-sorting is a typical instance; a paper-sorters’ strike just before the Christmas present season might be highly effective. In such occupations as these, nevertheless, Unionism is mostly conspicuous by its absence.

There is little use in denying that there are special difficulties in the way of the organisation of women. The old difficulty of the hostility of men Unionists is largely a thing of the past, but many others remain. There are difficulties from hostility and indifference on the part of the employers; long hours of work; family ties and duties; educational deficiencies among working women themselves, and the intellectual and moral effects that result from ignorance. An immense difficulty is the low rate of wages characteristic of so many women’s employments, which makes it impossible in most cases to pay contributions sufficient for adequate benefit during a strike. Competition is another difficulty, especially in low-grade and unspecialised trades, where places can easily be filled. There is the constant dread among workers of this class and low-grade home workers that, if they attempt any resistance, some other woman will go behind them and take the work for still less wages. Even collecting contributions is often a considerable difficulty; if it is done at the factory it may subject the collector to disfavour and victimisation; if not, the labour is very considerable. Another great difficulty in organising women is the prospect of marriage. A girl looks upon her industrial career as merely a transition stage to getting married and having a home of her own. This need not in itself hinder her being a “good trade unionist,” for after all the industrial career of a girl, beginning at twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, may well be eight or ten years long, even if she marries young, but it no doubt does tend to deflect her energies and sentiment from Unionism. The prospect of marriage, which to a young man is a steadying influence, making for thrift and for the strengthening of his class by solidarity and corporate action, is to a young girl a distraction from industrial efficiency, an element of uncertainty and disturbance.

Again, the position of women renders them especially amenable to social influences. Social differences between different grades of workers keep them apart from one another and make combination difficult. Women are more susceptible than men to the influence of their social superiors. In the past, and even in the present, though less than formerly, no doubt, the influence of upper class women has been and is used against the Trade Union spirit. Charity and philanthropy have tended to counterbalance the forces that have been drawing the working class together. Miss Collet found in investigating for the Labour Commission that the homes and hostels for the working girls run by religious and benevolent societies had an atmosphere unfavourable to Trade Unionism, and influenced the girls to look coldly on agitation for improved material conditions. Lack of public spirit is, in short, the great difficulty with women. Their economic position, their training and education, the influence of the classes considered superior, above all perhaps the pressure of custom and tradition, all these have combined to prevent or postpone corporate action and class solidarity.

Must we admit that women are inherently incapable of organisation, which by a kind of miracle or chance has been achieved successfully in one district and in one industry only? A further consideration of the Board of Trade figures gives a rather different complexion to the matter.

In the building, mining, metal and transport trades there are practically no women unionists, but with the exception of metal there are only a very few women employed in these trades at all. In the other non-textile trades the proportion of women organised is very small, and the proportion of organised women to organised men is also small. But it happens that in most of these trades the women employed are also few compared with the men, and the men themselves are not strongly organised. In the woollen and worsted trade organisation is not strong for either sex. In cotton alone do we get a really strong organisation of both men and women. It begins to dawn upon us at this point that the weak organisation of women is after all part and parcel of the general problem of organisation in those trades. No doubt it is an extremer and specially difficult form of the problem. But on the whole, with the exception of the metal trades, it holds good that where women are employed together with men, they are strongly organised where men are strongly organised, weak where men are weak. Even in metal trades the exceptions are more apparent than real. The strong Unions are in branches of work that women do not do; and a glance down the list of those metal workers who make the small wares and fittings in which women’s employment is increasing does not reveal any great strength of male Unionism, except perhaps in the brass-workers, who exceeded 7000 in 1910. Directly we realise this intimate connexion of women’s unionism with the Labour Movement as a whole, a light is thrown on many puzzling discrepancies.

In the case of women there have been in the last forty years or so two tendencies at work. One is towards the sporadic growth of small unco-ordinated Unions of women only. Financially weak and in some cases governed by a retrograde policy, numbers of such Unions spring up and die down again. A few achieve some measure of success, and occasionally a very small Union will show a very considerable degree of persistence and vitality without perceptible increase of numbers. Occasionally such Unions are competing with mixed Unions in the same occupation, each of course regarding the other as the intruder. It matters very little who is to be blamed for the overlapping. The only important thing is to recognise that such tactics mean playing into the enemy’s hands, with disastrous results for labour. Apart from such unfortunate instances, it would be foolish to deny that the small Unions of women only have provisionally at least a considerable usefulness. The women must be roped in somehow, and even the most precarious organisation may have a distinct educational value in evoking in its members the germ of a sense of class-solidarity and membership with their fellows. I am almost tempted to say that any force that brings women consciously into association with aims higher than petty and personal ones is ultimately for good, however destructive it may seem to be in some of its manifestations.

The other tendency is towards the organisation of women either jointly with men or in close connexion with men’s Unions. In these cases there have been many failures and some successes. The question of adjustment is highly complicated, and cannot be settled on broad lines as with the cotton weavers. “Equal pay for equal work” is not a ready-made solution for all difficulties, for the work is very often not equal at all. In most cases it is absolutely distinct, and in many there is a troublesome margin where the work of men and women is very nearly the same but not quite.