Women in Modern Industry

by B. L. Hutchins

It seems, however, highly improbable, from what one knows of the working woman’s point of view and outlook, that as she becomes able to voice her wishes she will favour an indiscriminate levelling of sex-restrictions in industry; on the contrary, it seems likely that as she becomes more articulate and has more voice and influence in the organisation she belongs to, she will favour regulations of a fairly stringent nature in regard to the processes within an industry which may be carried on by women. Many of the observations that have been made on industrial women in recent or comparatively recent years show that although at times they are driven by stress of need to compete with men or to do work beyond their strength, yet that they regard themselves mainly from the point of view of the family and believe that to keep up the standard of men’s wages is as important as to raise their own.[48]

The Middle-Class Woman’s Movement.—There is, however, a complication between the labour woman’s movement and the woman’s movement for enfranchisement and freedom of opportunity generally, and great care is necessary to avoid confusing the issues. The labour woman’s movement is a class movement in which solidarity between man and woman is all important. The women’s rights movement aims at obtaining full citizenship for women; that is to say, not only the Suffrage but the entrance to professions, the entrance without special impediments to local governing bodies and, generally, the abolition of belated and childish restrictions that hinder the development of personality and social usefulness. Now these two movements are not in principle opposed, and there is no reason why the same women should not take part in both, as in fact many do. The opposition consists rather in a difference of origin and history. The labour movement is born of the economic changes induced by the industrial revolution, and tends towards a socialistic solution of the problem. The women’s rights movement is the outcome of middle-class changes, especially the decreasing prospect of marriage, which, together with the absence of training and opportunity for work, has produced a situation of extreme difficulty. The middle-class woman’s agitation was inevitably influenced by the ideals of her class, a class largely engaged in competitive business of one kind or another. Equality of opportunity, permission to compete with men and try their luck in open market, was what the women of this type demanded, with considerable justification, and with admirable courage. The working woman, on the other hand, the victim of that very unrestricted competition which her better-off sister was demanding, before all things needed improved wages and conditions of work, for which State protection and combination with men were essential.[49]

There is, however, no fundamental opposition between these movements. Just as the working classes are striving through Syndicalism to express a rising discontent, not only with the economic conditions of their work, but also with the fact that they have no voice in its regulation and control, so women are striving, not only for political freedom and economic betterment, but for a voice in the collective control of society. Women have, until very lately, been left out from the arrangement even of matters which most vitally concern them and their children. The following incident in the history of the Factory Department will illustrate this fact. In 1879 the then Chief Inspector of Factories, Sir Alexander Redgrave, discussed in his annual report a tentative suggestion for the appointment of women inspectors that some person or persons unnamed had put forward. With the utmost kindliness and gentleness he negatived the proposal altogether, first on the assumption that the inspection of factories was work impossible for women and “incompatible with (their) gentle and home-loving character”; secondly, on the ground that in regard to the sanitary conditions in which women were employed “it was seldom necessary to put a single question to a female,” and consequently there was no need to appoint women inspectors.[50] Thirteen years later came the Labour Commission. At that time it was unheard of for women to be appointed on Commissions, even when the subject was one in which women were most chiefly concerned. It is said, and I see no reason to doubt the statement, that the Labour Commission of 1892 did not at first intend even to hear evidence from women witnesses as to conditions in which women were employed. Having yielded to the urgency of two women who were working hard at the organisation of sweated workers in the East End and demanded to be heard, the Commission, as an afterthought, appointed women Assistant Commissioners, whose researches and reports subsequently led to the appointment of women Factory Inspectors—sixty years after the first appointments of men. Anyone who is likely to read this book will probably be already aware that women factory inspectors had no sooner been appointed than they very speedily were informed of flagrant sanitary defects in factories and workshops which had been suffered to continue simply because no woman official had been in existence, and men, with the best intentions, did not know what to look or ask for. The exclusion of women had involved in this case not merely a narrowing of the field of opportunity for professional women—a comparatively small matter—but a scandalous neglect of the elementary decencies of life for millions of women and girls in the working-class. It is unnecessary here to do more than remind my readers that until lately women were excluded also from local governing bodies which control the health, education, and conditions of life and work of women and children.

Men are not alone to blame for this state of affairs. If women have long been excluded from posts in which their services were greatly needed, it is very largely because of the ideals set up by the women themselves. The wretched education given to girls in the Victorian era, the egotistic passion for refinement which made it a reproach even to allude to the grosser facts of life, much more to the perils and dangers run by women in a lower class, all this was due quite as much to the influence of women as of men. It was not surprising that men of the upper classes, accustomed by their mothers and wives to believe that for women ignorance and innocence were one, and that no painful reality must ever be mentioned before them or come near to sully their refinement, should recoil from the idea of trusting them with difficult duties and responsible work. It is to the few pioneer women like Florence Nightingale, Josephine Butler, and others who came out and braved reproach—from women as well as men—that we owe the introduction of worthier social ideals.

The New Spirit among Women.—As the women’s movement draws towards the labour movement, as it is now so rapidly doing, it tends to lose the narrow individualism derived from the middle-class ideals of the last century. Mere freedom to compete is seen to be a small thing in comparison with opportunity to develop. The appeal for fuller opportunity is now stimulated less by the desire merely to do the same things that men do, more by the perception that the whole social life must be impoverished until we get the women’s point of view expressed and recognised in the functions of national life. On the other hand, the women Unionists, who have long been taxed with apathy and lack of interest in their trade organisation, are drawing from the women’s movement a new inspiration and enthusiasm. Observers in Lancashire tell you that there is a new spirit stirring among the women. They are no longer so contented to have the Union efficiently managed for them by men; they want to take a conscious part in the work of organisation themselves. The same movement is visible in the plucky and self-sacrificing efforts for solidarity made by the workers in trades hitherto unorganised; and, at the other end of the social scale, in the deep discontent with the life of parasitic dependence which has been so powerfully expressed in the Life of Florence Nightingale, and in Lady Constance Lytton’s book on Prisons and Prisoners.

The Potential Changes the Industrial Revolution carries with it.—We have endeavoured to analyse the changes effected in the position of women by the industrial revolution. Social changes, however, take a long time to work themselves out, and many features in the position of the woman-worker at the present day, as we have seen, are the result not so much of the industrial revolution as of the status and economic position of women in earlier times, and still more of the neglect of the governing classes to take the measures necessary for the protection of the people in passing through that prolonged crisis which may be roughly dated from 1760 to 1830. Let us now try as far as possible to free our minds from the influence of these disturbing factors and ask ourselves what are the potential changes in the position of the working woman effected by the industrial revolution, and what improvement, if any, she might expect to achieve if those changes could work themselves out more completely than social reaction and hindrances have yet permitted them to do. Let us, in short, pass from the consideration of What Is to the contemplation of What Might Be.

1. By the use of mechanical power, the need for muscular strength is diminished, and greater possibilities are opened up to the weaker classes of workers.—We are accustomed to view this change with disfavour, because it often takes the form of displacing men’s labour and lowering men’s wages. But that is mainly because we see things in terms of unorganised labour. With proper organisation we should not see women taking men’s work at less than men’s wages; we should see both men and women doing the work to which their special aptitudes are most appropriate, each paid for their special skill. We should not see women dragging heavy weights or doing laborious kinds of work which are dangerous and unsuitable to them; we should see them using their special gifts and special kinds of skill, and paid accordingly. There is no reason, save custom and lack of organisation, why a nursery-maid should be paid less than a coal-miner. He is not one whit more capable of taking her place than she is of taking his. For generations we have been accustomed to assume that any girl can be a nursery-maid (which is far from being the truth), and from force of habit we consider the miner has to be well paid because his occupation demands a degree of strength and endurance which is comparatively rare, and also because he has the sense to combine and unfortunately the nursery-maid so far has not. The factory system is doing a great deal for women, directly by widening the field of occupation open to them, and indirectly by heightening the value of special aptitudes, some of which are peculiar to women. When mechanical power is used, strength is no longer the prime qualification for work, and the special powers of the girl-worker come into play.

The factory system, also, by its immensely increased productivity, is altering the old views of what is profitable, and a new science of social economics is evolving which would have been unthinkable under the old regime. In Miss Josephine Goldmark’s recent most interesting book, Fatigue and Efficiency, she has gathered together the results of many experiments made by employers to ascertain the effects of shorter hours. There is practical unanimity in the results of these experiments. Obviously there must be a limit to the degree in which shortening hours of work would increase the output, but no one appears yet to have reached that limit. In the Factory Inspectors’ Report for 1912 many cases are mentioned where employers have voluntarily reduced hours of work and find that they, as well as their work-people are benefited by the change. In one case of a large firm which had formerly worked from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. it was arranged to cease at 7, a decrease of a whole hour, which necessitated engaging extra hands, but at the end of the year it was found that the annual cost of production was slightly diminished and the output considerably increased. Others expressed an opinion that 8 to 6.30 was “quite long enough,” and that if these hours were exceeded the work suffered next morning. The same may be said in regard to other improvements in working conditions, such as ventilation, cleanliness, the provision of baths, refectories, medical aid, means of recreation; those who have taken such measures have found themselves rewarded by increased output. Even from the commercial standpoint we do not appear to have nearly exhausted the possibilities of betterment. There can be little doubt, judging from existing means of information, that if the whole of the industry of the country were run on shorter hours, higher wages, and greatly improved hygienic conditions, it would be very much more productive than it is. From the social point of view such betterment is greatly needed, especially in the case of the young of both sexes, whose health is most easily impaired by over-strain, and who are destined to be the workers, parents, and citizens of the next generation.

2. Status.—A still more important result of the industrial revolution is the changed status of the wage-earner. Here it appears to me that women have profited more than men. Broadly speaking, men, whatever their ultimate gain in wages, lost in status through the industrial revolution. The prospect of rising to be masters in their own trade, though not universal, was certainly very much greater under the domestic system of working with small capital than under the modern system of large concentrated capital. In this respect women did not lose in anything like the same proportion as did men, because they had very much less to lose. The number of women who could rise to be employers on their own account must have been small. No doubt a larger number lost the prospect of industrial partnership with their husbands in the joint management of a small business. But for women wage-earners the industrial revolution does mean a certain advance in status. The woman-worker in the great industry sells her work per piece or per hour, not her whole life and personality. I shall perhaps be told indignantly that the poor woman in a low-class factory or laundry is as veritable a drudge as the most oppressed serf of mediaeval times, and I do not attempt to deny it. But we are here discussing potential changes, not the actual conditions now in force. The drudgery performed by women under the great industry is of the nature of a survival, and results from the fact that women can still be got to work in such ways for very low wages. These conditions are largely the heritage of the past and can be changed and humanised whenever the women themselves or society acting collectively makes a sufficiently strong demand.

Nor must it be forgotten that in modern industry women have a further advantage in being paid their own wages instead of being merely remunerated collectively in the family, as was often the case formerly. Modern industry thus holds for the woman-worker the possibility of a more dignified and self-respecting position than the domestic system of the near past.