Women in Modern Industry

by B. L. Hutchins

It was probably not until the factory system developed, however, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, that women were employed to any considerable extent as wage-earners in industry, and even when they were so employed there was an intermediate stage in which it was not unusual for the father or head of the family to appropriate their earnings and apply them as he pleased. Gaskell lamented the fact that the custom was creeping in of paying individual wages to women and children, thinking that it would break family ties. Though it still sometimes happens that members of a family work together in mills, Gaskell’s fears were undoubtedly justified. Family ties, however, are of many kinds, and it is probably not correct to assume that the disintegration of the family as a producing or industrial unit indicates a relaxation of these emotions of affection, loyalty, and responsibility which spring to mind when the family is regarded in its social and ethical relationships.

The fact must, moreover, be noted as bearing directly upon the chief problem of women’s wages that although the family as a producing unit is no longer of considerable importance, as a spending unit it exercises a fundamental influence on the industrial system. From the point of view of food, lodging, medicine, and other items of expenditure, a person is more interested as a rule in the collective income of the family group to which he belongs than in his own individual contribution. Many mining districts in which men can earn large wages show a low wage level for women, while in such a district as Hebden Bridge, where, as the phrase goes, it pays a man better to have daughters than sons, the opposite condition prevails. In both cases the wages are influenced, broadly speaking, by the standard of comfort of the family rather than by that of the individual.

If it were the invariable rule for a worker to belong to a family group, and if families were uniform as regards the number and sex distribution of their members, there would be no great cause to regret the influence of the collective family budget upon wages. But conditions are not uniform, and in districts or trades in which the wage level is largely affected by the presence of women whose fathers and brothers are relatively well-to-do, the position of a woman living alone in lodgings is apt to be a hard one. Where a father earns enough to maintain his family in reasonable comfort, the daughters going to work in a factory may be willing to accept wages no more than sufficient to provide them with clothes and pocket-money, but quite inadequate to afford their workmate who is living independently a sufficient livelihood.

These considerations are closely connected with the question whether, in estimating what is a fair wage for a woman, we should proceed on the basis of a woman living alone in lodgings, or whether we should admit as a proper consideration the fact that in many cases the woman would live with her parents and family, and would have the advantage, if not of assistance from them, at least of that economy in expenditure which the family group represents.

Statistics as to the number of women who live independently are difficult to obtain, and it is doubtful whether such women form the majority of those employed. It may be granted, however, that in certain districts and certain trades the proportion is small, and in these cases it might be asked whether we should not ignore the type which is exceptional and consider the wages paid on the basis of actual rather than hypothetical needs. This, it may be argued, is already done in the case of children or young persons, in connection with whom the question is never asked whether the wages paid are sufficient to maintain them independently.

The answer appears to be clear, though it brings us up against certain moral considerations. It may be true that the women in a certain industry or town, in spite of low wages, are all in fact well nourished and comfortable, members as they are of families which as families are well-to-do. Great as may be the respect which kinship deserves, it is submitted, however, that no normal woman should be compelled by economic exigencies to live with persons towards whom she has not voluntarily undertaken responsibilities, and that the freedom which economic independence implies is a right to which every woman willing to work may properly lay claim.

Even, therefore, though we dismiss from consideration the great number of women who have no choice but to live entirely on their own earnings, there are still grounds on which the position can be maintained that the single woman living alone with reasonable frugality is the proper test by which, from the point of view of what is right and desirable, wages should be measured.

It should be noted, moreover, that the issue is not solely between women who live alone and women who are partly supported by their families. There are also the women who have dependents. According to the 1911 population Census over one-fifth[56] of occupied women were not single, but married or widowed, and many of these doubtless have children to support. The Fabian Women’s Group enquiry showed that about half the women workers canvassed had dependents. The Labour Commission of the United States, in course of investigating the condition of women and child wage-earners, found that in a group of 300 families 43 per cent of the family income was contributed by unmarried women over sixteen.[57] Again, Miss Louise Bosworth, in a study of The Living Wage of Women Workers, published in 1911, found that “the girls working for pin-money were negligible factors.” So far from girl workers being mostly supported at home, it appears that in many cases the earnings of the single daughter or sister living with her family, small as they are, are an important element in the family income.

It has been shown in the previous section that even in the relatively well-paid women’s trades there are large numbers of adult women in receipt of wages which are scarcely compatible with mere physical existence, much less a decent and comfortable life. Men’s wages, even in low-paid trades, are usually sufficient to enable a man who has not undertaken family responsibilities—which after all are entirely voluntary—to obtain a sufficiency of food and warmth. The remuneration of working-class women are in the majority of cases, however, barely adequate to satisfy this austere standard. We naturally ask, therefore, why this difference should exist.

The occupations in which men and women are indifferently employed are relatively few in number. Even where men and women are employed side by side in the same trade they are usually engaged on different processes. The points where overlapping occurs are, however, sufficiently numerous to enable us to make the generalisation that in those industrial processes in which both men and women are employed the efficiency or output of the man is greater than that of the woman worker. In other words, the man is worth more, and his higher wages are an expression of this fact.