Women in Modern Industry

by B. L. Hutchins

There are signs that a deeper and more intimate consciousness of society as a whole may operate in favour of women. The recruiting campaign, for instance, may induce certain reflections. Between 1891 and 1900, 781,475 male infants died under a year old in England and Wales alone, making an average death-rate of 168 per thousand births. If even the very mild measures for the improvement of sanitation and the care of infants and nursing mothers that have been adopted in recent years had been customary twenty years ago, we should have now in England some hundreds of thousands more lads of recruiting age or approaching it than are actually here, and many of those who survived the high death-rate of those years would have escaped damage in early years and be stronger and finer men than they are. If we now adopted much more generous measures to the same end, we could probably save some hundreds of thousands more to serve their country in twenty years’ time. And all this would cost an infinitesimal sum in comparison with what is now being poured forth to make these young men as strong and fit for the field as possible. The militarists, if they were consistent, would realise that at the back of the army stands another army—the army of the poor working women, underfed, overworked, badly housed, and insufficiently clad. The patriots, if they were more clear-sighted in regard to their own desires, would spend a great deal more time and energy in demanding, for the sake of military efficiency, that the conditions under which the nation’s babies are brought into the world and the mother nursed and nourished should be changed in a quite revolutionary manner. Some of us may not love this style of argument; the view of men as “food for powder” and women as mere feeders of the army may seem an ignoble one. Those who hold such views will, however, have to consider their implications more closely.

It was a curious coincidence, perhaps even not a wholly fortuitous one (who can say?), that in the very week preceding our declaration of war, when Europe was already resounding with the tramp of armed men and the rumble of artillery wheels, the Local Government Board should have issued its first memoranda on the subject of Maternity and Child Welfare. These circulars, addressed to County Councils and Sanitary Authorities, advocated a considerable extension of the work of Public Health Departments in the direction of medical advice and treatment for pregnant and nursing mothers and their infants, and an extensive development of the system of home-visiting of women and infant children already in existence in some places. Parliament has already voted a grant to the extent of 50 per cent of the cost in aid of local schemes for Maternity and Child Welfare. The immediate appeal of the War Relief Fund and the difficulties of its administration have, no doubt, combined with the inertia characteristic of many local authorities to efface any very bold initiative on the more fundamental but less clamant questions raised in the Local Government Board memorandum. Still, the fact remains that the needs of the woman and the young child have been at last recognised as vital, however inadequate the means taken to meet them have so far been. These needs will be urged by Women’s Societies and by labour organisations, and the war will have the effect of bringing them into stronger relief as time goes on, and may supply the impetus for a still more drastic scheme, on the lines advocated by the Women’s Co-operative Guild.[66]

It is now recognised, or is coming to be recognised, that it is not alone the soldier who serves his country in war; the great part played by industry in building up the nation’s life is equally vital. “Industry and commerce,” writes Mr. Arthur Greenwood, “are not primarily intended as a field for exploitation and profit, but are essential national services in as true a sense as the Army and Navy.” Such a recognition should have its effect in raising the woman’s position, the special economic weakness of which is, that her value to the community is greater than any that can be measured in pounds, shillings, and pence, while nevertheless she, like others in a competitive society, is compelled to measure herself by competitive standards. During the war industrial women have been working day and night to supply military and naval requisites, taking their part in national defence as truly as if they could themselves aid in slaughtering the enemy, and not without considerable overstrain and damage to their own health and strength. Others, again, have spent their time and strength toiling to make good the deficiencies in Government organisation, not only for the relief of distress and unemployment, but even for the needs of recruits themselves. Working women in their homes bear a disproportionately heavy share of the burden of trouble and anxiety caused by the rise of prices in the necessaries of life. Vast numbers of women have offered up their sons and brothers in battle; hundreds of thousands have lost their employment and been reduced to poverty and distress. The efforts and sacrifices made by women cannot have passed wholly unnoticed by the Government, and we may hope that some real development of the position of woman, especially of the working woman, will follow the hoped-for settlement of this terrible crisis.

Even the thoughtless sentimentality of the well-to-do leisured woman has been touched to finer issues. Impelled to “do something” for the soldiers, she turned instinctively to the traditional or primeval occupations of women, and wanted to make shirts, etc., with her own hands. She was, however, here confronted with the new idea that the needs of the unemployed working woman must be considered. In the autumn it was suggested those who could afford new clothes should order some to stimulate employment. In the spring and early summer, on the contrary, the utmost economy was advocated, capital being scarce. The most irresponsible class in the community were thus asked to realise themselves as members of society, to understand that philanthropy was not merely an opportunity for them to save their own souls, that even their personal expenditure was not a merely private matter, but that both must be considered in relation to the needs of the commonweal.[67]

Constructive Measures.—The experience of the war should certainly lead to some better-thought-out method of dealing with times of stress and unemployment than has ever yet been in operation, especially with regard to women. It would be beyond the scope of this volume to draw up such a scheme in detail, but some points may be indicated. The need of better training has become plain. To raise the upper limit of school attendance is urgent, if education is to be worthy of the name. A better all-round training at school would give girls more choice of occupation, and would not leave them so much at the hazard of one particular process or trade. Develop a girl’s intelligence, train her hand and eye, and she will be helped to master the technical difficulties of whatever occupation she may wish to follow or work she may need to do. For older girls special technical and domestic courses may be most valuable, especially if taught in such a manner as to occupy the mind and increase the capacity, and not as mere mechanical routine. It was noted during the boom of work for the army that girls who had been trained in a trade school could adapt themselves more readily to a new and unaccustomed process than could those who had only ordinary workshop training. As a further development of the education question the experience of 1914-15 should lead to the provision of increased facilities for physical exercise in the open air (and time to use them) for young people of both sexes. In the first winter of war we were all amazed at the change effected by a few months’ training and fresh air, at the fine well-set-up young men who had lately been weedy clerks and pale-faced operatives. It may perhaps dawn upon us after the war that if the country can afford to satisfy the elementary needs of healthy life in young men when they stand a good chance of dying for her, it might be worth while to do something of the same kind for those who are to live for her and make her future. Perhaps eventually even the physical health and soundness of girls may be held to justify some provision for exercise in the open air.

In the second place, the local authorities should at times of stress offer all the useful employment they possibly can find to women at fair rates of wages. The more genuine employment a municipal body can find for women in time of need the better, whether by anticipating work that would normally be wanted a few months later or by increasing the efficiency of special services, such as the educational or health services, district nursing, cleansing and sweeping of schools and other buildings. Why not organise a grand “spring cleaning” of neglected homes, with domestic help to aid the overtaxed mothers of families? Special investigation of particular industrial or sanitary conditions as to which information was needed might well be carried out at times when educated women of the secretarial and clerical professions are unemployed.

It is evident that we need a better scheme of Employment Bureaux for women. There should be a centre of information and a clearing-house where workers, found superfluous in their previous occupation, could be drafted into such new ones as they were capable and willing to undertake, and this might possibly be worked in conjunction with a system of training. The comparative success of the work hurriedly improvised, and with many difficulties, by the Central Committee on Women’s Employment, is a clear indication that some similar organisation on a larger scale, say a National Advisory Council, linked up with the Labour Exchanges and representative of women’s organisations, might be infinitely valuable.

Another constructive movement that seems to be gaining ground is that for the organisation of women as consumers. At the end of [Chapter V.], written early in 1914, I ventured to prophesy that some such form of association would be needed as a complement to the work of organising industrial women-workers. In June 1915 a number of women’s societies were engaged in forming an association to take measures to counteract the war scarcity and increase the supply of food, to extend agricultural and horticultural training for women, to improve the feeding of children in schools, to establish cost-price restaurants for the poor, and to urge the Government to form an Advisory Committee to deal with the whole subject and take steps to control the rise of prices, such a committee to include representatives of women householders.[68] Such an association may have great results, directly in the attainment of the objects set forth, indirectly in the stimulating of public spirit and a sense of citizenship among women.

There is, however, little ground for hoping that the war will of itself lead to social measures of reconstruction or to the development of a better-organised state, whether in regard to women or in regard to labour generally. Some can find spiritual comfort and sustenance in the idea that by fighting German militarism we are destroying tyranny and despotism among ourselves. On the contrary, it may be that in fighting we are impelled to use as a weapon and may be giving a new lease of life to precisely those tendencies, those forces in our own social life which we are opposing among the Germans for all we are worth. Class domination, the rule of the strongest, and the idealisation of brute force are not peculiar to Germany, although unquestionably, as we have been driven to see, they have there reached an extraordinary exuberance. But the same tendencies are here, and we may be sure democracy will not come of itself, merely as a result of the war. War inevitably means for the time the predominance of man over woman, the predominance of the soldier over the industrial, the predominance of reaction over democracy. It is significant that the stress of war was quickly seized as a pretext for suspending the protection of industrial workers by the State, and for relaxing the Education Acts which normally interpose some hindrance to the exploitation of children by the capitalist employer. The clamour for compulsion and the shameless underpayment of women in some branches of war work are signs of the same reaction. Yet in the long run the apparently weaker elements of society are as vitally necessary as the stronger, and to ignore or silence their needs is to strike at the heart of life. The problems offered by the great war, gigantic and staggering as they are, are not so different in kind from, though vaster in degree and more appalling than, the problem of the industrial revolution itself. Each is a problem of the development of material civilisation, which has (we know it now too poignantly) far outdistanced the growth of civilisation on its social and spiritual side. Each includes the question whether man is to be the master or the slave of the mechanic powers his own genius has evoked. Neither can ever be solved without the conscious co-operation of Woman and Labour, failing which we must for ever fall short of the highest possibilities of our race. “If Great Britain is to lead the way in promoting a new spirit between the nations, she needs a new spirit also in the whole range of her corporate life. For what Britain stands for in the world is, in the long run, what Britain is, and when thousands are dying for her it is more than ever the duty of all of us to try to make her worthier of their devotion.”[69]