As the unemployment crisis passed, “the sole problem” came to be “what scale of hours was likely to give the largest amount of production.” Steps were then taken to replace the first individual permits for exemptions by uniform orders for an entire trade. The latter were still issued, however, not for the industry as a whole, but only to individual firms applying for them. The permits were largely based on joint conferences with employers and employes, and allowed women to work at night or some eight or nine hours of overtime weekly. The latter meant a working week of about sixty-five hours in textile factories, and between sixty-five and seventy in other forms of factory work. The demands of employers had often been for a far greater amount of overtime.
The most extensive modifications of the law were made for munitions plants where, on account of the “urgent demand” the inspectors “recognized that latitude on a very wide scale must be permitted.” Night work under either the two or the three shift system was allowed, or as an alternative five hours of overtime weekly or seven and a half in cases of special urgency. But women were not to be employed on Sundays except for night work.
From August 4, 1914, to February 19, 1915, a total of 3,141 overtime permits of all kinds were issued.[161] Only fifty-four permits allowing night work remained in force at the end of 1914, though the number was considerably increased in the first quarter of 1915.
But overtime by women workers was unfortunately not even confined to that sanctioned by special orders. There is considerable evidence that long hours were also worked illegally, sometimes entirely without permission, in other cases above the permitted modifications. In September, 1914, the belief spread about that the factory acts were wholly in abeyance until the end of the war, and the factory inspectors admit that undoubtedly many cases of “long hours without legal sanction” occurred. Yet “these have been steadily brought under better control, the more steadily because of the knowledge of intelligent manufacturers that unlimited hours can not be worked without detriment to output, or in the long run without encroaching on workers’ reserves.”[162] According to the factory inspectors, this section of the manufacturers made more resistance to excessive overtime at this period than the workers themselves. In the critical days when the Germans were advancing toward Paris, many women were ready to work all day and all night on army supplies. Except in surgical dressing factories, where the girls were very young and the work very monotonous, the operatives were said to show “a spirit of sustained, untiring effort never seen before and most admirable.” One girl is quoted as saying, “My sweetheart, he’s out there, and my two brothers, so I may as well be working,” and a woman remarked that she wanted to be able to write her husband in the trenches that she was “doing her share.”[163] An appeal to the workers was made by Lord Kitchener early in the war to the effect that “in carrying out the great work of providing the army with its equipment employers and employes alike are doing their duty for their King and country equally with those who have joined the army for service in the field.” This was often posted in factories, and helped to stimulate the women to work long hours without complaint.
Women’s Working Hours
in 1915
Authorities differ about women’s working hours in 1915 in a way that makes it difficult to determine the exact situation. The factory inspectors showed a considerable degree of optimism. From their point of view the total numbers of hour law modifications in force remained large, but the amount of overtime and week end work declined, and the problem of violations was not serious.
In certain important industries, particularly clothing, boots, shirts, leather equipment and surgical dressings, the need for overtime had “for the present at all events ceased.” Yet the total number of requests for exemptions was no less, though there was “a marked reduction in the amount of latitude sought and allowed; for instance, fresh demands for permission to work on Sundays are now rarely received, and are confined to cases where sudden and unexpected emergency arises or the processes are continuous. Requests for Saturday afternoon work have also become less common, and there seems to be a more general recognition of the advantages of a week end rest.... Sunday labor has been found to be more and more unsatisfactory; apart from the ill effects which must follow from a long continued spell of working seven days a week, it too often results in loss of time on other days of the week and in consequent disorganization.”[164]
Only fifty orders allowing Sunday work by women and girls were outstanding in December, 1915. These orders were strictly conditioned. Sunday work was to be allowed only in cases of emergency and for part of the day, and was not to be carried on in any two consecutive weeks. Moderate hours through the week and time off on Saturdays were required.
Besides orders covering some twenty-seven different trades affected by war demands, a general order was issued in September, 1915, modifying the statute law in all other nontextile factories in which exemptions were legal. Seven and a half hours of overtime, making a working week of sixty-seven and a half hours, were permitted, and daily hours night run up to a maximum of fourteen. The 1914 general overtime order was continued in the munitions industry, and in special cases a week of from seventy to eighty hours was allowed. The factory inspectors noted on one hand that “many of the schemes put forward were considerably within the maximum allowed, and even where the maximum was sought it has been found in practice that the full number of hours were frequently not worked,” and on the other hand that many special orders had been required, especially for the large munition firms, in some of which the hours remained longer than those permitted by the general order for the trade. But on the whole there was “observable a distinct tendency towards a reduction of hours in these works as elsewhere.”[165]
Moreover, the tendency grew during the year “to substitute a system of shifts for the long day followed by overtime.” The factory inspectors urged the introduction of the three shift system, but, owing to the scarcity of skilled male tool setters and other mechanics and sometimes of women, two twelve hour shifts (generally ten and a half hours of actual work) were much more prevalent. The inspectors maintained, however, the superiority of three shifts, giving one example where the change had been made in which output increased by a third while the need for supervision diminished. But it should be noted that although the shift system brought a reduction of overtime to women workers, it involved an increasing amount of night work.