Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor

by J. A. Hobson

§ 8. What Trade Unionism can do for them.--A question which naturally rises now is, how far combination in the form of Trade Unionism can assist to raise the industrial condition of these women. The practical power wielded by male Unions we saw was twofold. Firstly, by restricting the supply of labour in their respective trades they raised its market price, i.e. wages. Secondly, they could extract better conditions from employers, by obliging the latter to deal with them as a single large body instead of dealing with them as a number of individuals. How far can women-workers effect these same ends by these same means?

Trade Unionism, so far as women are concerned, is yet in its infancy. In 1874, Mrs. Paterson established a society, now named the Women's Trades Union Provident League, to try and establish combination among women in their several trades. The first Union was that of women engaged in book-binding, formed in September 1874. Since then a considerable number of Unions have been formed among match-makers, dressmakers, milliners, mantle-makers, upholstresses, rope-makers, confectioners, box-makers, shirt-makers, umbrella-makers, brush-makers and others. Many of these have been formed to remedy some pressing grievance, or to secure some definite advance of wage, and in certain cases of skilled factory work where the women have maintained a steady front, as among the match-makers and the confectioners, considerable concessions have been won from employers. But the small scale and tentative character of most of these organizations do not yet afford any adequate test of what Unionism can achieve. The workers in a few factories here and there have formed a Union of, at the most, a few hundred workers. No large women's trade has yet been organized with anything approaching the size and completeness of the stronger men's Unions. Women Trade Unionists numbered 120,178 in 1901, and of these no less than 89.9 per cent were textile workers, whose Unions are mostly organized by and associated with male Unions.

There are several reasons why the growth of effective organization among women-workers must be slow. In the first place, as we have seen, a large proportion of their work is "out work" done at home or in small domestic workshops. Now labour organizations are necessarily strong and effective, in proportion as the labourers are thrown together constantly both in their work and in their leisure, have free and frequent opportunities of meeting and discussion, of educating a sense of comradeship and mutual confidence, which shall form a moral basis of unity for common industrial action. But to the majority of women-workers no such opportunities are open. Even the factory workers are for the most part employed in small groups, and are dispersed in their homes. Combination among the mass of home-workers or workers in small sweating establishments is almost impossible. The women's Unions have hitherto been successful in proportion as the trades are factory trades. Where endeavours have been made to organize East End shirt-makers, milliners, and others who work at home, very little has been achieved. In those trades where it is possible to give out an indefinite amount of the work to sub-contractors, or to workers to do at home, it seems impossible that any great results can be thus attained. Even in trades where part of the work is done in factories, the existence of reckless competition among unorganized out-workers can be utilized by unprincipled employers to destroy attempts at effective combination among their factory hands. The force of public opinion which may support an organization of factory workers by preventing outsiders from underselling, can have no effect upon the competition of home-workers, who bid in ignorance of their competitors, and bid often for the means of keeping life in themselves and their children. The very poverty of the mass of women-workers, the low industrial conditions, which Unionism seeks to relieve, form cruel barriers to the success of their attempts. The low physical condition, the chronic exhaustion produced by the long hours and fetid atmosphere in which the poorer workers live, crush out the human energy required for effective protest and combination. Moreover, the power to strike, and, if necessary, to hold out for a long period of time, is an essential to a strong Trade Union. Almost all the advantages won by women's Unions have been won by their proved capacity for holding out against employers. This is largely a matter of funds. It is almost impossible for the poorest classes of women-workers to raise by their own abstinence a fund which shall make their Union formidable. Their efforts where successful have been always backed by outside assistance. Even were there a close federation of Unions of various women's trades--a distant dream at present--the larger proportion of recipients of low wages among women-workers as compared with men would render their success more difficult.

§ 9. Legislative Restriction and the force of Public Opinion.--If Trade Unionism among women is destined to achieve any large result, it would appear that it will require to be supported by two extra-Union forces.

The first of these forces must consist of legislative restriction of "out-work." If all employers of women were compelled to provide factories, and to employ them there in doing that work at present done at home or in small and practically unapproachable workshops, several wholesome results would follow. The conditions of effective combination would be secured, public opinion would assist in securing decent wages, factory inspection would provide shorter hours and fair sanitary conditions, and last, not least, women whose home duties precluded them from full factory work would be taken out of the field of competition. Whether it would be possible to successfully crush the whole system of industrial "out-work" may be open to question; but it is certain that so long as, and in proportion as "out-work" is permitted, attempts on the part of women to raise their industrial condition by combination will be weak and unsuccessful. So long as "out-work" continues to be largely practised and unrestrained, competition sharpened by the action of married women and other irregular and "bounty-fed" labour, must keep down the price of women's work, not only for the out-workers themselves, but also for the factory workers. Nor is it possible to see how the system of "out-work" can be repressed or even restricted by any other force than legislation. So long as home-workers are "free" to offer, and employers to accept, this labour, it will continue to exist so long as it pays; it will pay so long as it is offered cheap enough; and it will be offered cheaply so long as the supply continues to bear the present relation to the demand.

But there is another force required to give any full effect to such extensions of the Factory Act as will crush private workshops, and either directly or indirectly prohibit out-work. The real reason, as we saw, why woman's wages were proportionately lower than man's, was the competition of a mass of women, able and willing to work at indefinitely low rates, because they were wholly or partly supported from other sources. Now legislation can hardly interfere to prevent this competition, but public opinion can. If the greater part of the industrial work now done by women at home were done in factories, this fact in itself would offer some restrictions to the competition of married women, which is so fatal to those who depend entirely upon their wages for a livelihood. But the gradual growth of a strong public opinion, fed by a clear perception of the harm married women do to their unsupported sisters by their competition, and directed towards the establishment of a healthy social feeling against the wage-earning proclivities of married women, would be a far more wholesome as well as a more potent method of interference than the passing of any law.

To interfere with the work of young women living at home, and supported in large part by their parents, would be impracticable even if it were desirable, although the competition of these conduces to the same lowering of women's wages. But the education of a strong popular sentiment against the propriety of the industrial labour of married women, would be not only practicable, but highly desirable. Such a public sentiment would not at first operate so stringently as to interfere in those exceptional cases where it seems an absolute necessity that the wife should aid by her home or factory work the family income. But a steady pressure of public opinion, making for the closer restriction of the wage-work of married women, would be of incomparable value to the movement to secure better industrial conditions for those women who are obliged to work for a living. A fuller, clearer realization of the importance of this subject is much needed at the present time. The industrial emancipation of women, favoured by the liberal sentiments of the age, has been eagerly utilized by enterprising managers of businesses in search of the cheapest labour. Not only women, but also children are enabled, owing to the nature of recent mechanical inventions which relieve the physical strain, but increase the monotony of labour, to make themselves useful in factories or home-work. Each year sees a large growth in the ranks of women-workers. Eager to earn each what she can, girls and wives alike rush into factory work, reckless of the fact that their very readiness to work tells against them in the amount of their weekly wages, and only goes to swell the dividends of the capitalist, or perhaps eventually to lower prices. The improving mechanism of our State School System assists this movement, by turning out every year a larger percentage of half-timers, crammed to qualify for wage-earners at the earliest possible period. Already in Lancashire and elsewhere, the labour of these thirteen-year-olders is competing with the labour of their fathers. The substitution of the "ring" for the "mule" in Lancashire mills, is responsible for the sight which may now be seen, of strong men lounging about the streets, supported by the earnings of their own children, who have undersold them in the labour market. The "ring" machine can be worked by a child, and can be learned in half an hour; that is the sole explanation of this deplorable phenomenon.

In the case of child-work, with its degrading consequences on the physical and mental health of the victim thus prematurely thrust into the struggle of life, legislation can doubtless do much. By raising the standard of education, and, if necessary, by an absolute prohibition of child-work, the State would be keeping well within the powers which the strictest individualist would assign to it, as it would be merely protecting the rising generation against the cupidity of parents and the encroachments of industrial competition.

The case of married women-workers is different. Better education of women in domestic work and the requirements of wifehood and motherhood; the growth of a juster and more wholesome feeling in the man, that he may refuse to demand that his wife add wage-work to her domestic drudgery; and above all, a clearer and more generally diffused perception in society of the value of healthy and careful provision for the children of our race, should build up a bulwark of public opinion, which shall offer stronger and stronger obstruction to the employment of married women, either outside or inside the home, in the capacity of industrial wage-earners. The satisfaction rightly felt in the ever wider opportunities afforded to unmarried women of earning an independent livelihood, and of using their abilities and energies in socially useful work, is considerably qualified by our perception of the injury which these new opportunities inflict upon our offspring and our homes. Surely, from the large standpoint of true national economy, no wiser use could be made of the vast expansion of the wealth-producing power of the nation under the reign of machinery, than to secure for every woman destined to be a wife and a mother, that relief from the physical strain of industrial toil which shall enable her to bring forth healthy offspring, and to employ her time and attention in their nurture, and in the ordering of a cleanly, wholesome, peaceful home life. So long as public opinion permits or even encourages women, who either are or will be mothers, to neglect the preparation for, and the performance of, the duties of domestic life and of maternity, by engaging in laborious and unhealthy industrial occupations, so long shall we pay the penalty in that physical and moral deterioration of the race which we have traced in low city life. How can the women of Cradley Heath engaged in wielding huge sledge-hammers, or carrying on their neck a hundredweight of chain for twelve or fourteen hours a day, in order to earn five or seven shillings a week, bear or rear healthy children? What "hope of our race" can we expect from the average London factory hand? What "home" is she capable of making for her husband and her children? The high death-rate of the "slum" children must be largely attributed to the fact that the women are factory workers first and mothers afterwards. Roscher, the German economist, assigns as the reason why the Jewish population of Prussia increases so much faster than the Christian, the fact that the Jewish mothers seldom go out of their own homes to work.[[36]] One of the chief social dangers of the age is the effect of industrial work upon the motherhood of the race. Surely, the first duty of society should be to secure healthy conditions for the lives of the young, so as to lay a firm physical foundation for the progress of the race.

This we neglect to do when we look with indifference or complacency upon the present phase of unrestricted competition in industrial work amongst women. So long as we refuse to insist, as a nation, that along with the growth of national wealth there shall be secured those conditions of healthy home life requisite for the sound, physical, moral, and intellectual growth of the young, at whatever cost of interference with so-called private liberty of action, we are rendering ourselves as a nation deliberately responsible for the continuance of that creature whose appearance gives a loud lie to our claim of civilization--the gutter child of our city streets. Thousands of these children, as we well know, the direct product of economic maladjustment, grow up every year--in our great cities to pass from babyhood into the street arab, afterwards to become what they may, tramp, pauper, criminal, casual labourer, feeble-bodied, weak-minded, desolate creatures, incapable of strong, continuous effort at any useful work. These are the children who have never known a healthy home. With that poverty which compels mothers to be wage-earners, lies no small share of the responsibility of this sin against society and moral progress. It is true that no sudden general prohibition of married woman's work would be feasible. But it is surely to be hoped that with every future rise in the wages and industrial position of male wage-earners, there may be a growing sentiment in favour of a restriction of industrial work among married women.