PROSPECTS.—The girls can rise to forewoman's position, here or elsewhere. Vellum work forewoman mentioned that two of her young ladies had become forewomen elsewhere.
ORGANISATION.—The manager knew that a Women's Union existed, but thought it was more of a Benefit Society than anything else. He assured me that the problem of the organisation of women's labour was the problem in trade, and seemed vaguely to regret that women were so helpless and ready to be cut down.
MARRIED AND UNMARRIED.—The manager estimated twelve years as the average period that a woman remained in the trade. He fancied that there were a good many married women here; but when we went round and asked the different heads of departments we found that the only married ones were 2 in the litho department, i.e., 2 out of 12 in that department, i.e., 2 out of about 128 employed altogether. In the other departments the forewomen or foremen did not care to have them because they were so irregular. "You can never count on them." Two widows were employed in the book-folding department. The head of the litho department had only lately found out that two of his employees were married—one had run away from her husband, the other's husband was a stone polisher and she had to come out to keep the house going. The manager was very decided that undoubtedly married women's work tended to lower wages. They only want a little to supplement their husbands' earnings. He explained afterwards that his remarks applied more to the provinces than to London. He thought that the thing to aim at in improving the industrial position of women was the abolition of the married woman worker. How this could be done he could not say. The forewoman of the book-folding and sewing department, who had had some experience of married jobbers, said that they would not do ordinary work at ordinary rates, as they did not consider it worth their while. They had not got to earn any money, as they had husbands to fall back upon. The manager said that in the litho department the single girls thought it infra dig. to wash the rollers, but the married women "made no bones about it."
LEGISLATION.—In no case had women been turned away because of restrictive legislation. A certain amount of folding and stitching has to be done by men at night, and he would say that about 2 or 3 men were employed at this for about one hour five nights in the week. Sometimes the folding was not ready till 11 p.m., and the men had to hang about before. The manager thought that the chief grievance of the Factory Acts was that if only one woman in a department was employed overtime, one of the thirty legal nights was thereby used up. The manager thought that it was forty-eight nights you might work overtime, and seemed surprised on looking up the notices to find that it was thirty only. He approved of Factory Legislation on the whole, and thought that women had benefited by it. Personally, he would like to see all overtime abolished by law for men and women. Men worked worse next day when they had had to sit up at night. Public bodies were the worst offenders in the matter, "They have no consciences." The forewoman of the folding and sewing, where overtime was worked, said that her girls disliked overtime very much; and she did not think it worth while working them, as they could do less work next day in consequence. She had much rather that the men did it at night. She and the manager agreed that in places where women did not make a decent wage by working ordinary hours they might want to work at night. As to the effect Factory Legislation had upon the diverting of work from the home to the workshop, or vice versâ, the manager thought that the tendency had been for work to come in to the factory. There used to be much more home work.
MEN AND WOMEN.—According to the manager, there is a hard and fast line drawn by the various Societies in London as to what a woman may or may not do.
In Bookbinding of all descriptions she is practically confined to folding and sewing. She may not touch a glue brush or do any putting of paper books or magazines into paper covers.
In the provinces, on the other hand, the rules of the Consolidated Societies are different. A woman may do flush binding (i.e., books whose covers are cut on a level with the leaves and which have no "turnings in") up and foolscap size, two quires. Hence women do diaries, etc. In certain works at Tonbridge women are set to do this.
Litter-press Printing.—This firm had never tried female compositors. They had 100 men. If they tried to introduce women, all the men would go out and "you'd have a hornet's nest." The idea of paying women at the same rate as men struck them as ridiculous. "They would never be worth as much because they stay such a little time." They might some day try women compositors in their country establishment.
Feeding Printing Machines.—They might not employ women on platen machines because of the Union, but were going to try them on smallish letter-press machines. The Union had no objection to that.