[APPENDIX III.] GENERAL GLASGOW REPORT.
(A.) Letterpress Printing. Machine Feeding and Flying.
Girls are employed to "feed" the machines and to "take off" the impressed sheet. A girl will learn "taking off," or "flying," in a couple of days; but except in the old-fashioned and smaller jobbing-shops flying is now done entirely by machinery. Machine feeding is not so easy and simple a process as it seems. The girls stand and perform the same movement repeatedly, each time giving to the sheet the precise swing required to send it accurately into the grips. The work requires little intelligence, and the extent to which it can be characterised as exhausting depends partly on the speed of the machine, but chiefly on the length of the "run." Three methods of treating the girls may be distinguished. In some shops where there are very long runs, perhaps extending to a couple of weeks, as in the case of the printing of low-priced Bibles, the work is tiring. At the close of a long run the machines have to be prepared afresh, and the girls enjoy a spell for a day or two. This leisure they are sometimes inclined to abuse by interrupting the work of others with conversation, and consequently attempts are being made to employ them on other machines during the interval. This innovation the girls are resisting. In other shops the fatiguing nature of a long run is mitigated by removing the girl to another machine with a different movement, but the "right" of a girl to be so moved about and rested is not recognised; it is simply a matter for the consideration of the foreman. To allow the claim to frequent shifting might prove inconvenient in times of pressure. Lastly, in establishments where the bulk of the work involves short runs, as, for example, in printing the official matter of a municipality or a college, the necessity for frequently preparing the machines affords considerable leisure to the feeders. These intervals explain the groups of girls often to be seen chatting and knitting in odd corners of the machine-room. Some of these shops recognise the right of a girl to feed and keep clean "her own machine" and no other. Where this is the case a girl may be employed feeding for no longer than a quarter of the normal working week of fifty-two and a half hours owing to the shortness of the runs and the length of time spent in re-adjustment. The work is dirty but not dangerous, as all machinery is well-fenced, and accidents are of very rare occurrence. The day's work usually starts at 6.15 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m., with meal hours at 9 and at 2 o'clock and half an hour for tea when engaged on overtime. Saturday's shift is from 6.15 a.m. until 10 a.m. Girls are paid 5s., in a few shops 6s., a week as beginners. They get their first rise in three months, and are gradually advanced to an average wage of 10s., while an expert feeder may earn 11s., or at the outside 12s., a week. When girls find that they can feed well after a comparatively short time in a shop and that they are getting only 7s. or 8s. a week they commonly seek and obtain the average wage elsewhere. Managers fancy "it would not do" to advance a girl abruptly from 6s. to 10s. a week in the same shop, but do not blame the girls for leaving. "It is human nature." Girls are taken on at any age after fourteen, and stay on till they are married or until they are called away to domestic duties. Some remain on after marriage, but not more than 1 or 2 per cent. A few come back as widows. Married and unmarried as workers are "six of one and half a dozen of the other," remarked an employer of both, while another thought married women "less regular" in attendance. There are no signs of married women lowering rates of pay. "Time and a half" is the overtime rate. Women workers who do not get paid overtime when they work beyond the normal day get paid over the holidays, but not otherwise. There are no fines. There is no trade organisation among the machine feeders, and as the various unions of the men are not directly affected they do not interfere. In some firms feeding has been done by girls for a quarter of a century; in others they have been introduced only within the last five or six years. Boys were rough, irregular, scarce, and wanted higher pay. The girls, although they also are drawn from a rough class, are steadier, cleaner, and more economical in the use of material than boys. Besides, there are more of them. There was no inducement for boys to continue at such work, so they have been drafted into certain forms of unskilled, but fairly well paid, labour, such as is offered by the Post Office or bread factories. In some districts they go to the shipyards to assist riveters, and are able to earn straight away twice the wages they would obtain in a printing shop. As overtime by girls is restricted by legislation, young men (over 18) are kept for feeding in one large jobbing-shop where there are often seasons of great pressure (e.g., in the printing of penny monthly diaries and time-tables) and where "rushes" and overtime are inevitable. These young men would not be thus employed but for the restrictions of the Factory Acts, as the manager, for reasons stated above, much prefers girls for feeding. While all modern machines are fitted with self-fliers, not one of the many attempts to provide automatic feeders has proved quite satisfactory. For long runs such feeders as have been designed may serve fairly well, but in shops with much jobbing and many short runs too much time would be spent in adjusting the feeder to the particular job. The sole advantages of a mechanical feeder are that it neither "takes ill" nor "goes on strike." Meanwhile it is imperfect and expensive, and the supply of cheap female labour abundant.
(B.) Lithographic Printing. Machine Feeding.
What has been said of feeders under letterpress printing is generally true of feeders in the lithographic branch. The only difference seems to be one of social position. Girls employed in feeding lithographic machines are "higher,"[97] "less filthy in talk," etc. They form the intermediate class, of which the girls in the bookbinding and warehouse departments are at the top. In one shop where all three classes are employed, the manager remarked that these caste distinctions were "clean cut," and obvious to the most casual observer.
[97] They are supposed to be lower in London, Manchester, etc.—[Ed.]