(4) The cheaper type-setting of women is needed in order to compete successfully with the Linotype machine. There is no doubt that to a certain extent the comparatively low price of women's labour tends to retard the introduction of machinery.
(D.) Bookbinding.
In the bookbinding trade girls fold, put in plates and illustrations, collate, sew by hand and by machine. Sewing used all to be done by hand, but machines were introduced some fifteen years ago. In the case of primers and stitched books girls do all except print the covers. They make cloth cases as distinct from leather cases. Girls also lay the gold leaf on covers, which are subsequently stamped by machines operated by men. For at least half a century women have worked in these branches, but while in earlier days they learnt a variety of operations the tendency now is to keep them to a special process or machine. Hence a smart girl can pick up her task in a week. The old custom of a four years' apprenticeship still survives. Girls start at fourteen, or at thirteen if they have passed the fifth standard. The initial wage is still in some shops 3s. a week, but there is a decided upward tendency, which in one case was found to reach 4s. 6d. for beginners. On the termination of the apprenticeship an average wage of 10s. a week is paid, but in the exceptional case referred to above the average was given as 12s. 6d., while 15s. is earned by expert pagers, coverers, and perforators who have been in the employment of the firm for some time. A chargewoman gets about 15s. a week, while the principal forewoman in a firm employing nearly 300 girls in its bookbinding branch is paid a guinea per week. Folders and hand-sewers are paid piecework rates in the large shops, but not in the smaller ones. To the casual visitor these pieceworkers exhibit a remarkable swiftness and accuracy, and the work must involve no small physical strain. Although the girls engaged in folding and the allied processes are as a rule of higher intelligence than mill girls and machine feeders and drawn from different social strata, there are many who come, frail and under-fed, from very poor homes. To these especially the early hour at which the day's work begins is a hardship. On a Glasgow winter's morning to start work at 6.15 on a hurried bite of bread and margarine, with the distant prospect of more bread and margarine three hours later, leads logically to "broken time." There has been some slight tendency towards beginning at 8 o'clock and stopping on Saturdays at 1, but two of the largest firms still adhere to 6.15 a.m. and finish on Saturdays at 10 a.m. The manager of one of these characterised the system as a "relic of barbarism," and said he had tried to alter the hour to 8 o'clock, but the men vigorously opposed the change and the scheme had to be dropped. As matters now stand, and owing to the great irregularity of the attendance during the week, work has often to go on from 11 till 2 on Saturdays. Otherwise in this establishment overtime is systematically avoided, the manager maintaining that the normal week of 52½ hours is quite exhausting enough for the girls. When, as at seasons of unusual pressure, overtime is reluctantly resorted to, it is paid time-and-a-quarter, as in the case of men. The busy season lasts from August to March, but the girls are hardly affected, and have plenty of work round the year. In another large firm, where much railway printing is done, the conditions differ somewhat. The hours are as follows:—
6.30 a.m. to 9 a.m.
10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturdays till 1 p.m.
There are small fines for spoilt work, but the money goes to the Workers' Benevolent Fund. These fines do not amount to more than sixpence per head per annum. Overtime is worked to the full limit. It is paid at a higher rate, but not at the same proportionally higher rate as men. Girls are never suspended in slack seasons, but are put on time wages of 13s. or 14s. a week for the best workers.
The employment of married women is regarded as exceptional, but all large firms have a small number of such—3 or 4 per cent., perhaps. The usual practice is for girls to come from school and remain on until they get married or leave for some domestic purposes. Some come back as widows or when living apart from their husbands. Some firms boast a considerable number of workers who have been employed for very long periods, ranging from 15 to 30 years and upwards. There are no signs of married women lowering the rates of pay. It is customary for those who return after a long absence to do so at the old wages. Efforts have been made from time to time to organise the women into unions, but they have invariably proved disappointing. Indirectly the women have gained by the successful efforts of the men to shorten the hours of toil. Generally speaking the attitude of the men's unions is not so much one of hostility as of indifference to women's work, except where it threatens to encroach on the men's preserves. There is no positive agreement as to the line of demarcation; it is determined tacitly by use and wont. The men profess to see a tendency among employers to extend the field of female labour. This extension of woman's sphere they deprecate as likely to lead to the lowering of men's wages. Just as men are never employed in folding in the bookbinding department of a publishing firm, so certain processes are invariably never done by women. As a rule men do the heavier and more complicated work, while women do that which is preparatory or supplementary. In jobbing-shops where odd volumes come in to be bound in various styles women are unsuitable, and men do the work right through; but in large publishing houses where orders run into thousands women specialise on particular processes. Women's work is apt to be extended where there are large quantities involved and where the work can be sub-divided. While women perform many of these sub-divisions quite as skilfully as men, they do not exhibit a like concentration of effort, and are more inclined to scamp.
Opinions differ as to the amount of homework done nowadays. The plant required is just a folder—a piece of bone. There is no doubt that to some extent folding is still done at home by the older girls who have during the day been employed in the factory. One employer admitted that on "not more than three or at most four nights in the year" do girls take work home from his shop. The cause is set down to the impatience of the public. Everybody wants his order executed immediately. Rates paid for homework are, if anything, a shade less than those paid for work done in the factory. While such work increases the total earnings this is not the main motive for undertaking it. A good deal of it is forced, and due to the urgency of the public demand. During very busy months some firms have a great deal of folding done as outwork by widows and married women not now employed in the factory during the day. But this practice is declining. Twopence per 1,000 extra is paid by one firm, i.e., 10d. as against 8d., for this outwork to compensate for lack of facilities in the home.