[10] It is interesting to note that in these days also the women only set up the type and the men "made it up."
Commenting on this trouble, the Standard, in a leading article (October 8th, 1879) cynically remarked: "What women ask is not to be allowed to compete with men, which the more sensible among them know to be impossible, but to be allowed the chance of a small livelihood by doing the work of men a little cheaper than men care to do it. This is underselling of course, but it is difficult to see why, when all is said and done, men should object to be undersold by their own wives and daughters."
"Capital and Labour," as quoted by the Victoria Magazine,[11] put the case for the women thus: "This work is much more remunerative, and far less toilsome and irritating than the occupation of the average nursery governess, and we anticipate that, with proper arrangements, there will be a large addition to the number of women compositors. The reasons assigned against their employment in this capacity seem to be the outcome of pedantry, prejudice, and jealousy; and no trade rules can be permitted to interpose obstacles to the attainment of such a desirable object as furnishing occupation to a number of females who are qualified by deftness of hand and mental capacity to earn in it an honourable livelihood. What would one of the men, who chose to leave Messrs. Smyth and Yerworth at the behest of the Union, say, if having a daughter of his own to assist him in his occupations, she were to be compelled to sit idle while he was made to employ a male assistant at high wages? Yet these men, though intelligent, capable, and industrious, deliberately throw themselves out of work, and become for the time paupers of their Union, because it will not permit them to assist in perfecting any processes which have been begun by women. This is the way in which men run their heads against a brick wall."
[11] November, 1879.
In December, 1882, the Printers' Register published the following notice: "In a West End office, objection having been made to the introduction of female labour, and an undue number of turnovers, a strike appeared imminent, but the Committee of the Society succeeded in settling the dispute to the satisfaction of both sides."
The question does not appear to have troubled the London Society again, but in 1886, a Conference of the Typographical Societies of the United Kingdom and Continent, held in London (October 21st-23rd), resolved:
"That while strongly of opinion that women are not physically capable of performing the duties of a compositor, this Conference recommends their admission to membership of the various Typographical Unions, upon the same conditions as journeymen, provided always the females are paid strictly in accordance with scale."
This resolution was subsequently adopted by the London Society of Compositors as noted above, and is at present in force, with the result that it is practically impossible for any woman to join the Society.[12]
[12] A curious point in connection with the work being sent out of London is that except in the case of Edinburgh the greater cheapness of the work outside London is not due so much to cheaper labour as to lower rent, etc. Several firms out in the country in England where there is no question of a Union preventing them, have tried to introduce women, but with very little success. This is put down as lack of intelligence in the women. No doubt a girl who has had only a village elementary education is not the best material out of which to make a good compositor, and the wages offered are not high enough to tempt town bred girls to undergo the tedium of country life.