4. That after the learners then employed had completed their apprenticeship, not more than twenty learners should be employed at one time.
About a hundred women had come out, and the men's Union organised a relief fund.[20]
[20] It may not be amiss to copy a few sentences from Mr. Dunning's obituary notice in the Bookbinder's Trade Circular, January 21st, 1862, of the women's leader, Mary E. Zugg, an early and humble worker in women's organisations. "Nothing could exceed the temper, moderation and firmness she displayed. Possessing great energy, strong sense and great acuteness of perception, detecting at a glance pretence from reality, she was not what was termed a strong-minded woman, commanding great respect and but little affection, for her goodness of heart and great regard for the feelings and welfare of others endeared her to all." She died at the age of thirty-three of consumption on November 13th, 1861, and is buried in Bow Cemetery.
Miss Watkins replied, denying every charge made by Mr. Dunning, and giving 10s. as the earnings for a week of sixty hours. The Union replied by asking that a deputation should be allowed to inspect the wages books of the firm. It claimed to be in possession of the rates of wages paid to ninety-seven folders and sewers for three weeks in August, and gave the average as 6s. 2½d. for a sixty-hours' week, and in other respects it supported its original charges.
The Times of January 25th, 1850, contains in its advertisement columns the report of a Committee of the Southwark Auxiliary of the Bible Society, which examined Miss Watkins' books, and it supported her statements. The women earned from 9s. to 14s. per week. But Mr. Dunning was not silenced, and on March 25th he issued a long pamphlet, the last of the "controversy" for the time. In it, it is stated that the committee of investigation had been deceived so as to mistake wages paid for ten days as though they were paid for a week, and a table of wages for three weeks in September and October, for the week ending July 28th, 1849, and for the four weeks preceding the strike, was printed.[21] The wage average of the periods was from 5s. 9½d. to 6s. 4½d. per week of sixty hours.
[21] See p. 184.
The agitation failed. The women either found work elsewhere, or went back under the conditions against which they had struck. Mr. Dunning could only say that the dispute had arrested a downward tendency in prices and wages.
The dispute cost the men's Union £146. This was spent mostly in printing and postage, but it included grants amounting to £22 given to the separate Women's Committee, which had collected an additional fund of £650 to aid the strikers.
The finishers had strongly opposed the support which the Union had given to the women, and their section, to the number of 150, was finally expelled from the Union.
But whilst this unusual harmony existed between the men's Union and the women workers, no serious attempt had been made to organise the women permanently, either as members of the men's Society, or in one of their own. In 1833, in an address to the London journeymen bookbinders, a Mr. Benjamin Teasdale, of Manchester, advised the formation of a women's Society, but nothing appears to have been done. In 1855 they were allowed to borrow books from the men's library on the payment of 6d. a quarter. It is impossible to ascertain how far the agreement between men and masters for a nine hours' day in 1872 really affected women, as a considerable proportion of them had been working only for nine hours before the agreement was made.