| Income. | £ | s. | d. |
|---|---|---|---|
| To balance from April 30th, 1901 | 114 | 0 | 4½ |
| " contributions | 72 | 3 | 3 |
| " Bank interest | 2 | 9 | 11 |
| ---- | -- | -- | |
| 188 | 13 | 6½ | |
| === | == | == | |
| Expenditure. | £ | s. | d. |
| By sick pay | 29 | 10 | 0 |
| " out-of-work pay | 17 | 1 | 8 |
| " printing | 2 | 15 | 9 |
| " postages | 0 | 8 | 6 |
| " secretary's salary | 5 | 12 | 6 |
| " collector's commission | 1 | 9 | 9 |
| " grant to Women's Trades Council | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| " grant to treasurer | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| " auditing accounts | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| " deputation expenses | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| ---- | -- | -- | |
| 59 | 9 | 2 | |
| " cash in Bank on April 30th, 1902 | 125 | 2 | 5 |
| " cash in hands of secretary | 4 | 1 | 11½ |
| ---- | -- | -- | |
| £188 | 13 | 6½ | |
| ==== | == | == |
Attempts have been made to organise women elsewhere as, for instance, in Edinburgh, where a Union of women compositors existed for a year; also in Birmingham, where ten years ago a Union was formed specially to include the machine-rulers who had been introduced about ten years previously. But the movements have failed.
Such is the record of the organisation of women in the trades with which we are dealing. It is almost exclusively confined to London and Manchester, and in London, out of 19,000 women connected with bookbinding, most of whom are book- and paper-folders, certainly not more than 500 are organised. In 1901, in the seven Men's Unions covering these trades there were 41,907 members, whilst the total membership of the Women's Unions was well under 1,000.
Maintaining standards without organisation.
Our enquiries have discovered, however, the existence of a kind of loose organisation of majority-rule and custom in some firms. Standards of prices and conditions are thus kept up. It must not be forgotten that where men and women work together all concessions won by the men's Unions are shared by women, as for instance, when the Typographical Association of Scotland secured a fifty hours' week for Aberdeen compositors. This is an interesting feature of feminine methods. In one house we came across two collating-rooms, one of which was staffed by older hands, who stood upon their dignity and would not accept inferior work or tolerate reductions in wages. The other room was conducted after the methods of the ordinary employer of cheap women's labour; the workpeople were careless and casual and the room had no traditions and no industrial "public opinion." This force of opinion, which assumes almost the nature of caste, is most strongly developed amongst job hands. These women manage to keep up a comparatively high standard of pay, and we have discovered the most unusual circumstance that in one or two instances the wages of job women have been cut down to the Union rates. We have been told on most trustworthy authority that the unwritten laws of these job hands are sometimes enforced upon recalcitrant work-women by "a hiding."
Organisation in the miscellaneous trades.
As regards organisation in the more miscellaneous trades included in our investigation, little has to be said. A few card mounters once joined the Women's Printing and Kindred Trades Union after a strike, but soon fell away, and a Union started in 1890, of which little information can now be obtained, included some envelope makers: but by 1893 it, too, seems to have died.
No attempt has been made to organise women engaged in the preparation of materials for printing either in London or the provinces.