The men's view.
Men in these trades have never looked upon women competitors with a friendly eye, the reason being that so many branches are just on the margin line of those occupations which are so light and easily picked up that women can supplant men in them altogether.[37] The Typographical Association for over a quarter of a century has had to carry on a constant struggle with the employers in order to protect the journeymen printers against three forms of cheap labour—apprentices, unskilled men and women.[38] Employers in a small way of business, maintaining establishments on little capital, where efficiency is not high, employ women on work done in larger and better equipped establishments exclusively by men. Here there is rivalry and competition, and women are preferred mainly because they accept lower wages, and because they are not members of Unions;[39] and their lack of technical skill is not found to be a sufficient counterpoise to these advantages. But in these places an inferior kind of work is done, and if men were employed they would either have to accept wages below the generally enforced scale, or the whole character of the work and organisation of the business would have to be changed.
[37] It is interesting to note that an official of the Lithographic Printers' Society, entitled to explain the attitude of the Union, stated, "The Lithographic Society distinctly encourages girls; when boys feed the machines they are apt to pick up too much and want to become litho-printers before going through the apprenticeship. The women, not desiring to become litho-printers, are better from the Society's point of view."
[38] This is the real opposition which the men offer to women. In Perth and Bungay, for instance, the women put in a bill at the end of each week, worked out on the men's scale of rates. The cashier then divides the total by two and pays the women accordingly. In Edinburgh women's piece rates for composing average about two-thirds those of men. At Warrington, women do machine-ruling for prices ranging from 15s. to 20s., whilst men are paid 32s. for the same work. A more definite statement is made by a Manchester employer. He estimated that a woman was two-thirds as valuable in a printer's and stationer's warehouse as a man, and she was paid 15s. or 20s. to his 33s. A further example of this is given in connection with a Scottish firm executing Government work. "As the Government insists upon the men's Union price being paid, the work is being done by men, although in the ordinary way it would have been done by women." "But they would never allow the women," said our informant of her employers, "to make such big money as that."
[39] This is why the Typographical Association offers a steady resistance to the employment of women. It does not object to them as women, but as forms of cheap and unskilled labour.
Apparent rivalry.
In the better equipped houses, where women are employed on work generally done by men, as in composing, only parts of a compositor's duty are performed by women, and the heavier or the more technical duties, such as carrying about the formes or imposing, are done as a rule by boys or men.[40] So that here the rivalry is but partial, and, moreover, the employment of women does not always pay. It appears that in some cases, particularly in bookbinding, the application of machinery[41] makes it possible for the less skilled and lower paid women to do work formerly done by men, so that men regard women plus the machine as their competitor. On the other hand machines have displaced women and have made new openings for men, as in the case of one of the most recently introduced folding machines which feeds itself. But the re-organisation of the workshop which follows the introduction of the machine cannot be regarded merely as a substitution of men's labour by women's or the opposite, for what really happens is an all-round shifting of the distribution of labour-power and skill, and a re-arrangement of the subdivision of labour.[42] Men are transferred from one kind of work to another, owing mainly to a change in the volume of production; women are introduced not so much to take men's places as to fill places created by the re-organisation of work; youths also find a footing more often at the expense of women than of men. At certain points the machine simplifies processes and abolishes the need of paying for skill in the worker; at others it makes skill (sometimes, perhaps, a new kind of skill) more necessary; at one point it abolishes the need of paying for strength, at another it makes a new opening for strength. Thus the displacement which occurs, and the competition set up are often more apparent than real.
[40] As a type of the reports from firms employing women compositors, the following from Edinburgh firms may be summarised: Seven girls are employed on each machine (monotype), five on the keyboards and two correcting proofs. A man is kept for every ten or twelve girls, his work being to "make up" the girls' work. Another firm employs a man to attend to every three monotype machines used, for the purpose of keeping things going. Another says it employs two men compositors and one labourer for thirty-eight girls.
[41] Machinery has also tended to increase the employment of women in stamping and embossing.
[42] An official of a Bookbinders' Union states: "In A works there was much gloom among the men when the rounding and backing machine came in; profitable work was taken away from the 'rounders' and 'backers,' but they had more 'lining-up' and other work to do in consequence, so nobody was turned off."