A miscellaneous survey.
In the more miscellaneous trades over which this enquiry ranged a considerable mass of evidence points to the displacement of men by women. General statements to this effect are common in the evidence of both employers and employed. In firm A. it is alleged that women do the same work in card mounting as used to be done by men, and are paid 2s. for work which used to be paid for at 10s. Paging and numbering used to be men's work, but is now almost exclusively done by women. Plain relief stamping and black bordering have also drifted into the hands of women, whilst in various directions, such as the making and binding of cases, wrappering, or feeding printing and particularly lithographic machines, women are beginning to encroach upon men. These displacements are very often only local. Manchester has one experience; Edinburgh another. Leeds was agitated because women were displacing men on a French ruling machine, whilst elsewhere no similar move was taking place. But it must be emphasised again that in many of these instances careful enquiry shows that when men were employed they did something that the women do not now do,[43] and that the employment of women was owing to an increased volume of trade, when new machinery or some other change had made a greater subdivision of labour possible and profitable. In some cases girls displace boys for no other reason than that boys cannot be found to do the work; this was the case in Manchester some ten years ago, when girls took the place of boys in letterpress work.
[43] An Edinburgh employer put that in this way: "If women were paid the same rates as men they would have to pay for their overseers and assistants."
Conclusions.
Generally, the results of our investigations show the following summary of the advantages and disadvantages of women's labour to the employer, and their employment in preference to men depends upon how far in any given case or under any given circumstances the balance of these advantages and disadvantages is on the side of the women—or, it must also be said, how far the employer is bound by conservative use and wont so as to be protected against any impulse to employ the best organisation for the efficient conduct of his business.
The advantages of the woman worker are:—
1. That she will accept low wages; she usually works for about half the men's wages.
2. That she is not a member of a Union, and is, therefore, more amenable to the will of the employer as the absolute rule of the workshop.
3. That she is a steady[44] worker (much emphasis must not be placed upon this, as the contrary is also alleged), and nimble at mechanical processes, such as folding and collecting sheets.
[44] "In Mr. W——'s youth, men used to do all the card mounting. Women were introduced for it about twenty-nine years ago. They were brought in because the men drank so and kept away." But later on the same informant said that he had to introduce a varnishing machine because women "kept away so."