We have to face the fact that, for various reasons, in modern industrial society there is of necessity a tendency to specialise the work of men and women and centre the one in the workshop and the other in the home, and to incline women to take a place in industry second to their male relations. Hence, in the workshop women have hitherto been adjuncts to machines; they have taken up simple mechanical processes, and have shown little interest in complete series of industrial operations. They have picked up the arts, but have shunned the sciences. The factory and the workshop have been to them the scenes of "meanwhile" employment.
Gentility in trade.
In such circumstances one is not surprised to find such considerations as conventional gentility determining the branches of trade taken up by the women. The printing trades generally do not attract the most genteel girls, but there are grades within them. One informant says, "In Manchester, up to 1870, to be a folder was looked upon as being next door to being on the streets;" but now folders look down upon feeders. "Folding and sewing girls look down on the machine girls tremendously, and would not sit at the same table with them for anything." Perhaps the manager who said in a shocked tone of voice that "The women never care to talk of the Sunday's sermon" was hypercritical, but undoubtedly certain sections of these trades are staffed by rather rough specimens of women.
Then again, a folder, despised herself by those above her, is reported to "look down upon the litho and bronzing girls. They are of the very lowest class (she says), with hardly a shoe on their feet. They are on quite a different floor and have nothing to do with the folders." Or again, for reasons of gentility, girls prefer to become book-folders, where the hours are longer and the pay lower, rather than to become paper-bag makers. The distinction between these various sections is not similar to that between skilled and unskilled labour. The simple explanation is that amongst women engaged in industry convention is particularly potent in determining what trades are desirable and proper and what are not, so that when certain employments acquire a reputation for gentility, the others will be filled by a goodly proportion of unassorted girls, and will ultimately acquire characteristics which appear to justify the feminine prejudices against them. It has been suggested that these notions of gentility have, as a matter of fact, a deeper significance, and that the favoured trades are the lighter ones. To some extent this is true. The heavier employments are staffed by a rougher class of women. But, as in the case of the Manchester folders cited above, fashions change, and we must recognise that reputation for gentility is a very important factor in determining the distribution of character amongst the trades. This appears to be the main reason why high wages do not always attract the better class of girls to certain kinds of employment, and also why there is a reluctance on the part of many self-respecting girls to enter a course of industrial training.
[CHAPTER VI.] LEGISLATION.
1. THE LAW.
The printing and allied trades were not brought within the scope of legislation until Mr. Walpole's Factory Acts' Extension Act of 1867.