B. a forewoman, thought the Factory Acts a very good thing. Girls grumbled if they had to stop till 8, and she never heard of any of them wanting to stay longer. "If you work till 8 for many weeks you get used up; there is no change in your life, and as soon as you get home you have to go to bed, you are so tired."
C. is a forewoman. As a girl she used to work from 8.30 a.m. to 9 or 10 at night every day from September to Christmas. She had to stay till 2 a.m. one night and come again just the same next day; she had to work from 3 a.m. one Good Friday morning and sometimes had to come to work at 1 on Sunday mornings. This nightwork was only occasional, but she thinks it a very good thing that it has been stopped; she never found it pay; the girls were so tired the next day.
Another forewoman gave it as her deliberate opinion that when overtime is worked the piece workers do not make more as a rule, for they get so tired that if they stay late one night, they work less the next day.
This is the unanimous view held by the forewomen, and it comes with considerable force from them, as it is they who have to arrange to get work done somehow within a certain time. They are the people who have to put on the pressure, and are in such a position as to see how any particular system of getting work done answers.
Exceptions.
Among the younger women—the girls who have had no experience of conditions before 1867, the opinion about overtime is not so unanimous. Some few like what little overtime is allowed to them and say they would not mind more. One such worker was met, just arrived home from her factory late one Saturday afternoon. She had been working overtime as a consequence of the Queen's death—the envelope makers and black borderers were all working late just then. It was a bleak and wet afternoon, and she came in in high spirits, evidently regarding all life as a joke, and frankly confessing that factory life especially was a joke, particularly when they had overtime. "It is 'larks' working late, and the governor he up and spoke to us so nice. He says, 'Girls, you won't mind doing a bit of overtime for the sake of our dear Queen?' and we says 'No.' I shouldn't mind doing overtime every day of the week. I like the factory and should hate to be out of it." A few such girls there are who are in excellent health, like the work and don't find it monotonous, and, above all, enjoy the larger life that they meet in a factory just as girls in another social scale enjoy public school or college life. It is these who revel in their day's work and are not tired at the end of it, but how in actual fact they would like longer hours or systematic overtime it is impossible to say. It is probably the rarity of it, the stimulus and excitement of working against time for once in a way, the being put on their mettle by the "governor" himself, that make the enjoyment. We must also remember that the younger hands are those who take the most anti-social views of work and care least about industrial conditions. But even by these few, when the idea of all night work is suggested, it is scouted with horror. On the whole, the view adopted is that when you have done your day's work, you have done enough. A worker in the stationers' trade assured us that overtime means a doctor's bill, so you don't really make anything by it. The experience of two women who had tried nightwork illegally was also instructive.
Overtime experience.
A. an apparently strong woman was once offered a night job when she was hard up, and thought that it would be a "lark" to take it. She went in about 8 a.m. on Friday and worked on with intervals for meals till 3 p.m. on Saturday, being paid piece rates for the day hours and 6s. for the work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. She was utterly done up in consequence of this work and lost more money next week than she made by the whole job.
B. once worked all night in a City shop for 5s. and got no good out of it, for she was so done up that she could not work at all next day, and very little the day after.
Three girls working at the same factory, and speaking of conditions there, said that when they were busy after 9.30 p.m. men were put on to do the card mounting. These girls ridiculed the idea that they disliked this or wanted to stay. "You feel quite done for by 9 o'clock. Girls sometimes cry, they get so tired in the evening." None of the three had ever heard of any girls who objected to the Factory Acts. "The little ones do not mind overtime so much because they get 3d. an hour the same as the full hands, but the full hands do mind. Overtime, i.e., till 4 p.m., on Saturdays is not so bad because you ain't so worn out."