These wages are very much the same as those paid to-day, and the hours then were undoubtedly longer.[73] Nor must it be assumed that wages would have risen more satisfactorily had there been no Factory Acts. Had there been any tendency for wages to rise which the Factory Law was retarding, that tendency would have shown itself in a marked way during the intervals between each Act, but no such thing is observable, as Mr. Wood's figures in the footnote indicate. Moreover, taken all together, the evidence gathered by this investigation proves that neither the demand for improvement nor the organisation to make that demand effective exists in the case of the woman worker. On the other hand, there is no evidence to show that legislation has improved wages, except in so far as it has reduced hours without apparently having lowered rates.
[73] Cf. "The Course of Women's Wages during the Nineteenth Century," by Mr. G. H. Wood, printed as an Appendix to "A History of Factory Legislation," by B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison, where the following figures are given as the estimated average weekly earnings of women and girls in the printing trade: 1840, 6s. 3d.; 1850, 6s. 6d.; 1860, 7s. 5d.; 1866,7s. 10d.; 1870, 8s. 6d.; 1883, 8s. 9d.; 1886, 8s. 9d.; 1891, 9s. 10d.; 1895, 9s. 10d.; 1900, 10s. 1d.
On the whole there seems to be no ground for considering that special legislation for women in this trade has materially injured the value of their labour. There is nothing to show that their wages have decreased, that legislation has acted as a drag upon their income, or that they have lost employment to any appreciable extent.
Want of elasticity in the law.
A lack of elasticity in the law seems to be the greatest complaint of the employers. On the face of it, it looks like a piece of senseless red-tape that, because it is usually preferable to an employer to open his factory between the hours of 8 to 8, he may not when it is more convenient to him, open it between 6 and 6 or 7.30 and 7.30. It seems absurd that it was an illegal act of an employer to allow two young women to begin work at 6 a.m. and work till 8 p.m., whereas it would have been quite legal if they had begun work at 8 a.m. and worked till 10 p.m., due notice having been given to the Home Office.[74]
[74] Stationery Trades' Journal, 1898.
Mr. Henderson, as above quoted, gives it as his opinion that "a wide limit of law is necessary for printing offices where women may not work after 8 p.m. or before 6 a.m. Hours for adult women other than at present should be allowed by the Secretary of State, as for instance the folders of weeklies."
Again, it is felt that a greater freedom is needed with regard to overtime. Mr. Vaughan, the Factory Inspector for North London, in the Factories and Workshops Report for 1899 says: "I find in some trades, e.g., Christmas cards, great dissatisfaction at the curtailment of overtime from five to three nights a week, when the busy season lasts only for a month or so; the allowance of thirty nights a year is not required, but an allowance of more nights during these few weeks would be an enormous assistance. The temptation in such cases to work more nights a week than are allowed is universally great."
It appears to be a great hardship that women who have not been working by day may not upon occasions work by night, and both employers and employées are unanimous in demanding that the law should recognise this distinction. There is a great difference between retaining an ordinary worker through the night, or for more than a certain number of hours per week, and drafting in a fresh set of workers to do work by night at stated periods in the month or at times of emergency.