There used to be a good deal of home work in these trades, but the growth of large firms and the introduction of machinery[82] have discouraged it.[83] The material is very heavy and sometimes costly, and has to be carefully handled. It is therefore difficult to move from workshop to dwelling-place; and when handled in kitchens or other living rooms it runs a great risk of being stained and spoiled. The home workers find some of their own material, e.g., paste and brushes for bag making, and they save light and rent for employers; but, on the other hand, they are apt "to send back their work with the mark of teacups upon it," or spoiled in some other way, and it is difficult to get them to return it punctually. So in these trades, home work really does not pay.
[82] This seems to be specially the case in the provinces.
[83] One of the home workers (also workshop worker) visited said, "Home work is given less and less and is difficult to get now. Only three work at it—old hands—and they are going to stop it altogether, perhaps." Another investigator reports of machine-ruling in Scotland: "Two elderly women who worked a paper-ruling machine in their kitchen. They had been at the work for thirty years, having been taught by their father, and have carried on the business since his death. The father had a good business, and they can make their living by it, but say the work has sadly fallen off. They get enough orders to keep them going, and when very busy employ a girl occasionally to help them. 'It is useless to try to compete with the new machines they have nowadays. What used to be given to us at 2s. 6d., can now be turned out by the machines for 1s. 6d. We couldn't afford to do it at those rates.'" Cf. Appendix V.
The Trade Unions prohibit home work when they are able to detect it. There is, generally, a healthy feeling opposed to this method of employment, and firms deny practising it.
Home work processes.
Home work is now mainly confined to book and paper folding, sewing printed matter, black bordering and folding envelopes, making paper bags, and designing and painting Christmas cards which is done at home not so much because employers encourage it, but because it is undertaken by a class of women indisposed to enter a workshop. The folding is mostly of cheap printed matter like popular almanacs and other street literature. Also, a good deal of folding thin paper Bibles and prayer books is done at home.
Some paper staining is also done in living rooms by workpeople, but the practice is less common than it was. "One paper colourer, a married woman, whom we saw, told us that her mother worked at the trade before her at home, and when she herself was a baby her cradle was rocked on the colouring board. 'Many was the night' that she sat up as a child helping her mother to do the work. She certainly throve on it and seemed immensely proud of her industrial career."
The home worker.
What home work is still done is given mainly to women employed in the workshop during the day, and is therefore illegal.[84] In addition, women who have married whilst working in certain firms, or widows of men who have been workmen in these trades, keep up old connections by occasional—if not systematic—home work. But as it hardly pays the employer to avail himself regularly of domestic workers, the work now done at home is chiefly given out to meet a temporary pressure of demand, and would practically disappear if these exceptional pressures did not take place.