Part 10 (1/2)
Nor must it be forgotten that in modern industry women have a further advantage in being paid their own wages instead of being merely remunerated collectively in the family, as was often the case formerly.
Modern industry thus holds for the woman-worker the possibility of a more dignified and self-respecting position than the domestic system of the near past.
3. _The Possibilities of State Control._--We next note that _the industrial revolution has led to State control_, and that the Factory Act, whatever its defects in detail and its inadequacy to meet the situation, has greatly improved the status of the woman-worker by giving her _statutory rights against the employer_. This aspect has often been overlooked by leaders of the women's rights movement, who at one time tended to regard factory legislation as putting the woman in a childish and undignified position. But the true inwardness of the Factory Act is the a.s.sertion that workers are _persons_, with rights and needs that are sufficiently important to override commercial requirements. It has not only aided the progress of industrial betterment, but it has taught women that they are of significance and importance to the State, and has brought them out of the position of mere servility. A great deal more may be effected in the future when the governing cla.s.s attain to more enlightened views of civics and economics, and when the women themselves become politically and socially conscious of what they want.
4. _a.s.sociation. The factory system has also made it possible for women to strengthen their position by a.s.sociation and combination._--Such a.s.sociation affords women the best opportunity they have ever yet had of attaining economic independence on honourable conditions. And it is interesting to note that just as women are now awakening to social consciousness, and beginning to feel themselves members of a larger whole, so the Trade Unions are now reaching out to issues broader than the mere economic struggle, and are beginning to give more attention to social care for life and health. In the past the Unions have very largely taken what might be termed a juristic view of their functions. They have been concerned mainly with wage-questions, with the prevention of fraud through ”truck,” oppressive fines and unfair deductions; they have penalised backwardness in the improvement of machinery. As the management of a cotton mill concentrates on extorting the last unit of effort from the workers, so the Unions in the past have very largely concentrated on securing that the workers at any rate got their share of the results. But in more recent years the Unions are beginning to see that this, though good, is not enough. Industrial efficiency may be too dearly bought if it involves a loss of health, character, or personality, and recent reports of the cotton Unions show that the officials are increasingly aware of the seriousness of this matter from the point of view of health. _E.g._, the heavy rate of sickness among women-workers disclosed by the working of the Insurance Act has turned the attention of the Weavers' Amalgamation towards the insanitary conditions in which even now so many operatives do their work. ”Fresh air, which is such an essential to health, is a bad thing for the cotton industry; what is wanted is damp air, and calico is more important than men and women. When they are not well they can come on the Insurance Act. We want to talk less about malingering and more about insanitary conditions, which is the real cause of excessive claims.”[51]
Just as the woman's movement is widening its vision to understand the needs of labour, so the Unions now are widening theirs to understand the claims of life and health. The officials are already alive, if unfortunately the Lancas.h.i.+re parents are not, to the evils of the half-time system. And the co-operation of women in the active work of the Union will strengthen this conviction.
_The Future Organisation of Women._--As women come more and more into conscious citizens.h.i.+p they will, as Professor Pearson prophesied twenty years ago, demand a more comprehensive policy of social welfare. We may expect in the future that the care of adolescence and the care of maternity will be considered more closely than it ever has been; also that such social provision for maternity as may be made will be linked up with the working life of women, so that marriage shall not be penalised by requiring women against their will to leave work when they marry, and on the other hand, that the home-loving woman of domestic tastes shall not be forced, as now so often happens, to leave her children and painfully earn their bread outside her home.
One of the great obstacles in the way of attaining such measures of reform has been, not only the comparative lack of organisation of women-workers but the difficulty of adapting existing organisations, devised for the trade purposes of the workers at a single industrial process, to these broader social purposes. The majority, as we have seen, in Chapter III., leave work on marriage, and the problem results, how to bridge the ”cleft”[52] in the woman's career and give her an abiding interest in organisation. How, the old-fas.h.i.+oned craft organiser asks with a mild despair, how is he to organise reckless young people for whom work is a meanwhile employment, who go and get married and upset all his calculations? How are women, whose work is temporary, to be given a permanent interest in their a.s.sociation? For some women, no doubt, their work _is_ a life-work, but it is most unlikely it will ever be so for the majority. Mr. Wells's idea, shared with the late William James, of a kind of conscription of the young people to do socially necessary work for a few short years has a curious applicability to women. There are certain distinct stages in a woman's life which the exigencies of the present commercial society fit very badly. One can foresee a society arranged to do more justice to human needs and apt.i.tudes in which girls might enter certain employments as a transition stage in their careers; then marry and adopt home-making and child-tending as their occupation for a period; then, when domestic claims slackened off in urgency, devote their experience and knowledge of life to administrative work, social, educational, or for public health. Other women with a strong leaning to a special skilled occupation might prefer to carry it on continuously.
Different types of organisation will be needed for different types of work. If the craft Union cannot fit all types of male workers, much less can it fit all women. Trade Unionism as we have known it mostly presupposed a permanent craft or occupation, and one of the great troubles of Trade Unions for women is that so many women do not aspire to a permanent occupation. The ”clearing-house” type of Union suggested by Mr.
Cole to accommodate workers who follow an occupation now in one industry, now in another, might possibly be adapted to meet the needs of women.
Perhaps a time will come when the Unions that include the ”woman-worker”
will be linked up with societies like the Women's Labour League or the Women's Co-operative Guild, whose members.h.i.+p consists mainly of ”working women,” that is to say of women of the industrial cla.s.ses who are not themselves earners.
These speculations may seem to run ahead of the industrial world we now know. But all around us the Trade Unions are federating into larger and larger bodies, and when these great organisations have attained to that central control and direction they have been feeling after for generations, they will certainly discover that it is essential for them to develop a considerable degree of interdependence between the Trade Unions and consumers' co-operation. Therewith they can hardly fail to grasp the latent possibilities of the members.h.i.+p of women. The woman is much less an earner, much more a consumer and spender than is the man; she is more interested in life than in work, in wealth for use than in wealth for power. She suffers as a consumer and a spender both when prices go up and when wages go down. It is difficult to believe that the working cla.s.ses will not before long develop some effective organisation to protect themselves against the exploitation that is accountable, in part at least, for both processes. Mrs. Billington Greig's masterly study of the exploitation of the unorganised consumer is a demonstration of the need of awakening some collective conscience in a specially inert and inarticulate cla.s.s, and Miss Margaretta Hicks is making most valuable experiments in the practical work of organising women as consumers. The supposed apathy and lack of public spirit in women has been largely due to the lack of any visible organic connection between their industrial life as earners and their domestic life as spenders and home-makers. Probably the future of the organisation of women will depend on the degree in which this connexion can be made vital and effective.
PART II
CHAPTER VI.
WOMEN'S WAGES IN THE WAGE CENSUS OF 1906.
BY J. J. MALLON.
Until a few years ago no statistics comprehensive in character relating to women's wages were available. In 1906, however, the Board of Trade took ”census” of the wages and hours of labour of the persons employed in all the industries of the country, and the result has been a series of volumes which, though becoming rapidly out-of-date, nevertheless throw much light on the general level of wages in various trades and occupations.
The enquiry made by the Board of Trade was a voluntary enquiry: that is to say, it was left to the public spirit and general amiability of the employer to make a return or not as he pleased. There was no penalty for failure to furnish information. The response to the Board of Trade efforts was not, however, unsatisfactory, and returns were forthcoming, roughly speaking, in respect of nearly half the wage-earners employed in the different industries. Unfortunately, however, the fact that the authorities were dependent for their information on the goodwill of the employers has probably given the statistics a certain bias. The schedules supplied were somewhat forbidding in appearance, and often troublesome to fill in, and it may fairly be surmised that it was the good rather than the bad employers who put themselves to the trouble of complying with the official request. Hence of all the workers employed in the United Kingdom it was probably those who were more fortunately placed in regard to whom we now have statistics. The condition of those working for employers who thought that the less said about their wages-sheets the better, still remains obscure. The statistics upon which comments are now offered may therefore convey a more favourable impression than the facts, if fully known, would justify, especially when it is remembered that 1906, the year of the census, was one of good trade. On the other hand, it needs to be borne in mind that since the enquiry was made, the level of wages in many trades is known to have been raised.
The Earnings and Hours of Labour Enquiry, as it was officially called, was directed primarily to ascertaining for each of the princ.i.p.al occupations in the various trades what were _the usual earnings or wages of a worker employed for full time in an ordinary week_, the last pay week in September being the particular week suggested subject to the employer's view as to its normality.
With a view to supplementing or checking the details of actual earnings in a particular week, information was also sought with respect to the _total_ wages paid in an ordinary pay week in each month, and also with respect to the total wages paid in the year. From this last-mentioned body of information it is possible to deduce some tentative conclusions in regard to the extent to which the industry suffers from seasonal variations.
This matter will be further considered below. It is, however, mainly the information in regard to full-time earnings in an ordinary week with which it is proposed to deal. Statistics, it may safely be a.s.sumed, are abhorred of the general reader; but they are the alphabet of social study and cannot be dispensed with, and certain tables must now be introduced showing the relative wage level for women in a number of important industries. It should be noted that the abstract ”woman” who is dealt with in the statistics is a female person of eighteen years of age or over. She may be, though is not likely to be, a new recruit or learner. She may, on the other hand, be very old and infirm, though here again the probabilities are against it. In all cases, however, she works full time, which roughly we may regard as being about fifty to fifty-two hours a week.
The following table shows the average weekly full-time earnings of women employed in the princ.i.p.al textile industries. In addition to the average, which may of course be a compound of a great many widely differing conditions, the proportion or percentage of women whose earnings fall within certain limits is also shown.[53]
TABLE A
+-----------------------------------------------------+ | | Percentage numbers of | | | | women working full time | | | | in the last pay-week of | | | | September 1906, whose | | | | earnings fell within the| | | Industry. | undermentioned limits. | Average | | |-------------------------|earnings for| | |Under| 10s. and |15s. and| full time. | | | 10s.|under 15s.| over. | | |--------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| | | | | | s. d. | |All textiles | 133| 388 | 479 | 15 5 | |--------------|-----|----------|--------|------------| |Cotton | 30| 209 | 761 | 18 8 | |Hosiery | 145| 444 | 411 | 14 3 | |Wool, worsted | 107| 556 | 337 | 13 10 | |Lace | 181| 493 | 326 | 13 5 | |Jute | 62| 664 | 274 | 13 5 | |Silk | 389| 478 | 133 | 11 2 | |Linen | 417| 491 | 92 | 10 9 | +-----------------------------------------------------+
The cotton industry stands out conspicuously as showing a relatively high level of earnings, and we find in marked contrast to the other trades in this group that only 3 per cent of the women earned less than 10s. a week.
The results coincide of course with popular impression, it being well known that the mill la.s.ses of Lancas.h.i.+re are the best paid--probably because the best organised--large group of women workers in the country.
The woollen and worsted industry, like the cotton, is localised, being confined mainly to Yorks.h.i.+re, though the woollen industry of the lowlands of Scotland is also important. In this trade the results are much less satisfactory, the average being 13s. 10d., and considerably more than half the total number employed earning less than 15s. It may be noted, however, that in one town, Huddersfield, where women and men are engaged largely on the same work, the average, 17s. 1d., is considerably higher than that for the United Kingdom.