Unions, their position as wage-earners being not merely
a temporary one, to be abandoned in a few years' time.
The " Christian " Trade Unions contain no very
large numbers of women compared to the " free "
societies. They were also considerably later in coming
into existence, and appear, though ostensibly non-
political, to be largely due to reactionary political
influences, and organised in opposition to the Socialist
party. The Home Workers' Union is mainly philan-
thropic and controlled by ladies. The Christian
Unions have enemies on both sides, as they are naturally
regarded with considerable suspicion by the " Free "
or " Central " Unions, but nevertheless are also dis-
approved of by the authorities of the Catholic Church.
WOMEN IN UNIONS 161
The Christian Unions started with the aim of being
inter-denominational (" interkonfessionelle "), including
Protestants as well as Catholics, and a considerable
degree of sympathy with labour was combined with
their mainly reactionary propaganda ; they even con-
sidered strikes a possible and ultimate resource,
although they desired to avoid them. In many cases,
pressed forward perhaps by the rank and file, they have
co-operated with the " Free " Unions, who are so
much stronger in numbers and finance than themselves.
These tendencies excited the displeasure of the strict
Catholic body, and not only the German Bishops, but
the Pope himself, have shown hostility to the Christian
Unions, which have thus been rent by internal dis-
sensions. Catholic Unions of a strictly denominational
type have been formed in opposition to the inter-
denominational Christian Unions, and though the
former are of little importance as organisations, they
no doubt have some effect in weakening the body from
which they have branched off. However that may
be, the numbers in the Christian Unions, though
showing a considerable percentage increase, are in-
significant compared to the large " Free " Unions.
In quite recent years the Christian Unions have lent
themselves to strike-breaking and are becoming dis-
credited in the labour world. The Hirsch-Duncker
Unions have only a very small number of women
members, and are of little importance for the women's
labour movement. These Unions were founded and
are partly controlled by middle-class Liberals.
It may be interesting here briefly to compare the
views of two distinguished German women writers on
the question of Trade Unionism for women. Frau
Braun, writing in 1901, says that the development of
M
162 WOMEN IN UNIONS
the great industry is the force that impelled men to
combine successfully together, but industrially women
are about a century behind men, and before they can
be successfully organised, home-work must be repressed
in every form, and women's work must develop into
factory industry much more completely than it has yet
done. Home-work tends to perpetuate the dependence
of women, enabling the home-keeping wife or daughter
to carry on a bye-industry, and is therefore an evil.
Again, the poverty of women is a great obstacle to their
organisation. Economic history shows that well-paid
workers organise more quickly and effectively than
those who are isolated, oppressed and degraded.
Women-workers most urgently need to be enlightened,
but this cannot happen until they have been lifted out
of the intense pressure of physical need ; they must be
given time to read, to follow the news of the day, to
get beyond the horizon of their own four walls. This
cannot be attained by Trade Union action alone.
Legislative measures must be taken for the relief of the
women- workers. English history shows that Lanca-
shire women weavers before the Factory Act were as
incapable of organisation, as easy a prey to the exploiter
of their work, as the majority of women- workers are
to-day. It was only after the law had restricted their
hours of work that they began to organise in Trade
Unions and Co-operative Societies.
In Frau Braun's opinion women-workers will lose
more than they gain by adopting the style of the
women's movement in the bourgeois sense. Save
where absolutely necessary, organisation for women
only is a source of weakness to the women-workers'
movement. The numerous societies for women-
workers' education, the independent Socialist women's
WOMEN IN UNIONS 163
congresses, and especially the women's Unions promoted
by the advocates of " women's rights," all these are
dangerous.
A working woman's movement fully conscious of
its aims and principles will permit this class of organisa-
tion only in the case of Unions for trades exclusively
feminine, or of educational clubs or institutes when no
other is accessible to women- workers. In principle
they should all be avoided, for they can only confuse
the issue, and exaggerate the one-sided feminist point
of view which leaves out of account the class solidarity
of workers and women - workers, the indispensable
condition of any successful effort by the proletariat.
And it follows from this point of view that co-operation
with the bourgeois woman's movement should be
refused, whether in the form of admission to " bour-
geois " women's societies or the inclusion of " bour-
geois " advocates of women's rights in women- workers'
societies. Both England and France, Frau Braun
thinks, offer examples of the reactionary effect of
such co-operation ; the numberless work-girls' clubs,
holiday homes and the like, managed by ladies of the
upper and middle classes in England are one cause of
the political backwardness of the English working
women. Co-operation is too apt to degenerate into
tutelage. The German women's movement has steadily
refused any co-operation with the bourgeois movement,
because it recognises the complete divergence of principle
lying at the back of the two movements, and the differ-
ence of standpoint as well as of aim.
Not that every Socialist is sound on the woman
question ! Far from it. Frau Braun recognises that
in many a Social democrat there lurks the old re-
actionary philistine feeling about woman : " Tout pour
164 WOMEN IN UNIONS
la femme, mais rien avec elle." The increase of women's
employment has considerably shaken this conviction in
the Trade Unions, because the organisation of women
is seen more and more to be a condition of their very
existence. But more than this, they need to recognise
the vast importance of educating, enlightening the
working woman, binding her closer and closer to the
Socialist cause. Women have the future destiny of
men in their hands. They mould and shape the
character of the children. If Socialism can gain the
women, it will have the future with it. To bring the
women into closer community with the labour move-
ment, to translate their paper equality into living fact,
is no fantastic dream ; it is part of the obligation of the
modern " knights of labour " in the interest of them-
selves and their cause.
Frau E. Gnauck-Kiihne writes in sympathy with
the Catholic Unions of the older type, viz. the " Inter-
konfessionelle." Like Frau Braun, she greatly prefers
organisation for working women along with men to
separate Unions. Separate organisations, she remarks,
require double staff, double expenses of book-keeping,
finance and secretarial arrangements, and are more
costly, not to mention that the women's wages are so
low, the contributions they can make are so small that
a sound and effective Union of women only is scarcely
possible. Frau Gnauck lays stress on the psycho-
logical difficulties of organising women. For ages men
have been accustomed to work in common, to subject
themselves to discipline ; their work brings them into
relation with their fellows of the same calling, with
their equals. The traditional work of women, on the
contrary, has kept them in isolation ; the private
household was, and is still, a little world in itself, and
WOMEN IN UNIONS 165
in this world the woman has no peers she has as house-
wife no relation to other housewives, and there is
nothing to connect her work at home with the outside
world or public matters. She is very slow to perceive
the advantages of new methods, labour-saving devices,
co-operation and so forth, which might so greatly lessen
domestic toil if intelligently applied. With a certain
sly humour Frau Gnauck points out that the housewife
has no expert criticism to undergo, for her husband is
often out the whole day, and understands nothing of
housekeeping or the care of children if he were at home.
The housewife as worker (not, be it observed, as wife)
is in the position of an absolute ruler ; she has no one's
opinion to consider but her own, no inspection or control
to regard ; she is a law unto herself. This habit of
mind is not calculated to fit woman for combined
action ; rather does it tend to promote individualism
and a lack of discipline, which hinders concerted effort
in small things or in great. This is not to deny that
many women are capable of the greatest devotion and
sacrifice, even to the point of self-annihilation. The
loftiest courage for personal action and self-sacrifice,
as Frau Gnauck keenly remarks, is nevertheless in its
way an emphasis of individual will and action, a
heightening of self, even though for unselfish ends.
Concerted action demands a surrender of individuality,
the power to find oneself in the ranks with one's equals.
Men are better trained for this kind of corporate action
than women normally are. The older women are too
much burdened, and continually oppressed with the
thought of meeting the week's expenses, the young
ones are indifferent because they expect to get married.
Frau Gnauck, however, refuses to despair even of
organising the woman-worker. We must, she says, put
i66 WOMEN IN UNIONS
ourselves in her place ; we must realise that as no man
can see over his horizon, we must bring something that
the woman worker can see over her horizon, something
that will strike her imagination, something that will
build a bridge from her over to those large ideas, " class-
interest," " general good," which so far she has neither
time, spirit, nor money enough to understand. She
must be drawn at first by the prospect of some small
but concrete improvement in her own condition, which
will make it seem worth while to give the time and
money that the Union wants. Appeal to the feeling all
women have for a home of their own. Explain to them
in simple language that the Union would prevent under-
bidding and undercutting, and thus raise men's wages.
More men could marry on these higher wages, married
women need not go to work, and both the single woman
and the married would benefit.
Frau Gnauck is in agreement with Frau Braun as
to the advisability of common organisation, for if the
women cannot join the men's Unions, they are helpless,
and if they form a Union of their own, they will probably
be too weak to avoid being played off against the men.
She takes, on the other hand, a much more favourable
view than Frau Braun of the various jjtilanthropic
clubs and societies formed by women of a Sperior class.
These organisations do not of course doKnything to
improve the economic position, they caj^t in any
way take the place of Trade Unions, but they provide a
kind of preparatory stage, a training in association, an
opportunity for discussion, and in the present circum-
stances, with the isolated condition in which working
women and girls so often have to live, all these experi-
ences are a means of development and an educational
help to more serious organisation later on. This is
WOMEN IN UNIONS
167
borne out by Dr. Erdmann, 1 who, whilst opposed to the
Catholic Unions as reactionary, admits that even in
these Unions the workers soon begin to feel the need of
Trade Union organisations, and often end by joining
the Socialist Union.
NUMBERS OF WOMEN IN UNIONS GERMANY.
Largest Occupation Groups.
Number.
Per cent of Total.
FREIE GEWERKSCHAFTEN.
(Total women, 216,462.)
Textile workers ...
Metal . . . . .
53,363
26,848
24*6
I2'4
Factory workers . . .
Tobacco . . . - .
Bookbinders ... .
25,146
I7,9l8
15,979
II-6
8-2
7'4
CHRISTIAN UNIONS.
(Total women, 28,008.)
Textile workers
Home workers .
Tobacco . ..
12,811
8,188
3,o88
457
29-2
II'O
HlRSCH-DUNCKER UNIONS.
(To^kwomen, 4950.)
Textile tlfckers .
1,880
38-0
The Outlook. It will be seen from the preceding
chapter and section that a general view of women
in Unions presents a somewhat ambiguous and con-
tradictory picture. In one industry, cotton, there are
in England two large Unions of remarkable strength
1 A. Erdmann, Church and Trade Union in Germany, 1913.
168 WOMEN IN UNIONS
and effectiveness, in which women are organised with
men, and form a majority of the Union. The women
cotton weavers and card-room operatives form nearly
70 per cent of all the organised women. In the other
textile industries, in the clothing trades, and some
others, a comparatively small number of women are
organised, either with men, or in branches closely in
touch with the men's Unions, but these Unions are of
various degrees of strength, and in no case include a
large proportion of the women employed. There are
also some women organised in Unions of general
labourers and workers, and their numbers have
increased rapidly in the last few years, but are not as
yet considerable. We also find many small Unions of
women only in various occupations, but it is a curious
fact that women have so far evolved very little organisa-
tion in their most characteristic occupations such as
domestic service, nursing, dressmaking and millinery.
Unions of some kind in these occupations are not
unknown, but they are quite inconsiderable in com-
parison with the numbers employed. Yet the strategic
position of the workers in some of these occupations is
in some respects strong. A fairly well-organised strike
of London milliners in the first week in May, or of hotel
servants and waitresses along the south coast, say
about the last week in July, would probably be irre-
sistible. The same applies to women in certain factory
processes when the work is a monopoly of women and
cannot be done by men's fingers. Paper-sorting is a
typical instance ; a paper-sorters' strike just before the
Christmas present season might be highly effective.
In such occupations as these, nevertheless, Unionism
is mostly conspicuous by its absence.
There is little use in denying that there are special
WOMEN IN UNIONS 169
difficulties in the way of the organisation of women.
The old difficulty of the hostility of men Unionists is
largely a thing of the past, but many others remain.
There are difficulties from hostility and indifference
on the part of the employers ; long hours of work ;
family ties and duties ; educational deficiencies among
working women themselves, and the intellectual and
moral effects that result from ignorance. An immense
difficulty is the low rate of wages characteristic of so
many women's employments, which makes it impossible
in most cases to pay contributions sufficient for adequate
benefit during a strike. Competition is another diffi-
culty, especially in low-grade and unspecialised trades,
where places can easily be filled. There is the constant
dread among workers of this class and low-grade home
workers that, if they attempt any resistance, some other
woman will go behind them and take the work for still
less wages. Even collecting contributions is often a
considerable difficulty ; if it is done at the factory it
may subject the collector to disfavour and victimisa-
tion ; if not, the labour is very considerable. Another
great difficulty in organising women is the prospect of
marriage. A girl looks upon her industrial career as
merely a transition stage to getting married and having
a home of her own. This need not in itself hinder her
being a " good trade unionist," for after all the in-
dustrial career of a girl, beginning at twelve, thirteen,
or fourteen, may well be eight or ten years long, even
if she marries young, but it no doubt does tend to
deflect her energies and sentiment from Unionism.
The prospect of marriage, which to a young man is a
steadying influence, making for thrift and for the
strengthening of his class by solidarity and corporate
action, is to a young girl a distraction from industrial
170 WOMEN IN UNIONS
efficiency, an element of uncertainty and disturb-
ance.
Again, the position of women renders them especially
amenable to social influences. Social differences
between different grades of workers keep them apart
from one another and make combination difficult.
Women are more susceptible than men to the influence
of their social superiors. In the past, and even in the
present, though less than formerly, no doubt, the
influence of upper class women has been and is used
against the Trade Union spirit. Charity and philan-
thropy have tended to counterbalance the forces that
have been drawing the working class together. Miss
Collet found in investigating for the Labour Com-
mission that the homes and hostels for the working
girls run by religious and benevolent societies had
an atmosphere unfavourable to Trade Unionism, and
influenced the girls to look coldly on agitation for
improved material conditions. Lack of public spirit
is, in short, the great difficulty with women. Their
economic position, their training and education, the
influence of the classes considered superior, above all
perhaps the pressure of custom and tradition, all these
have combined to prevent or postpone corporate action
and class solidarity.
Must we admit that women are inherently incapable
of organisation, which by a kind of miracle or chance
has been achieved successfully in one district and in
one industry only ? A further consideration of the
Board of Trade figures gives a rather different com-
plexion to the matter.
In the building, mining, metal and transport trades
there are practically no women unionists, but with the
exception of metal there are only a very few women
WOMEN IN UNIONS 171
employed in these trades at all. In the other non-
textile trades the proportion of women organised is
very small, and the proportion of organised women to
organised men is also small. But it happens that in
most of these trades the women employed are also
few compared with the men, and the men themselves
are not strongly organised. In the woollen and worsted
trade organisation is not strong for either sex. In
cotton alone do we get a really strong organisation of
both men and women. It begins to dawn upon us at
this point that the weak organisation of women is after
all part and parcel of the general problem of organisa-
tion in those trades. No doubt it is an extremer and
specially difficult form of the problem. But on the
whole, with the exception of the metal trades, it holds
good that where women are employed together with
men, they are strongly organised where men are strongly
organised, weak where men are weak. Even in metal
trades the exceptions are more apparent than real. The
strong Unions are in branches of work that women do
not do ; and a glance down the list of those metal
workers who make the small wares and fittings in which
women's employment is increasing does not reveal any
great strength of male Unionism, except perhaps in the
brass- workers, who exceeded 7000 in 1910. Directly
we realise this intimate connexion of women's union-
ism with the Labour Movement as a whole, a light
is thrown on many puzzling discrepancies.
In the case of women there have been in the last
forty years or so two tendencies at work. One is
towards the sporadic growth of small unco-ordinated
Unions of women only. Financially weak and in some
cases governed by a retrograde policy, numbers of such
Unions spring up and die down again. A few achieve
172 WOMEN IN UNIONS
some measure of success, and occasionally a very small
Union will show a very considerable degree of persistence
and vitality without perceptible increase of numbers.
Occasionally such Unions are competing with mixed
Unions in the same occupation, each of course regarding
the other as the intruder. It matters very little who
is to be blamed for the overlapping. The only
important thing is to recognise that such tactics mean
playing into the enemy's hands, with disastrous results
for labour. Apart from such unfortunate instances,
it would be foolish to deny that the small Unions of
women only have provisionally at least a considerable
usefulness. The women must be roped in somehow,
and even the most precarious organisation may have
a distinct educational value in evoking in its members
the germ of a sense of class-solidarity and membership
with their fellows. I am almost tempted to say that
any force that brings women consciously into associa-
tion with aims higher than petty and personal ones is
ultimately for good, however destructive it may seem
to be in some of its manifestations.
The other tendency is towards the organisation of
women either jointly with men or in close connexion
with men's Unions. In these cases there have been
many failures and some successes. The question of
adjustment is highly complicated, and cannot be settled
on broad lines as with the cotton weavers. " Equal
pay for equal work " is not a ready-made solution for
all difficulties, for the work is very often not equal at
all. In most cases it is absolutely distinct, and in
many there is a troublesome margin where the work of
men and women is very nearly the same but not quite.
The men often regard women as unscrupulous
competitors, and though they have mostly abandoned
WOMEN IN UNIONS 173
the old policy of excluding women, they are apt to try
and organise them from their own point of view, with-
out regard to the women's special interests. Rough
measures of this kind only give a further impulse to
schism, confusion and bitterness. At present un-
deniably there is here and there a good deal of ill-
feeling, especially in districts like Manchester or
Liverpool, with a number of ill-organised, ill-paid trades,
and competing unco-ordinated Unions.
If Trade Unionism is to be effective, if membership
is to be co-extensive with the trade and compulsory, as
in the future we hope it will, there is no question that
better methods are needed, greater centralisation, a
more carefully thought-out policy, to avoid the present
waste and competition.
It is not so much a change of heart as a coherent
policy that is needed. The organisation of women has
been taken up merely where it was obviously and
pressingly needful, in order to safeguard the interests
of the men immediately concerned. In the case of
the cotton weavers, an altogether special and peculiar
class, the problem was comparatively simple. It was
of vital importance to the men to get the women in,
and on the other hand, the men could do for the women
a great deal which at that stage of social development
and opinion the women could not possibly have done
for themselves. The cotton weavers exhibit an inter-
locking of interests, so patent and unmistakable that
it was not only perceived but acted upon. The card-
room operatives lagged behind for a time, the organisa-
tion of women being not quite so evident and apparent
a necessity, but they have now almost overtaken the
weavers. In other industries the problem is more
complicated and has taken much longer to grasp.
174 WOMEN IN UNIONS
Take the interesting and suggestive industry of paper-
making. How is the strongly organised, highly-paid
paper-maker to realise that it matters very much that
women should be organised in his trade ? His daughter
may earn pocket-money at paper-sorting, but merely
as a temporary employment. She will marry a
respectable artisan and abandon work on marriage.
The rag-cutters, on the other hand, belong to an
altogether different class, being usually wives or widows
of labourers. There is not enough class feeling to bind
together such different groups. It is true enough that
the problem of labour is a problem of class-solidarity,
and that the women must in no wise be left out.
" Whoever can help to strengthen Trade Unionism
among women workers will be conferring a benefit on
more than the women themselves/' x But the depth
and truth of this statement is by no means fully
realised, and in many cases women have little chance
of being organised by the men of their own trade. As
Mr. Cole has told us, the weakness of British labour is