the lack of central control and direction.

Outside the special case of the skilled workers in
cotton, the organisation of women becomes more and
more a question, not of craft, but of class. This is
seen in the different form and type of organisation
demanded by the " new unionism." The cotton
weavers need in their secretary before all things the
closest and minutest acquaintance with the technical
mysteries of the craft. The secretary of a modern
labour Union including all sorts of heterogeneous
workers cannot possibly possess intimate technical
knowledge of each. Personality, power of speech, the

1 Report of Gas-workers' and General Labourers' Association,
March 1897.



WOMEN IN UNIONS 175

force and warmth of character that can draw together
oppressed and neglected workers and make them feel
themselves one, these are the elementary gifts needed
to start a workers' Union, whether of men, women, or
both together. But also if such a body is to be kept
together and do effective work, it is especially in the
" new unionism " that the need of central control and
direction is felt. A national policy must take into
consideration the needs of women and harmonise their
interests with those of men. The success of the
Women's Trade Union League is very largely due, not
merely to the personality of its leaders, though no doubt
that has been a considerable asset, but to the fact that
it has a national policy and a definite aim.

Frau Braun eleven years ago saw that the labour
woman ran some danger of being caught into the
feminist movement and withdrawn from her natural
place as an integral part of the Labour Movement itself.
It is to be hoped that she has followed English social
history in the interval with sufficient closeness to be
aware of the far-sighted statesmanship shown by the
leaders of the Trade Union League in avoiding such a
pitfall.

However unsatisfactory and inadequate the organisa-
tion of women has been and still is, a review of the
situation does not suggest any inherent incapacity of
women for corporate action. In the cotton weavers'
societies, although the main responsibility for organisa-
tion has rested on men's shoulders, yet the women and
girls have consistently paid contributions amounting
now to a relatively high figure, and they have constantly
aided in the work of recruiting new members. Experi-
ence is now showing that in certain districts where the
industry is becoming more and more a woman's trade r



176 WOMEN IN UNIONS

the women have not been lacking in capacity to take
over the work of managing the Union's affairs. The
absence of women from the Committee of so many
weavers' Unions at the present day is due to inertia
and long surviving habit rather than to any real
incapacity. In the recent ballot on the question of
political action, the enormous proportion of votes
recorded shows that a large proportion of women must
have used the vote. In many of the small women's
societies in Manchester a working woman is the secre-
tary. In certain cases local Unions of women have
been successful, notably the Liverpool upholstresses,
the Edmonton ammunition workers and some others.
The working woman is in fact beginning to show
powers, hitherto unsuspected, of social work and
political action. The Insurance Act has demanded
women officials as " Sick Visitors " and " Pay Stewards,"
and the new duties thrown on the secretaries and
committee by that Act are likely to bring about an
increasing demand for the participation of women.
The rapidly increasing numbers of women in the Shop
Assistants' Union, the movement for a minimum wage
in the co-operative factories, the increasing number of
women in general labour Unions, all these are hopeful
signs of a movement towards unity. The milliner and
dressmaker in small establishments and the domestic
servant will probably be the last to feel the rising wave.
Even of these we need not despair. With the develop-
ment of postal facilities, easy transit and opportunities
for social intercourse, such as we may foresee occurring
in the near future, there may be a considerable develop-
ment of class-consciousness even among the workers
among whom it is now most lacking, while the
Women's Co-operative Guild and the Women's



WOMEN IN UNIONS



177



Labour League, in their turn, are finding a way for
the association of non-wage-earning women in the
working class.

FEMALE MEMBERSHIP OF TRADE UNIONS, 1913.



Occupation.


Numbers.


Per cent of
Total.


Textile-
Cotton preparing . . ,
Cotton spinning .
Cotton weaving . ;. . . .
Wool and worsted . ..." ,
Linen and jute
Silk


53,317
1,857
155,910
7,738
20,689
4,247


14-9

o-5

43'8

2'2

5'8

1-2


Hosiery, etc. . . . .
Textile printing, etc. '. .


4,070

9,453


I'l

2-6


Total . .
Non-Textile
Boot and shoe . . . ,
Hat and cap . . ,, . .

Tailoring .


257,281

9,282

3,75
9,798


72-1

2-6

I'l

2'7


Printing . . . . .


5,893


1-7


Pottery . ' . f . * - .


2,600


0-7


Tobacco . i
Shop assistants . . ...
Other trades . . . .

General labour . .' .. .
Employment of Public Authorities


2,060

24,255
8,742

23,677
9,625


0-6
6-8

2'4

6-6
2-7


Total . . . . .


99,682


27-9


Grand Total . . , .


356,963


lOO'O



N



CHAPTER V.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I. 1

Changes effected by the Industrial Revolution. We
have seen that the industrial employment of women
developed partly out of their miscellaneous activities
as members of a family, partly out of their employment
as domestic servants, partly out of the work given out
from well-to-do households to their poorer neighbours.
Weaving and spinning, the most typical and general
employments of women, were carried on by them as
assistants to the husband or father, or as servants
lending a hand to their masters' trade, or were done
direct for customers. In the last case, the work might
be done either for the use of the manor or some other
well-to-do household, or in the case of spinning and
winding, the product might be sold to weavers directly
or through a middleman. To a more limited extent,
the same kind of conditions probably applied to work
other than textile. The women acted as subordinate
helpers or assistants, whether in the family or out of it.
In the former case they were probably not paid but
took their share of the family maintenance ; in the
latter they were earners. When the circumstances of
the trade were favourable, e.g. when the demand for

1 This chaptej was written before the outbreak of war.
178



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I. 179

yarn exceeded the supply, women-workers may have
earned very fair wages ; but on the whole it appears
that they were in an unfavourable position in selling
their labour. The fact of working for nothing, as many
did in the home, would not promote a high standard of
remuneration, and the women who took in work from
the manor or other wealthy households would probably
be expected to regard employment as a favour. 1

When the industrial revolution came, and the man
with capital found himself in the exciting position of
being able to obtain large returns from his newly-
devised plant and machinery, the women and children
were there waiting to be employed. Enormous
profits were made out of the cheap labour of women
and girls. The only alternative occupation of any
extent was domestic service, then an overstocked and
under-paid trade. The women and girls, accustomed
to work at home, were not aware how greatly their
productive power had increased, and had no means of
justifying claims to an increased share of the produce,
even if they had known how to make them. Many,
as we have seen in Chapter II., were reduced to terrible
poverty through the failure of work to the hand-loom
weavers, and were ready to take any work they could
get to eke out the family living.

The Survival of Previous Standards and Conditions.
The development of the great industry, the use
of machinery and the concentration of capital, came
at a time when the working class was peculiarly
helpless to help itself, and the governing class was

1 Many worthy folk to this day even show by the use of the
phrase " giving employment " that they suppose themselves to be
conferring a benefit on persons who work for them, irrespective of
wages paid, and it is unlikely that our ancestors were more en-
lightened on this point than ourselves.



i8o SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

unable or unwilling to initiate any adequate social
reform. The Enclosure Acts had weakened the spirit
and independence of the agricultural working-class
and increased destitution and pauperism, while wages
were kept down through the operation of the allow-
ance system under the Old Poor Law. Local de-
population in rural districts sent numbers of needy
labourers, strong, industrious, and inured to small
earnings, to swell the industrial population of towns. 1
But the crowning cruelty, the extremest folly, was the
prohibition to combine. The special characteristic of
the industrial revolution was the association of opera-
tives under one roof, performing co-ordinated tasks
under one control to produce a given result. Now this
new method of associated labour was not only im-
mensely more productive, but it also potentially held
advantages for the workers. It brought them together,
it gave them a common interest, it brought all sorts of
social and civic possibilities within their reach. But to
realise these possibilities it was essential that they should
be able to join together, to take stock of the bewilder-
ing new situation which confronted them, to achieve
some kind of corporate consciousness. This was denied
them under various pains and penalties. Yet the State
did not for a long time itself take action to give the
factory class the protection they were forbidden to
seek for themselves. The effect was that while the
workers were bound, the employers were free or were
restricted only to the very slight extent of the regula-
tions of the early factory acts, and could impose very
much such conditions of work as they pleased. What

1 G. Slater, English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields,
Constable, 1907, p. 266. Compare Hammond, J. L. and B, The
Village Labourer, chap. v.



OF PART I. 181

those conditions were has been reiterated often enough.
Work far into the night, or even both night and day ;
sanitation of the rudest and most defective kind where
it was not absent altogether ; industrial disease from
dust, fluff and dirt, or from damp floors and steaming
atmosphere ; workrooms overheated or dismally cold ;
wages low, and subject to oppressive fines and fraudulent
deductions, such, and worse, is the dreary recital of
the treatment meted out to the workers. The intro-
duction of power machines was not per se the cause
of these evils. Women had been accustomed to do the
work that no one else wanted to do. The servile
position of the woman-worker, the absence of combina-
tion among the operative class, and the lack of State or
Municipal control over the conditions of industry and
housing, all combined to provide " cheap and docile
workers " for the factory system. And no doubt the
factory system took full advantage of the opportunity.
Capital inevitably seeks cheap labour. The governing
class had carefully and deliberately provided that
labour should be cheap.

What the Factory Act has done. The awakening
class-consciousness of the factory workers in Lancashire
and Yorkshire led to agitation and petitions for a
restriction of the hours of work. Leaving out of
account the earlier Factory Acts, which were ill-
devised and weak, the first effective regulation was
the Factory Act of 1833. This Act was timid in the
regulations imposed, which were too elastic to effect
very much, but in the providing for the appointment
of a staff of factory inspectors it asserted the right
and duty of the State to control the conditions of
industry, and also indirectly secured that the Govern-
ment should be kept in possession of the facts. Only



182 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

young persons under eighteen were included under this
Act, but in 1844 women also were included, and in 1847
and 1850 the working day was restricted to ten hours,
and the period of employment was carefully defined
to prevent evasion. In 1864 some dangerous trades
were brought within the scope of the Acts, which had
previously included textile and allied industries only,
and in 1867 other non-textile industries and workshops
were added. In 1878 a consolidating Act was passed
to bring the employment of women and young workers
under one comprehensive scheme. The plan of the
Act of 1878 was retained in the Act of 1901, but a con-
siderable number of new regulations, especially in
regard to health and safety, were included. In 1893
a step of great importance for working women was
taken, in the appointment of women factory inspectors.

It does not come within the scope of this volume
to describe the history of factory regulations and
control, but we may here ask ourselves the question,
How much has been done for the women in industry
by the State ? What is the present position of the
woman-worker ?

In the first place, we note that sanitary conditions
in factories and workshops are greatly improved and
conditions as to health are more considered than was
formerly the custom. This is not entirely due to the
regulations of the Factory Act, but partly to the
progress of public health generally, and to the develop-
ment of scientific knowledge and humaner ideals of
social life and manners. It is true that we are only at
the beginning of this movement, and much remains
to be done, as any one can satisfy himself by getting
into touch with industrial workers, or by studying the
Factory Inspectors' Reports, but it can hardly be



OF PART I. 183

doubted that the woman-worker of to-day has a very
different, a very much more civilised industrial environ-
ment than had her mother or her grandmother. The
appointment of women inspectors counts for a great
deal here, for in earlier times the needs of women-
workers were not considered, or if considered were not
known with any accuracy. In the second place we
note that there has been a considerable development
of special precautions for dangerous trades, and that
in one instance of a dangerous substance, viz. white
phosphorus, its use has even been prohibited, and the
terrible disease known as " phossy jaw," formerly the
bane of match-makers, has been stamped out. In
regard to certain sweated industries measures have
been taken to regulate wages through the instru-
mentality of the Trade Boards, and, as it appears,
with a considerable measure of success.

Present Position of the Woman-Worker. Otherwise
it is strange to notice how very little the position of
the woman-worker has been improved in recent years.
She is still liable to toil her ten hours daily, just as her
grandmother did, for five days in the week, though on
Saturdays the hours have been somewhat curtailed.
In non-textile factories ten and a half hours are per-
mitted, though in many of the industries concerned a
shorter day has become customary, whether through
Trade Union pressure or a recognition on the employers'
part that long hours " do not pay/' Ten hours, or
ten and a half, with the necessary pauses for meal-times,
involve working " round the clock," which is still the
recognised period of employment even for young
persons of fourteen and over. The five hours' spell
of continuous work is still permitted in non- textile
factories and workshops, although the inspectors



184 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

have long been convinced that it is too long for
health and energy, and Miss Squire reports that it
is now condemned by all concerned with scientific
management. In certain trades overtime is permitted,
and the result is that girls and women may be employed
fourteen hours a day, and if the employer takes his full
advantage of it, as occasionally he does, the inspector
can do nothing, the proceedings being perfectly legal. 1

While the hours of work have been but very little
shortened since 1874, the strain of work has been
considerably increased, as we have seen, through the
increased speed at which the machines are run. This
is especially the case in the cotton trade, though it
occurs in other factory industries. The demand upon
the worker is much greater than formerly, and the
reduction of hours has by no means kept pace with the
increased strain. The backwardness of the Factory
Act in these and some other matters is almost incon-
ceivable. So important a matter as the lighting of
work -places is still outside the scope of regulation.
The nervous strain and serious risk to eyesight involved
by doing work requiring close and accurate visual
attention in a bad light need hardly be emphasised.
The inspectors receive many complaints of badly-
adjusted or otherwise defective artificial lighting of
work-places, but have no weapon to use but persuasion,
which happily is in some cases successfully invoked.

Another serious factor in the working woman's
position is the weakness of the Truck Act, especially in

1 See, e.g., the cases mentioned in the Factory Inspectors' Report
for 1912, p. 142, and compare the case reported by Miss Vines in the
Report for 1913, p. 97. In a Christmas-card factory the women were
being employed two days a week from 8 to 8, three days a week
from 8 A.M. to 10 P.M., and Saturdays 8 to 4. " The whole staff of
workers and foremen looked absolutely worn out."



OF PART I. 185

regard to fines and deductions. Deductions, e.g. for
spoilt work, are sometimes made on a scale altogether out
of proportion to the weekly wages, and fines for being a
few minutes late, or for trivial offences of various kinds,
are often oppressive to a degree which can only be
described as preposterous when compared with the
value of the worker's time and attention measured in
the payments they receive. In some cases convictions
and fines are secured, and in other cases, even in some
which are outside the law, the inspectors are able to
obtain the adoption of reforms by employers, but many
hard cases remain unredressed owing to the difficulty
of interpreting the Acts.

All along the line our social legislation has been
characterised by timidity and procrastination. Dr.
Thomas Percival's statement of the case for State
interference in factories (1796) was left for six years
without notice from the Central Government, and the
first Factory Act, 1802, was applied to apprentices only
at a time when the apprenticeship system was falling
into disuse. Later on, in response to the high-souled
agitation of Sadler, Oastler, and Lord Ashley (after-
wards Shaftesbury), after years of hesitation and
vacillation, various inadequate measures were taken,
but never quite the right thing at the right moment,
never designed as part of a far-sighted policy that
would recreate English industrial life and make it
worth living as it might be made for the toilers of
field and factory, workshop and mine. This weakness
and backwardness in the policy of the Home Depart-
ment is no doubt largely due to the covetousness of
the capitalist and the control he is able to exercise on
politics. It should be remembered, however, that the
capitalist, or rather the capitalist employer, does not



186 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

present an unbroken front. In point of fact the best
manufacturers do not oppose social legislation. They
understand the need of a common rule, and the regula-
tions of the Factory Acts have usually been modelled
on the existing practice of the better kind of employer.
Labour legislation is weakened and kept back by
several causes other than the greed of employers.
Among these may be mentioned the cumbersome
and out-of-date procedure of the House of Commons,
and the interminable delays that dog the progress of
non-Governmental measures, even when these have
the approval of all parties. Other causes are to be
found in the class selfishness of the upper strata of
society, their indifference to the needs of the people,
their ignorance of the whole conditions of the industrial
population's life. With bright exceptions, such as
the late Lord Shaftesbury and some now living whose
names will occur to the reader, not only the aristocracy
and the very rich, but the conservative middle-class,
the dwellers in suburbs and watering-places, cling to
the idea of a servile class. They object to industrial
regulations which give the workers statutory rights
amongst their employers ; they object to increasing
the amenity of factory life and diminishing the supply
of domestic servants. Labour legislation remains back-
ward and undeveloped for want of the support of an
enlightened public opinion.

The Strain of Modern Industry. With the ill effects
of the present system it is impossible for a non-medical
writer to deal fully, but no one can have any talk with
a doctor or a sick visitor under the Insurance Com-
mittee in a big industrial town without hearing terrible
facts about the injury to women from the persistent
standing at work. It seems likely also that these



OF PART I. 187

injuries are not only due to overstrain among women
after marriage and before and after confinement, but
result in part from the fatigue endured by adolescent
girls. Parents are too anxious to send children to
work, and girls of fourteen and upwards are sometimes
working in competition with boys, and suffer from
trying to do as much. Pressure is put on girls to work
three looms or even four, before they are really equal
to the effort. It may, of course, be admitted that some
of this strain and drive is self-inflicted. It is part of
the admirable tenacity, self-reliance, and high standard
of life of Lancashire women that they are keen about
their earnings, and I have been told of girls who will
return to the shed during meal-hours, or even go to
work at 5.30 in summer-time, busying themselves in
sweeping or making ready for work before the engine
starts. These practices are illegal, and the employers
often protect themselves by putting up a notice that
any woman or young worker found in the shed out of
working hours will be dismissed, or by sending an
employee to clear the shed at the proper hour. Never-
theless in many cases the employer has a certain moral
responsibility for these evasions of the law, although
they appear to indicate perversity on the worker's part.
Girls and women are indirectly set to compete one with
another, and with boys and men. There is a constant
pressure on the weaker to keep pace with the stronger,
the immature or old with the worker in the full flower
of strength. The overlooker usually receives a small
percentage on all the earnings of all the weavers, and
has therefore an incentive to keep them at full tension,
and the overlooker's average is again criticised by the
manager. Lancashire people are remarkably articulate
and also quick in apprehension, and the sarcasms



i88 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

launched at girls who, on pay-day, have earned less
than the average are pointed enough to be well under-
stood. The whole system is like an elaborate
mechanism to extract the last unit of effort from each
worker, and dismissal hangs always over the head of the
slower and less competent worker. In the Factory
Inspectors' Report for 1913 Miss Tracey tells how
children lose their colour and their youthful energy
in the drudgery of their daily toil, ;how the girls fall
asleep at their work and grow old and worn before
their time. " Sometimes one feels that one dare not
contemplate too closely the life of our working women,
it is such a grave reproach." I have myself been
seriously assured that cases of suicide result from
the difficulty of maintaining at once the quantity and
quality of work under such conditions.

Anaemia is a frequent result of overstrain, not to
mention the constant colds and rheumatism due to
overheated rooms. The sickness among women from
these and other worse evils alluded to above have
become apparent for the first time through the serious
strain put on sick benefit funds in the first year of the
Insurance Act. At one very important centre of the
cotton trade, out of 8056 members 2800 received sick
benefit in the first twelve months. The Insurance Act,
whatever its defects, has at all events given many poor
women the chance to take a little rest and nursing that
they sorely needed and could not afford. The sneer
of " malingering " is easily raised, but it is doubtful