Women in the Printing Trades Part 29

(5) 1st year, half earnings; 2nd year, three-quarter earnings.

(6) 3_s._ or 4_s._ first 6 months; 5_s._ second 6 months; then 6_s._ for 2nd year.

(7) Pay 2 premium. Put on piece work almost at once and receive what they make. Premiums returned with 5 per cent. interest after 3 years.

(8) 3 months, nothing; 3 months, 2_s._ per week; next 3 months, 3_s._; next, 4_s._; so on till 8_s._

One forewoman considered that three years' training was much too long, and stated that there was a tendency in certain houses to do work cheap by means of apprentices. She said that the girls in such houses get disheartened and sick of work, and when they were out of their time it was no use staying on, for all the work got given to the learners. Some learners are quite quick by the end of three weeks. We often found that when a girl came in to learn stamping she was set to run about the warehouse or to do gumming for the first year. This, it was urged by one employer, was done purely from humane motives. Since the girls were often delicate when they came in, it was far better for them to do odd jobs for a year than to be stuck down at once at some sedentary occupation.

Learners are taken at thirteen or fourteen years of age. Sometimes they are left to "pick things up." Sometimes they are taught by a forewoman or experienced hand. The relief stamper belongs to the upper cla.s.s of factory girl.

REGULARITY.--Trade is tolerably steady. A few weeks in summer are generally slack, and where there is Christmas card work the six weeks before Christmas are extremely busy.

HEALTH.--We were told almost unanimously that stamping was healthy work, and undoubtedly, where the presses are light, it is so. Some of the presses, however, are very heavy, and the girls who work them acknowledged that the work was extremely tiring. Most houses have men to work their heaviest presses. We heard of three cases in two different houses of internal strain to girls working at these presses, and we heard of one house where the girls in the packing room were recruited from those who could not stand the stamping.

SKILL.--Skill is required for illuminating.

PROSPECTS.--In some cases it is possible to rise to forewoman, or from plain to relief and cameo stamping and occasionally illuminating.

WAGES.--Wages vary from 13_s._ to 25_s._ or 30_s._, mostly piece work.

Some of the piece work rates were 9_d._ per 1,000 impressions, 2_d._ per 1,000 plain (2,000 can be done per hour); 10_d._ per ream one die (takes two hours to do one ream), 1_s._ 8_d._ per 1,000 impressions.

MARRIED AND UNMARRIED.--Very few relief stampers are married. In some houses married women are not allowed, in some they "come back to oblige"

at busy times. In one house only we heard "that many stampers marry, though they might as well not, as they come back to work."

DISPLACEMENT.--Men used to do relief stamping, but women, owing to the cheapness of their labour, have superseded them in all but the heaviest work. For the heavy presses men are still employed, "but it is a poor trade for them."

In some houses they do illuminating, as for this the women are found not to possess sufficient skill and patience. One large house employs 4 men for a superior sort of relief stamping--gold and silver on a coloured surface. The crest or monogram has to be stamped in plain first, then coloured, then stamped with the gold or silver by the men.

This last process requires great skill and accuracy and care, for if it is crooked by a hair's breadth the thing is spoilt. Girls are stated not to be accurate and careful enough for this work, although they are employed for the simpler sort of gold stamping.

Where heavy hand machines have come in they have ousted women. One employer considered that if stamping machines worked by steam came in women would be employed on them. In one house, however, where there was machine stamping, it was done by men. We were told by a large employer that there is now a new machine in the market which may supersede female labour. It colours the surface first and then embosses it out. Another new machine requires a feeder only, as the die is coloured, rubbed and stamped down by machinery.

_Job Hands. Interview with Agent._

Miss R., like Mrs. B. before her, apparently acts as a sort of bureau-keeper for job hands; sometimes she has work in to do herself and keeps a certain staff, at other times she gets a notice to say that W.

has got a big job and wants so many hands; she collects them, sends postcards all round, and goes and works herself too. Very few of her job hands would touch magazine work; they usually work at prospectuses. Mrs.

B. used to do all the work for the ---- Societies. There were hundreds of job hands, how many she cannot tell at all.

REGULARITY.--The work is quite uncertain. "You never know when there will be work; but July and August are usually the slack months, but this year (1900-01) it has been slack all the year. Job hands, however, do what they like when there is not work, whereas constant hands have to come in and wait whether there is work or not."

HEALTH.--It is hard work, but there is nothing unhealthy about it.

GENERAL.--She spoke with pitying contempt of the "constant" hands and their low prices and the long hours they worked.

APPENDIX III.--GENERAL GLASGOW REPORT.

(A.) _Letterpress Printing. Machine Feeding and Flying._

Girls are employed to "feed" the machines and to "take off" the impressed sheet. A girl will learn "taking off," or "flying," in a couple of days; but except in the old-fas.h.i.+oned and smaller jobbing-shops flying is now done entirely by machinery. Machine feeding is not so easy and simple a process as it seems. The girls stand and perform the same movement repeatedly, each time giving to the sheet the precise swing required to send it accurately into the grips. The work requires little intelligence, and the extent to which it can be characterised as exhausting depends partly on the speed of the machine, but chiefly on the length of the "run." Three methods of treating the girls may be distinguished. In some shops where there are very long runs, perhaps extending to a couple of weeks, as in the case of the printing of low-priced Bibles, the work is tiring. At the close of a long run the machines have to be prepared afresh, and the girls enjoy a spell for a day or two. This leisure they are sometimes inclined to abuse by interrupting the work of others with conversation, and consequently attempts are being made to employ them on other machines during the interval. This innovation the girls are resisting. In other shops the fatiguing nature of a long run is mitigated by removing the girl to another machine with a different movement, but the "right" of a girl to be so moved about and rested is not recognised; it is simply a matter for the consideration of the foreman. To allow the claim to frequent s.h.i.+fting might prove inconvenient in times of pressure. Lastly, in establishments where the bulk of the work involves short runs, as, for example, in printing the official matter of a munic.i.p.ality or a college, the necessity for frequently preparing the machines affords considerable leisure to the feeders. These intervals explain the groups of girls often to be seen chatting and knitting in odd corners of the machine-room. Some of these shops recognise the right of a girl to feed and keep clean "her own machine" and no other. Where this is the case a girl may be employed feeding for no longer than a quarter of the normal working week of fifty-two and a half hours owing to the shortness of the runs and the length of time spent in re-adjustment. The work is dirty but not dangerous, as all machinery is well-fenced, and accidents are of very rare occurrence. The day's work usually starts at 6.15 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m., with meal hours at 9 and at 2 o'clock and half an hour for tea when engaged on overtime. Sat.u.r.day's s.h.i.+ft is from 6.15 a.m.

until 10 a.m. Girls are paid 5_s._, in a few shops 6_s._, a week as beginners. They get their first rise in three months, and are gradually advanced to an average wage of 10_s._, while an expert feeder may earn 11_s._, or at the outside 12_s._, a week. When girls find that they can feed well after a comparatively short time in a shop and that they are getting only 7_s._ or 8_s._ a week they commonly seek and obtain the average wage elsewhere. Managers fancy "it would not do" to advance a girl abruptly from 6_s._ to 10_s._ a week in the same shop, but do not blame the girls for leaving. "It is human nature." Girls are taken on at any age after fourteen, and stay on till they are married or until they are called away to domestic duties. Some remain on after marriage, but not more than 1 or 2 per cent. A few come back as widows. Married and unmarried as workers are "six of one and half a dozen of the other,"

remarked an employer of both, while another thought married women "less regular" in attendance. There are no signs of married women lowering rates of pay. "Time and a half" is the overtime rate. Women workers who do not get paid overtime when they work beyond the normal day get paid over the holidays, but not otherwise. There are no fines. There is no trade organisation among the machine feeders, and as the various unions of the men are not directly affected they do not interfere. In some firms feeding has been done by girls for a quarter of a century; in others they have been introduced only within the last five or six years.

Boys were rough, irregular, scarce, and wanted higher pay. The girls, although they also are drawn from a rough cla.s.s, are steadier, cleaner, and more economical in the use of material than boys. Besides, there are more of them. There was no inducement for boys to continue at such work, so they have been drafted into certain forms of unskilled, but fairly well paid, labour, such as is offered by the Post Office or bread factories. In some districts they go to the s.h.i.+pyards to a.s.sist riveters, and are able to earn straight away twice the wages they would obtain in a printing shop. As overtime by girls is restricted by legislation, young men (over 18) are kept for feeding in one large jobbing-shop where there are often seasons of great pressure (_e.g._, in the printing of penny monthly diaries and time-tables) and where "rushes" and overtime are inevitable. These young men would not be thus employed but for the restrictions of the Factory Acts, as the manager, for reasons stated above, much prefers girls for feeding. While all modern machines are fitted with self-fliers, not one of the many attempts to provide automatic feeders has proved quite satisfactory. For long runs such feeders as have been designed may serve fairly well, but in shops with much jobbing and many short runs too much time would be spent in adjusting the feeder to the particular job. The sole advantages of a mechanical feeder are that it neither "takes ill" nor "goes on strike." Meanwhile it is imperfect and expensive, and the supply of cheap female labour abundant.

(B.) _Lithographic Printing. Machine Feeding._

What has been said of feeders under letterpress printing is generally true of feeders in the lithographic branch. The only difference seems to be one of social position. Girls employed in feeding lithographic machines are "higher,"[97] "less filthy in talk," etc. They form the intermediate cla.s.s, of which the girls in the bookbinding and warehouse departments are at the top. In one shop where all three cla.s.ses are employed, the manager remarked that these caste distinctions were "clean cut," and obvious to the most casual observer.

[Footnote 97: They are supposed to be lower in London, Manchester, etc.--[Ed.]]

(C.) _Letterpress Printing. Type-setting._

The employment of women as compositors is a "vexed question." In two shops only are they so employed in Glasgow, and both are on the black list of the local trade union. Inasmuch as the conditions which obtain in these shops differ in important respects, they are here described separately.

Firm No. 1 introduced women as compositors some nine or ten years ago, when a dispute with the union ensued. It now employs about a dozen women at the cases. Girls are taken on at any age after fourteen. In three months' time they are able to set up type in "solid dig," _i.e._, newspaper or book matter, consisting of solid uniform paragraphs. Three girls who have spent about eight years with this firm are declared to be "good at displaying," and "more competent than the ordinary journeyman."

Beginners get 6_s._ a week during the first year, and in the third year are put on piecework rates. There are no indentures. Capable women compositors may earn 24_s._ a week, while their average earnings may be put at 22_s._ a week, and they never sink below a pound. Young workers make an average of 18_s._ a week or thereabouts. The normal week is one of fifty-one hours, made up as follows:--

8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on four days.

8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays.

8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sat.u.r.days.

A compositor sometimes acts as "clicker," _i.e._, checks the amount of piecework, but this is usually done by a clerk. No married women are employed. Overtime is paid time and a half, and women are fined a penny for being late.

Firm No. 2 employed at one time about two dozen girls in the composing-rooms. They were engaged solely on solid newspaper work, and never in the higher branches of the trade, such as "displaying." Seats were provided for them. They worked a forty-eight hour week for a "stab"

wage of 15_s._ or 16_s._, and had three weeks' holiday, off and on, for which they were paid. Further, they were never turned away in slack time. But the experiment was not altogether a success, and by to-day the two dozen have dwindled down to two, who set for newspapers and get 16_s._ a week. The reasons a.s.signed for the gradual reversion to the employment of men are as follows:--

(_a_) Irregularity of the women's attendance at work.

(_b_) Their shorter hours.

(_c_) Marriage.

(_d_) The introduction of the Linotype machine, of which there are three in this establishment. This was urged as the most important cause of the change back to men.

Of the work in general, it may be said that some intelligence is needed, that no dangerous machinery is used, and that the health of the workers depends largely on the character of the workroom. The special trade disease is that to which men are similarly subject, viz., "consumption"

in some of its many forms.

In Glasgow the Typographical a.s.sociation has strenuously, and, with the above exceptions, successfully, resisted the introduction of women into the composing-room. The att.i.tude taken up by the men may be summarised as follows: No objection would be offered to the employment of women at the case provided that they served the usual seven years' apprentices.h.i.+p at the same rates as male apprentices, and then on its completion were paid the full standard wage. "Underpaid female labour is equally unjust to the legitimate employer and employee." To allow women unrestricted access to the composing-rooms would probably lead in time, not only to the reduction of the men's wages, but to the undermining of the trade itself. The various branches of the trade which now demand many years of apprentices.h.i.+p before they are completely mastered by one man would be split up and distributed among a number of highly-specialized workers.

Women would be employed for separate departments, and by being continuously kept at one job or branch would become expert therein, but would have no knowledge of the trade as a whole.

The employers, on the other hand, are aggrieved that, while the union prevents women from acting as compositors in Glasgow, the same trade society allows them to work in Edinburgh. The result of the present arrangement is to divert a certain cla.s.s of trade, viz., "solid dig," or book work, from other centres to Edinburgh. The cause of this is to be found in the non-employment of women compositors in Glasgow, and is not, as sometimes suggested, due to the superiority of Edinburgh printing.