Women in Modern Industry Part 14

_Princ.i.p.al._--It is impossible to modify in any general way the adverse description of the existing state of matters as regards actual provision of sanitary conveniences for women and girls in factory industries which I found it necessary to give in last Annual Report, and to that statement I must refer again and again until there is real and complete reform. The women Inspectors have nearly doubled their efforts to raise the standard somewhat in factories, and notices about them to local sanitary authorities have risen from 538 in 1912 to 1029 in 1913, in addition to 146 notices with regard to workshops. Direct contravention notices to occupiers numbered 249, while complaints from workers numbered 170, some of them being very strong in regard to the unsuitability of the conveniences provided. The one important area in which a decided improvement is reported is the potteries area, where members of this branch have been steadily at work for many years, but on the whole the Midlands and the Lancas.h.i.+re Divisions have still most work to be done in this direction, for in the former Miss Martindale reports that 381 of the notices to sanitary authorities touched this one matter, and in the latter Miss Tracey reports similarly 308 notices.

_Miss Tracey._--The outstanding defect of all others in this north-west division is the sanitary accommodation provided for women. It is impossible to describe in a public paper how low the standard has been and still is, in many places, where in other respects the conditions are not only not noticeably bad, but are quite good.... Absence of doors and screens, uncleanliness and insanitary conditions can all be remedied by the sanitary authority, and in the large towns at any rate notices of these matters have received prompt attention, but there still remains the question of unsuitability of position. Many examples might be given. In a waterproof factory four or five girls were employed in an "overflow"

workroom of a larger factory, and worked in an upper room; in the lower room about a dozen men and youths were at work. To reach the sanitary convenience it is necessary for the girls to walk across the men's room and through a narrow s.p.a.ce between rows of machines at which the men are sitting, and the wall at the far end of which the sanitary convenience is situated.... There is no doubt that gla.s.s panels in doors, commoner still, no doors, no bolts, no provision for privacy is all calculated to "prevent waste of time," and it is a pathetic comment on employment that there should be this improper supervision and control of decent and respectable women. That they do sometimes stay longer than is actually necessary in these places is of course a fact well known to me, but to my thinking it only shows how great the strain is on women and girls that they should desire rest so obtained. When one thinks of the perpetual striving, the work which must never slacken, the noise which never ceases and of the legs which are weary with constant standing, of the heads which ache, because the noise is so great no voice can be heard above the din, one can understand that to sit on the floor for a few moments' talk, as I have often seen, is a rest which under even such horrid circ.u.mstances is better than nothing. Proper conveniences and the supervision of a nice woman would do away with all the drawbacks which employers foresee in complying with the standard laid down in the Order of the Secretary of State so long ago as 1903.

5. _Fire Escapes._

_Miss Tracey._--In one factory I visited to see an escape recently put up at the instance of the local authority, and I found quite a good iron staircase and platform. This was reached by a window which had been made to open in such a way that it completely blocked the staircase and gave but a tiny s.p.a.ce even on the platform, and the aid of the local officer was again invoked. Miss Stevenson reports that in the newer cotton mills a proper outside iron staircase with a handrail is to be found, but the construction of the older fire escapes shows a great lack of common sense.

In the first place, the narrow, almost perpendicular ladder without a handrail is peculiarly unsuited for the use of women. The openings from the platform to the ladders are exceedingly small, and the exit window is generally 3 to 4 feet above the floor level, no steps or footholds being provided. To increase the difficulty the exit window is sometimes made to swing out across the platform, cutting off access to the downward ladder.

In two cases the ladder, and in one case a horizontal iron pipe also, ran right across the window, rendering egress impossible except to the slender. In both cases the next window was free from obstruction.

_Miss Taylor._--Sometimes as many as 100 persons are employed on each floor of a high building, so that if the outside staircase had to be used those in the upper floors would, as they descended, meet the occupants of the lower floors crowding on to the landings. I have never been to a factory where they had such a fire drill as might obviate the possibility of overcrowding on these escapes. The women flatly, and I think, rightly, decline to attempt the descent, on the plea that they do not wish to incur the danger of it until it is absolutely necessary. I have sometimes been told by the managers of the factories that they themselves would never reach the bottom safely if they attempted to go down. Such escapes are to be found on quite 50 per cent of the cotton mills in Lancas.h.i.+re, and as they were put up on the authority of the sanitary authority it is difficult to get rid of them, but one cannot help thinking that there may be very serious loss of life if the circ.u.mstances of a fire should be such that the workers were obliged to resort to these outside escapes.

6. _Lead Poisoning._

_Miss Tracey._--I spent many days in visiting the cases which had been certified, and in visiting other cases of illness which were not directly certified, as due to lead. I visited these workers at their homes and found them in different stages of illness and convalescence. Their pluck will always remain fixed in my mind; although many of them were unable to put into words the sufferings they had gone through, yet not one of them but was eagerly wis.h.i.+ng to be well enough to go back to work. When, as is so common now, women are accused of malingering, I often wish that complainants would accompany me on my investigation of cases of accident or poisoning at the workers' homes, for I know that, like me, these people would return in a humbled frame of mind, recognising courage and endurance under circ.u.mstances which would break many of us. Without these home visits it would have been impossible to gauge the extent and severity of the outbreak of illness.

7. _Hours of Work and Overtime._

_Miss Tracey._--Often we receive complaint of the burden of the long twelve hours' day, and the strain it is to start work at 6 A.M. A well-known man in a Lancas.h.i.+re town was telling me only the other day about how he would wake in the morning to the clatter of the girls' and women's clogs as they went past his house at half-past five in the dark on their way to the mills. He had exceptional opportunity of judging of the effect of the long day's work, and he told me how bonny children known to him lost their colour and their youthful energy in the hard drudgery of this daily toil. How the girls would fall asleep at their work, and how they grew worn and old before their time. We see it for ourselves, and the women tell us about it. Sometimes one feels that one dare not contemplate too closely the life of our working women, it is such a grave reproach. I went to a woman's house to investigate what appeared a simple, almost commonplace, accident. She was a middle-aged, single woman, living alone.

Six weeks before my visit she had fainted at her work, and in falling (she was a hand gas ironer) she had pulled the iron on her hand, that and the metal tube had severely burnt both arm and hand. She was quite incapacitated. She told me she left home at 5.15, walked 2-1/2 miles to the factory, stood the whole day at her work, and at 6, sometimes later, started to walk home again, and then had to prepare her meal, mend and do her housework. This case is only typical of thousands of women workers.

She got her 7s. 6d. insurance money, and that was all. She made no effort to enlist my sympathy, but just stated the facts quite simply. Her case is not so bad as many, for in addition to their own needs, a married woman or a widow with children has also to see to the needs of the family, meals, was.h.i.+ng and mending, and the hundred and one other duties that are required to keep a home going.

In Scotland Miss Vines says that the largest proportion of complaints relates to excessive hours of employment, while on investigation they are found sometimes to be within the legal limits, and "there is no doubt that the working of the full permissible period of employment does sometimes entail an intolerable strain on the workers."

_Miss Meiklejohn._--There has again been in West London a marked decrease in the overtime reported this year. The opinion seems to be that systematic overtime in the season does not really help forward the work, and that the extension should be used, as was intended, in an emergency only. There is a tendency to shorten the ordinary working hours, as well as to work as little overtime as possible.

8. _Employment of Women before and after Childbirth._

There can be little doubt that provision of maternity benefit under the Insurance Act has materially lightened the burden of compliance with the limit of women for four weeks after childbirth before they may return to industrial employment. Complaints of breach of s. 61 have dropped to eight in 1913, and complaints (outside the scope of the section) of employment just before confinement have dropped to one. Even in Dundee, where this evil of heavy employment of child-bearing women has been probably the worst in the kingdom, an improvement of the situation is seen.

_Miss Vines._--I visited a group of twelve jute-mill working mothers within a month after their confinement and found that only one of them had returned to work, nine of the mothers were married and experiencing the good effects of the Insurance Act benefit. The unmarried women were, of course, getting less benefit, and were not so well off; one of them worked as a jute spinner in a jute mill till 6 P.M. on the night her baby was born.

9. _Truck Act._

_Princ.i.p.al._--The ill.u.s.trations sent me of the ma.s.s of work done in 1913 under the modern part of the law relating to truck are too numerous to be reproduced here. Typical instances must be selected from different industrial centres for the main points of (_a_) disciplinary fines, (_b_) deductions or payments for damage, short weight, etc., (_c_) deductions or payments for power, materials or anything supplied in relation to labour of the worker; abuses of the "bonus" system may be connected with (_a_) or (_b_). The main features of these ill.u.s.trations are the poverty of the workers, the rigidity and poverty of mind that controls workers by such methods, and the need for fresh and living ideas to sweep away all these defective, obsolete ways of control.

_Disciplinary Fines._

_Miss Tracey._--I had a long struggle with the occupier of a large laundry in Lancas.h.i.+re over fines for coming late. The work started at 6, and it was said that only three minutes (supposed to be five), were allowed as grace. The weekly wages were phenomenally small, but no work was demanded on Sat.u.r.days unless under exceptional circ.u.mstances. If a girl came to the laundry after the gate was closed (three minutes after 6 A.M.), she was shut out till after breakfast, a fine was inflicted for late attendance, and if this happened more than once, one-sixth of the total wage was deducted for Sat.u.r.day, although no work was required. I found these fines to amount to as much as 1s. 8d. out of a wage of 4s. 6d., and other sums in proportion. This iniquitous custom had been followed for twenty years, and I was a.s.sured that it was a case of "adjustment of wages" and did not come under the Truck Act. However, my view eventually prevailed; certain sums were repaid and the whole system done away with, without bringing the case into Court. In other respects, the laundry was a good one, and no work on Sat.u.r.day is an arrangement that is of great benefit to young and old workers alike. The plan now adopted is that a girl consistently unpunctual during the week will be required to come in on Sat.u.r.day morning to do a few hours' work--this plan has worked so well that no one, when I last visited, had been in the laundry on Sat.u.r.day at all.

_Miss Sloc.o.c.k._--(1) Two girls, aged respectively eighteen and nineteen, employed as cutters, were fined 2 : 14s. and 11s. 2d. for cutting some handkerchiefs badly and damaging the cloth. The deductions were made at the rate of 1s. per week, and at the time of my visit, each worker had already had 10s. 6d. deducted from her wages. Proceedings were considered, but the employer, directly his attention was drawn to the matter, refunded 5s. 6d. to one worker and agreed not to make any further deduction from the other, so that one girl paid 5s. for damage amounting to 11s. 2d. and the other 10s. 6d. for damage amounting to 2 : 14s. These amounts, 11s.

2d. and 2 : 14s. represented exactly the whole loss to the firm caused by the damaged work, and the employer thought that he was acting legally so long as the deductions did not exceed that amount. The fact that the Truck Act specifically draws attention to this limitation is constantly brought to my notice, and used as an excuse for putting the whole cost of any damage on the workers. The average gross weekly wage earned by these workers for the eleven weeks during which deductions were being made was 8s. 1d. and 10s. 10-1/2d. respectively.

(2) Two workers employed as s.h.i.+rt machinists were told they would both be fined 5s. for spoiling two s.h.i.+rts each by mixing the cloth. The difference in the cloth was so slight that I could hardly distinguish it in daylight, and the workers had machined the s.h.i.+rts by artificial light. The contract under which these deductions were made provided that the cost price of the material damaged should not be exceeded; the firm admitted that the cost price of the material was not more than 1s. 6d. each s.h.i.+rt, and a fine of 2s. 6d. from each worker (1s. 3d. for each s.h.i.+rt) was ultimately imposed.

_Miss Escreet._--Many instances of deductions for damage have touched the borderland where non-payment of wages for work done badly approximates to a deduction of payment in respect of bad work. Action in such cases is very difficult--when sums like 5s. 5d. and 3s. are deducted from wages of 10s. 7d. and 13s. 4d. in a weaving shed and metal factory respectively, there is no question that the workers look rightly for the protection of the Truck Acts, which were surely framed to control this very kind of arbitrary handling of hardly earned wage. Enquiry into these cases invariably brings to light other considerations than the mere fact of damaged work. Some managers find it difficult to realise that bad work is bound to be a feature attendant on pressure for great output, especially if the workers are inexperienced and ill-taught, or if the piece-work rates are so low that the workers cannot afford to use care, and are obliged to trust to luck and a lenient "pa.s.ser."

10. _Lenience of Magistrates to Employer._

_Princ.i.p.al._--We have to occasionally reckon with Benches who consider a few s.h.i.+llings' penalty, or even 1d. penalty, sufficient punishment for excessive overtime employment of girls, or with others who are reluctant to convict, or punish with more than cost of proceedings, law-breaking employers who are shown to have been thoroughly instructed in the law they have neglected to obey. It is in my belief an open question whether the tender treatment of the Probation of Offenders Act was ever designed to apply to the case of fully responsible adults officially supplied by abstracts with the knowledge and understanding of an industrial code which is intended to protect the weakest workers.

(_A Leaflet issued from a Trade Union Office_)

-------- & DISTRICT WEAVERS, WINDERS, WARPERS & REELERS' a.s.sOCIATION.

(Branch of the Amalgamated Weavers' a.s.sociation) OFFICES: TEXTILE HALL, --------.

WINDERS AND THE BARBER KNOTTER.[75]

A Few Facts for Non-Union Winders.

Have you ever considered what it costs you through not joining your Trade Union?

Study the following facts:

Many winders have five per cent. deducted each week from their wages for using the "Barber" Knotter.

Five per cent. on 15s. per week is 9d.

9d. per week is 1 17s. 6d. for every 50 weeks you work. If you work with one of these knotters for three years your employer has been paid =more= than the original cost; but they continue to stop the five per cent. and the knotter still belongs to the employer. If you work at a mill ten years and pay five per cent. all the time you cannot take the knotter with you when you leave.

Think about it. You pay for it three or four times over, but it doesn't belong to you. =Oh, no!=

We ask you to pay =5d.= to your Trade Union so that we can =stop your employer from keeping 9d. out of your wages=.

If you would rather pay 9d. to your employers than 5d. to your Trade Union you have =LESS SENSE= than we thought you had.

"But," you say, "we can earn more money with a knotter." Quite true, but you are paid on "=production=," so if you get more money it is only because you turn more work off, and in turning more work off your

Employers get a Greater Production

but they make =YOU= pay for it.

The knotter enables you to piece up at a quicker rate; this saves time. It enables you to make smaller knots, thus making better work. The two combined makes

Quant.i.ty and Quality.

The employers get =both= and make you pay for it.

We say to you that it is no part of your duty to pay for improved machinery. If it is beneficial to the employers to improve any part of any machine they'll do it without consulting you, but we hold that if by doing this they get a greater and better production then they ought to =ADVANCE= your wages and not deduct five per cent. from them.

Think! Think! Think!

View the matter over in your own minds.

Reason the matter from your own point of view.

If you are satisfied with the present system, well, =DON'T GRUMBLE=.