Sweated industry and the minimum wage

CHAPTER I
THE POOREST OF ALL

“Sweating”—General interpretation of the term—Work in the worker’s home—Some special investigations—Characteristics of home work—Match box making—The process—The payment—History of the Jarvis family—Shirt making—Some individual cases—Paper-bag making—Some cases—Some men home workers—Racquet balls—The process—The payment—Health of home workers—The married woman and the single woman as home workers—Brushmaking—Mrs Hogg’s description—Tooth brushes—Other trades and rates of pay—Home work, underpayment, and high priced goods.

The term “sweating,” to which at one time the notion of sub-contract was attached, has gradually come to be applied to almost any method of work under which workers are extremely ill paid or extremely overworked; and the “sweater” means nowadays “the employer who cuts down wages below the level of decent subsistence, works his operatives for excessive hours, or compels them to toil under insanitary conditions.” It is in this wide general sense that the word will be employed in these pages; and the first part of this volume will be devoted to showing how wide-spread is the prevalence of sweating throughout the whole field of British industry.

Probably the most completely wretched workers in our country may be found among those who ply their toil in their own poor homes. It is by no means the case that all home work is sweated; but it is the fact that a good deal of home work, in this country and in others, exists solely because the home worker can be ground down to the lowest stage of misery. As an acute French observer writes:—

“Home work, or at least an important fraction of that industry, is in the odd condition of only surviving on account of its evils. Low pay and long hours of work are among the chief conditions of its existence.”^[1] Into the conditions of women workers in this branch of industry—which, however, is by no means confined to women—the Women’s Industrial Council made an investigation, published in 1897.^[2] Two inquiries were also made by Miss Irwin, in Scotland, on behalf of the Scottish Council for Women’s Trades; and particulars as to the home work of women in Birmingham appear in Women’s Work and Wages.^[3] All these records exhibit much the same features: unremitting toil, a high degree of mechanical speed and accuracy, and at the same time the lowest standard of workmanship that will pass muster; above all, a cruelly heavy burden resting on the shoulders of the woman who tries to be at the same time mother, housekeeper, and bread-winner, and who in return for her endless exertion seldom receives enough even to keep her properly fed, and never enough to satisfy her own very modest standard of comfort.

The investigators of the Women’s Industrial Council visited personally nearly four hundred workers. Perhaps the very poorest trade investigated was matchbox-making, which, for the last fifteen years at least, has occupied some hundreds of workers in East London alone. The women fetch out from the factory or the middlewoman’s, strips of notched wood, packets of coloured paper and sandpaper, and printed wrappers; they carry back large but light bundles of boxes, tied up in packets of two dozen. Inside their rooms the boxes, made and unmade and half-made, cover the floor and fill up the lack of furniture. I have seen a room containing only an old bedstead in the very last stage of dirt and dilapidation, a table, and two deal boxes for seats. The floor and the window-sill were rosy with magenta matchboxes, while everything else, including the boards of the floor, the woodwork of the room and the coverings of the bed, was of the dark grey of ingrained dust and dirt. At first sight it is a pretty enough spectacle to see a matchbox made; one motion of the hands bends into shape the notched frame of the case, another surrounds it with the ready-pasted strip of printed wrapper, which, by long practice, is fitted instantly without a wrinkle, then the sandpaper or the phosphorus-paper, pasted ready beforehand, is applied and pressed on so that it sticks fast. A pretty high average of neatness and finish is demanded by most employers, and readers who will pass their matchboxes in review will seldom find a wrinkle or a loose corner of paper. The finished case is thrown upon the floor; the long narrow strip which is to form the frame of the drawer is laid upon the bright strip of ready-pasted paper, then bent together and joined by an overlapping bit of the paper; the edges of paper below are bent flat, the ready-cut bottom is dropped in and pressed down, and before the fingers are withdrawn they fold over the upper edges of the paper inside the top. Now the drawer, too, is cast on the floor to dry. All this, besides the preliminary pasting of wrapper, coloured paper and sandpaper, had to be done 144 times for 2¼d.; and even this is not all, for every drawer and case have to be fitted together and the packets tied up with hemp. Nor is the work done then, for paste has to be made before it can be used, and boxes, when they are ready, have to be carried to the factory. Let any reader, however deft, however nimble-fingered, consider how many hundred times a day he or she could manage to perform all these minute operations. But practice gives speed, especially when stimulated by the risk of starvation.

The conditions of life secured in return for this continuous and monotonous toil are such as might well make death appear preferable. The poor dwelling—already probably overcrowded—is yet further crowded with matchboxes, a couple of gross of which, in separated pieces, occupy a considerable space. If the weather be at all damp, as English weather often is, even in summer, there must be a fire kept up, or the paste will not dry; and fire, paste, and hemp must all be paid for out of the worker’s pocket. From her working time, too, or from that of her child messenger, must be deducted the time lost in fetching and carrying back work, and, too often, in being kept waiting for it before it is given out. The history of one matchbox-making family visited by a representative of the Women’s Industrial Council may be given in detail, since no single member survives.

The Jarvis household consisted of a father, mother, and nine children. They lived in an alley some fifty yards long and very narrow, entered through a row of posts from a street that runs northward from Whitechapel Road. Mr Booth’s “Poverty” map shows it coloured with the dark blue that signifies “Very poor, casual. Chronic want.” The houses in it, of which there were not many, were and are four-roomed cottages of two floors, and the Jarvis family occupied the upper floor of No. 9. Below them lived a young man with his wife and their baby, his mother, and three sisters; sixteen persons thus inhabiting the four rooms. All these people seem to have been industrious and respectable. Mr Jarvis, who had poor health, worked in the last summer of his life at matchbox-stamping, and earned “sometimes” 16s. a week. His wife worked constantly at matchbox-making, two of the girls nearly all day, and two of the boys out of school hours. The journey to and from the factory took from an hour to an hour and a half. In the beginning of the winter of 1897 the father fell ill, and had to go into the infirmary. The mother and the children remained at home, and the combined earnings of Mrs Jarvis and her four young helpers produced from 10d. to 1s. a day. It was at this time that the investigator of the Women’s Industrial Council paid her visit, and she notes in the brief space for “Remarks”: “This house was very poor and bare.... Family is often nearly starving.”

At about half past six on the morning after Christmas Day—a Sunday morning, when it was freezing hard and when there was a thick fog, the young man who lived on the ground floor awoke and got up to make tea for his wife. He found smoke in the room, and when he opened the door of the room in which his mother and sisters were sleeping, a burst of smoke met him. He succeeded in getting out his own family—in their nightdresses—sent a neighbour to call the fire engine, and tried in vain, as did a next door neighbour, to arouse the Jarvises. The firemen arrived within a very few minutes—three minutes, indeed, from the time of their summons—but the house was already in a blaze, the windows gone and the roof fallen in. The engine could not get through the posts at the entry of the court, but while it was being taken round to the back, a ladder was carried in, and a fireman bravely attempted to enter the burning house. But it was too late; all ten were already dead. All had, it was believed, been suffocated before the first call of their neighbour from below. The children had probably passed out of life without warning, but the mother was found lying on the floor, with her baby of seven months old in her arms, its body so protected by hers as to be scarcely burned at all. The father died next day in the infirmary, without having learned what fate had overtaken his wife and children; and their poor neighbours—for whom the weeks after Christmas are the leanest of the year—raised a subscription to defray the funeral expenses of the eleven, who were buried together.

In all but its tragically sudden close the history of the Jarvis family is the history of scores of East End households. In some there is a husband in intermittent work; in some the mother is widowed; in all the children, if children there are, help; in all the human beings are slaves of the matchbox. The nine years since that December morning have brought no change, unless it be that, impossible though it would have appeared, pay has rather decreased than advanced, and that a recent investigation, not yet completed, seems to reveal a higher proportion of workers in receipt of out-relief.

Such matchbox makers, if they worked at the same rates in the factory during the far shorter hours permitted by the Factory Acts, would earn no less than they do now, for they would no longer waste time in putting together box and drawer—whereby at present some other worker also wastes time in separating them again before they can be filled—and the employer would pay for paste and drying. That, indeed, is really the reason why they are working at home.

But although matchbox-making is among the poorest of trades, there are others but a shade better. The wages of shirtmaking, for instance, are often extremely low, and are yet further reduced by the fact that the home worker provides cotton for sewing. I remember seeing, seventeen years ago, a young deserted wife who was trying to support herself and two young children by making shirts. These were flannel shirts of a fair quality, and were handed to her cut out. She did not sew on buttons nor make button holes; but except for these items made the shirt throughout, by machine, and put in a square of lining at the back of the neck. She was paid 1s. 2d. a dozen, and bought the cotton herself. She could make in a week “five dozen all but one”; for which the payment would be five shillings, eightpence and a fraction of a penny, less the cost of cotton, machine needles, oil, and perhaps hire of machine.

At the Daily News Exhibition of Sweated Industries was to be seen an elderly Scotchwoman cutting and making shirts from the first stitch to the last, who was a singularly intelligent, skilful, and industrious worker. For varying styles of shirts she received from 9½d. to 1s. 9½d. per dozen. “For the shirts paid at 1s. 9½d. per dozen the following work is required:—Make and line yoke and bottom bands, put in four gussets, hem skirts, run and fell side seams, make sleeves and put them in.... The shirts paid at 9d. per dozen require her to hem necks, button-stitch two stud holes, sew on six buttons and clip threads from all seams. The shirts at 1s. per dozen have two rows of feather stitching, six button holes, eight buttons, four seams bridged and eight fastenings made.”^[4]

The better sorts of these shirts were such as are worn, not by poor, but by well-to-do purchasers.

“Paper-bag making,” says the Factory Inspectors’ Report for 1905, “is an industry largely carried on in homes in Glasgow, and no trade is more disturbing to the home. The paste seems to find its way everywhere, and many more things than the bags are found firmly pasted together. I visited two women, who, working usually in workshops, were, during the enforced period of absence owing to the birth of a child, given employment as outworkers. Nothing could exceed the misery and squalor amongst which the work was done. In both cases the workroom was also the living room and bedroom, and the whole of the available furniture, including the bed, was covered with damp bags, some hundreds of which had to be removed in one home before I could be shown the baby. The surroundings were unpleasant ones for making bags destined to hold pastry.” (p. 322.) Of another woman it is reported that “she personally took out work until the day before her child’s birth, and found the load of bags which had to be carried downstairs and upstairs very heavy and tiring. This work is poorly paid. Bags, by no means of the smallest size, are made for 3d. to 5d. a thousand, so that it is indeed a heavy weight which has to be carried for the daily shilling.” (p. 320.)

Although the cases quoted hitherto are those of women, and although the very worst instances of underpayment invariably occur among women, it must not be supposed that all home workers are women. In the nail and chain making districts many men as well as women work at forges in their own backyards; and even in London there is quite a small population of home working tailors, shoemakers, and cabinetmakers, to say nothing of men who make toys and trifles of various sorts for hawking in the streets.

In one afternoon last summer I was taken to visit some men working in their own homes, all within a very short distance. Two were toy makers, two manufactured pipes, and another cages for parrots; one was a shoemaker, and the last was the most skilled handweaver in London. One toy maker was engaged upon wooden hoops with handles and beaded spokes, for South Africa. He also made wooden engines, finding all the materials, iron wheels included, and for these he was paid 22s. a gross. The selling price is sixpence each. In his workshop, too, were to be seen attractive little waggons with sacks in them; and horses of that archaic type which has a barrel body, straight legs, and harness of red and blue paper. The other toy maker was making little go-carts adapted to the use of good-sized dolls. All the material was found by the maker, and the price received by him varied from 3s. 3d. to 6s. 6d. a dozen, according to size. Here again iron wheels had to be provided. In both these cases the wife and some other member of the family helped. The pipes were roughly shaped by hand, then pressed in a mould, the seam scraped smooth, and the pipes stacked in great clay pans and fired in an oven. They are not made to order, but sold by the maker to private customers—generally publicans—at 2s. 6d. or 3s. a gross. The cage maker, a consumptive man, transforms bands of tin and thick wires into domed cages, with a speed and dexterity amazing to the beholder. I have mislaid my note of the prices paid for this skilful work, but I know that they were horribly low. The elderly shoemaker and his wife—interesting, intelligent people—were full of family cares and of curious industrial reminiscences. They are now on a dry bank, as it were, a foot or two above the deep waters of hopeless struggle, in which the Jarvises, their neighbours, were immersed. The weaver was a survivor from another period, and a child of another race. Face and name alike proclaim him a descendant of the Huguenots; and not only is he a weaver of silk, but also one of the very, very few hand weavers of velvet still left in our country. The coronation robe of King Edward—perhaps the finest velvet ever woven, was his handiwork.

Moreover, a little remnant is still left of the old silk-weaving trade that came to Spitalfields and Bethnal Green when Louis XIV. was so ill advised as to revoke the Edict of Nantes. Instances of man and wife working at home together appear in the Report of the Factory Inspectors. “Husband and wife, with two children, occupy one room only. The wife weaves, while her husband is occupied in ‘finishing’ canvas boots in the same room.” “Husband, wife, and six children occupy the workroom (which contains two looms) and an attic.” “In the weaving room are three low beds under the looms, in which three adults sleep. They cannot sit upright in bed, as they knock against and injure the warp.” (p. 322.)

Racquet balls are articles bought mainly by persons in prosperous circumstances, few of whom would desire that women engaged in making their tools of play should receive less than a living wage. Yet the rates of pay are such that probably no coverer of racquet balls ever subsisted without aid from other sources. The cores or centres of these balls are made of shreds of rag, much compressed, and covered with strands of wool. These are prepared in the factory, but the covering is done by women working at home. The coverer receives a gross of cores, together with a gross of squares of white leather and a skein or skeins of a special thread. The squares of leather must be damped between wet cloths. Laying one of these damp squares on her left palm, the worker places upon it the core, “pulls the skin tightly over it, pares off with a pair of sharp scissors any superfluous leather, and sews together with neat regular stitches the edges at their meeting-places. While still damp the ball must be rolled, so as to smooth down any projection of the seam. This rolling is best effected between two slabs of marble, the upper one of which need be only a little larger than the ball. Considerable pressure is necessary, but in the hands of a practised worker the process is a quick one. These slabs of marble are not provided by the employer, and many women roll their balls between two plates; to do this takes rather longer, because the plate will not bear so much pressure as the slab. The scissors also have to be provided and kept sharp by the worker.” For covering a gross of the smallest sized balls (sold retail at 2d. or 3d.), the usual payment is 2s. per gross; but there is one prosperous employer who still pays only 1s. 10d. Working steadily for eleven to twelve hours a day, a superior young woman known to me who covered balls before her marriage used to earn about 5s. a week. She was quick and skilful, but obviously ill-nourished, and an accidental sprain, from which a girl in good health would quickly have recovered, developed in her case into an ulcer, in consequence, said the doctor who saw her, of her anæmic condition.

Ill-health, indeed, is the chronic state of the woman home worker. She misses that regular daily journey to and from her work-place which ensures to the factory worker at least a daily modicum of air and exercise; and she misses also that element of changed scene and varied human intercourse which makes for health and happiness. If she depends upon her own exertions she will inevitably be ill fed and ill clothed; and this is probably one reason for the fact, noted both by the investigators of the Women’s Industrial Council and by Miss Irwin, that the woman who is self-supported often earns less, even at the same rates of pay, than the woman who is comfortably married. The half-starved and apathetic human creature cannot maintain a high output of work; and even the out-relief which is so frequent a factor in the income of the widowed or single home worker, seldom suffices to keep her in more than a half-starved condition. Her work grows, like herself, poorer and poorer; and the employer thereupon declares that it is worth no more than its poor price. From a national point of view it would pay better to save the human machine from falling into that state of disrepair wherein it ceases to be profitable.

Tooth brushes, again, are articles purchased by the wealthy even more frequently than by the poor, and so are household brushes of all kinds. Of brushmaking an account was written in 1897 by the late Mrs Hogg,^[5] and being still applicable, was printed in the Handbook of the Sweated Industries Exhibition. “The brushes are given out in dozens, ready bored, and the worker supplied with fibre or bristles, as the case may be. Their work consists in selecting the little bundles of bristles from the heap, fastening them securely in the centre with wire, and then, with a sharp pull against the edge of the table, drawing them through the hole. They are kept in position by a wire at the back of the brush, and each row of bristles is trimmed with a large pair of shears fastened to a table-vice. The fingers, though protected by a leather shield, are often badly cut with the slipping of the wire, and the constant jerk of the drawing causes a strain to the chest. All the women complain of this. More serious accidents occasionally happen from the shears, which are hard to manipulate, and often beyond the strength of these exhausted, underfed workers. Materials, with the exception of lamp-black for painting the backs of the brushes, are provided by the shop. As lamp-black costs something, and soot can be had for nothing, a concoction of soot and water boiled is often used as a substitute for the more expensive pigment. But the shears are a serious outlay, costing from 18s. to £1, and needing constant sharpening. Many of the drawers, never having been in possession of the capital to buy them, or being forced by hunger to ‘put them away,’ are obliged to get their trimming done at the shop, at the cost of terrible waste of time and of iniquitous and capricious deductions from the price given for the work. Deductions are also made for short returns of fibre or bristle sweepings, where these have to be returned to the shop. The material is weighed out and weighed in. It is calculated that if the material weighed so much, the clippings or sweepings ought to weigh so much; but the worker is never told how much, and has no means of checking the calculation; yet if the amount is short, she either ‘gets the sack’ or has to pay for the deficiency. The rate of payment varies with the number of holes and the quality of brush, bristles always commanding a higher rate than fibre. Coarse fibre scrubbing brushes fetch anything from 3½d. to 1s. a dozen. One woman will make brushes with 145 holes for 10d., while another will get 9d. for brushes with only 100. There is no uniformity of payment; it all depends, they tell you, on the shop you work for.... The fibre drawers rarely make more than 7s. to 8s. for a week of seventy-two hours. Taking into consideration the various lets and hindrances to which they are subject, and the time wasted at the shop, 6s. would fairly represent the average during the season when it suits the masters to keep them regularly employed.... It is only by seeing the homes of the brush drawers that it is possible to realise all that is implied in the carrying on of a trade and of the travesty of family life in one single room, or the misery of these lives of endless toil, where the tragedy which endures on is so much more pitiful than the tragedy to which death brings rest from labour.”

Tooth brushes, of which it is estimated that a worker can make four in an hour, are paid at the rate of 4d. a dozen, and best hair brushes at 2d. each, or ¾d. for 100 holes.

These examples might be multiplied a hundredfold. Blouse makers (receiving from 1s. 6d. a dozen), underclothing makers, trouser finishers (from 2½d. a pair), sack makers (at 8d. or 9d. for a “turn” of 12, 15, or 18), makers of boot boxes (at 1s. 4d. a gross), of soap boxes and tack boxes, makers of baby clothes and of children’s shoes, finishers of woollen gloves, tassel makers, umbrella coverers, artificial flower makers, forgers of chains and strikers of nails, carders of buttons (at 3s. per 100 gross), and of hooks and eyes (at 8d. and 9d. per 24 gross), cappers of safety pins (at 1s. 6d. per 100 gross)—all of these are busy among us hour after hour, and day after day, for seven days a week, and are receiving in return a remuneration ranging from ¾d. to 2d. per hour. Their work, in some shape or form, comes into every house in this country. Our potatoes and our flour are carried in sacks, although not perhaps to our doors; our eggs are sold to us in cardboard boxes; our garments are fastened with buttons or with hooks—or perchance with safety pins; the gentleman’s collar and tie and the lady’s waist belt may probably be the handiwork of some half-starved home worker whose life is being shortened by her poverty. Only ignorance can flatter itself—as indeed ignorance is fond of doing—with the idea that none but cheap goods or cheap shops are tainted with sweating. Any person inclining to that opinion is advised to hang about the back doors of leading shops soon after they open in the morning, or just before they close at night, and to observe the furtive figures that pass in and out with bundles. The taint is everywhere; there is no dweller in this country, however well-intentioned, who can declare with certainty that he has no share in this oppression of the poorest and most helpless among his compatriots.

Wherein factory workers are better off than home workers—Life on five to ten shillings a week—Health—Ancillary processes—Paper bags—Packers—Case of a cocoa filler—Of a cartridge filler—Jam fillers—Pay sheets of confectionery workers—Observations of an uninstructed observer—Slack times—Long hours—Some cases—“Emergency” processes—Discomforts—Some cases—Danger of fire—Lead poisoning—Instances—Washing appliances—Extremes of temperature—Fines and deductions—Divergent views of two employers upon fines—“Earned too much”—Summary.

The poorer class of workers in factories and workshops are financially little better off—if, indeed, better off at all—than the poorer sort of home workers; but they have some other advantages. Their hours and conditions are in some degree regulated, and at least some degree of change and variety enters into their lives. But for them too existence is a hard battle. Upon a wage of from five to ten shillings a week life cannot but be narrow and stinted. Food, clothing, and lodging must all be of the poorest; an omnibus fare, a halfpenny newspaper, a penny stamp are luxuries in which only the thriftless indulge; and good health, as the middle class man or woman knows it, is a treasure seldom enjoyed. There is, indeed, no fact more painfully forced upon the middle class observer who becomes intimately acquainted with ill paid workers than the frequency with which they succumb to ailments that would be regarded in the observer’s own circle as trifling. Many girls injure themselves permanently by going to work when they are actually seriously ill. To stay away means loss of pay and possibly loss of employment, so they hold out to the last gasp.

Many of the worst paid workers are engaged in various processes that facilitate buying and selling, rather than in actual manufacture. The paper-bags into which a civil shop assistant so obligingly pops our small purchases are given nominally without charge to us, and are bought in very large quantities at a very low rate by the shopkeeper, their real cost being paid in flesh and blood by the women who make them. Some of these women, as appears in the previous chapter, work at home; some, possibly, in well-appointed workshops, but many, as the women factory inspectors truly observe, “in the poorest kind of workshop, badly lighted, ventilated, and heated. To these conditions, no doubt, the weak, inflamed eyes so often seen among the workers are due, at least partly. The workers themselves attribute it to the strain involved in counting over the bags.”^[6] This remark shows us that the simple and time-saving plan of weighing instead of counting (which is employed for wares so valuable as those of the Royal Mint) is not in use in paper-bag manufactories. Packing of various kinds occupies vast numbers of women and girls, most of whom are paid at low rates, by the dozen or the gross, and some of whom attain a celerity almost incredible. No foreman in the world can drive so hard as her own low wage drives the piece worker who has to support herself and, often enough, to help to support relatives. The most worn-out girl whom I remember ever to have seen was engaged upon no harder task than the packing of cocoa. My attention was called to her, in a room full of girls, by her ghastly appearance. She may have been eighteen or nineteen; she was absolutely colourless, and although there was no sign about her of any specific illness, seemed exhausted literally almost to death. She sat day after day pouring powdered cocoa into ready made square paper packets, of which she then folded down the tops and pasted on the wrappers. She received a halfpenny for every gross. In the week previous to that in which I saw her she had earned 7s. Each shilling represented 24 gross of packets; she had therefore filled, folded and pasted, in the week, 188 gross, or 21,792 packets. Her mother, who was present, said that the drive was killing her and that she must leave. The cocoa was of a brand well known in its day and sold in good shops, but the firm has now, I believe, disappeared. Would that its methods had disappeared with it.^[7]

Tea packers and jam fillers often receive wages barely higher. Girls whom I have known personally have been paid at the following rates for filling pots with boiling jam or marmalade: 11 lb. pots (in four trays of thirty-six pots), 2d. per gross; 2 lb. jars (in six trays of twenty-four jars) or 3 lb. jars (in nine trays of sixteen jars), 2½d. per gross. Two girls worked together, and my informant reckoned that the pair could fill a gross of the largest size in about half an hour. This would bring the wages of each to the comparatively magnificent figure of 2½d. an hour, or over 11s. a week. In some factories these heavy trays have to be lifted and stacked by the girls, the weight of the jars being added to that of the contents.

I was fortunate enough, some years ago, to obtain possession of a number of “pay sheets” showing the wages received in two consecutive weeks by girls employed in a large London confectionery factory. For the first week I had 107 sheets; for the second 98. Five sheets in the first week and ten in the second were left out of my reckoning as probably not representing a full week’s work; in each of these the total was below 4s. The highest net payment (there was a deduction for a compulsory sick club) was, in the first week, 15s. 9½d.; in the second, 16s. 1½d. The girls who received these wages (both well known to me) were superior young women of from 22 to 25 years old; both helped to support widowed mothers with younger children. There were, in the first week, 20 girls, and in the second 24, who received from 10s. to 16s., and most of them came much nearer to the lower than to the higher figure. In the first week 78, and in the second 64, received from 5s. to 10s. (57 out of the 78, and 49 out of the 64 earning less than 8s.); while in the first week 9, and in the second week 10, received from 4s. to 5s. Two-thirds, therefore, of the whole 190 sheets (excluding 15, which showed less than 4s. received) testified to a net weekly wage of less than 10s.—the average being a fraction over 7s. 6d. a week. Yet so easy is it for the inexperienced enquirer to be misled that a lady actually published an account of this very factory, in which she assured the public of wages “rising steadily to 18s. a week,” and declared that a girl, “if she ultimately becomes a piece worker, may make as much as 24s. to 25s. a week.” This lady was evidently not aware that piece work is not a state “ultimately attained,” but the usual system throughout the establishment. Nearly all—probably, indeed, every one—of those 190 pay sheets represented piece work wages. Upon the basis of this illusory wage of 24s. and upwards the writer proceeded to compare the payment of confectionery “hands” with that of High School mistresses, forgetting, however, to compare the hours of a school with those of a factory, or to deduct those slack seasons to which the confectionery trade is so sadly liable. A High School mistress, moreover, works forty weeks in the year and is paid by the year; a confectionery worker often works for less than forty weeks in the year, and since she is paid by the week her blank weeks are blank to her exchequer, so that even if she did earn £1 a week (which she does not) she would not earn £52 a year. Seasonality—the word is so useful that it must be admitted—though it falls one degree less heavily upon the factory worker than upon the worker at home, is to her too a terrible evil. The long “slack times” of the West-End tailor or tailoress reduce a wage that looks handsome in a pay sheet of May or June to a very meagre annual income; and many a West End dressmaker who has worked overtime—as often as not without extra pay—through the long hot evenings of the London season finds herself, in January or February, shivering, without work or pay, beside her own empty grate.

Long hours, which are in effect one form of low wages, have been checked by the Factory Acts, but not yet ended. The inspector for West London writes: “The Jew tailor of West London has an idea that seven days a week is not too long to work his hands.”^[8]

From Birmingham a case is reported of a Christmas card maker, who had already been cautioned for keeping “female young persons,” i.e. girls under eighteen, at work till 9 of an evening. He was found to be keeping two women and a girl at work till 6.15 on Saturday, a day on which work should, by law, end early, and was said to be keeping his hands at work on Sundays also—a privilege which the law allows only to the laundry proprietor. “On the succeeding Sunday,” writes the inspector, “the place was inspected, but with difficulty. It was only after considerable delay that admittance was obtained, and then, although the place had every appearance that work had been going on, no females were found. The upper parts of the premises were in use as residence, and I had reason to think that women had been sent up there upon my arrival, but the occupier would not allow me to go up. It has subsequently been admitted that eight women and two female young persons were at work and hidden as suspected.”^[9]

That such cases would be not the exception, but the rule, if there were no legal prohibition and no fear of fines, may be judged by the state of things actually existing in laundries, where, although the law allows the monstrous stretch of 14 consecutive hours of work, the permitted hours are frequently exceeded. The report of the lady inspectors contains a significant paragraph on this subject. “The hours worked in London laundries by women and girls,” says Miss Vines, “seem to be increasing in length, and to be more excessive than ever.... The firm I prosecuted in February had employed several young women, one of them only 17 years of age, for 28 consecutive hours, from 8 A.M. on Friday till 12, midday, on Saturday; while their hours, including meals on the previous days of the week, had numbered 14 on Thursday, 12 on Wednesday and Tuesday, and 11 on Monday. The 28 hours’ period included 2½ hours’ interval during the night, when the girls were permitted to lie on the floor of the calendar-room with their coats for pillows ‘for a rest!’ I prosecuted the other firm twice in June, and on the second occasion it was proved at the hearing of the case that an ironer had been employed for 37 consecutive hours, including meal times and short breaks, and another, an ironer and calendar worker, 32½ hours ... 14 days previously I had taken proceedings against the same firm.... It was then proved that, in one week, a young packer had been employed by them, exclusive of meal hours and absence of work, for 73½ hours; and two girls, aged respectively 16 and 17, for 68½ hours.”^[10]

Very similar results ensue in the jam-making industry, where, on the pretext of emergency, the law permits the working of prolonged hours. “In more than one case,” writes the inspector, “I have found emergency created by the simple expedient of allowing fruit to lie untouched at the factory till the close of the normal working day, when workers from all departments were turned on to it.”^[11]

It must be remembered that, in the case of workers paid by the day, as is usual in dressmaking establishments, and in some departments of laundry work, there is frequently no extra payment made for overtime. I have indeed heard a West-End working woman declare that overtime would cease if the law made payment for it compulsory; and although that assertion was much too sweeping, the experience of strong trade unions shows that when employers are compelled to pay at a higher rate for overtime, that necessity for overtime of which so much is heard whenever the Factory Acts are under discussion, does diminish in a very remarkable manner. Meanwhile, the law does its best to make undue hours of work costly by prosecuting persistent offenders. In 1905 the fines inflicted in the North-Western district of England alone, for illegal overtime, amounted to no less than £728, 4s. 0d., and the accompanying costs to £627, 16s. 0d.; and this in spite of the fact that magistrates in certain localities are decidedly hostile, and inflict derisory penalties. When we further reflect that the North-Western district contains both a large number of highly-organised workers, ready to complain of any breach of law, and also a large number of exceedingly enlightened employers who believe long hours to be inimical to their own true interests, we may fairly infer that there are other districts in which things are considerably worse, and in which the inspectors, zealous though they are, fail to discover all or nearly all the offenders.

Sanitary conditions are still sometimes far from satisfactory, although greatly bettered of late years. There is perhaps no point upon which the influence of women inspectors has been more beneficial. A case is reported to me, by a most trustworthy witness, of a box factory, where “women and men worked together in a room in which was the lavatory, with seldom a flush of water.” The same witness reports another case, in a rope factory employing both men and women, the details of which are so repulsive, that it is impossible I should print them.

Nor are long hours and underpayment the only ills from which factory workers suffer. In spite of laws and of inspectors, dangers and discomforts are still prevalent in many workplaces—especially in those where workers are ill paid. Many instances may be gathered from a single year’s Report of the factory inspectors; and of course the inspectors neither discover all the instances nor print all that they discover. Looking into the Report for 1905, we find, on p. 13, an account from Southampton of the tea-room “provided by a high class dressmaker employing about 60 females.” This apartment was “underground with concrete floor and walls and the ceiling only 6 feet high, with no ventilation and no natural light.” Not a few women employed by West-End firms may be found at the present day, not only eating, but also working, by artificial light, in basement-rooms that are little better than cellars, or in cramped upper rooms, from which there would be little hope of escape in case of fire. The law, in its wisdom, does not require a special fire escape except in places where as many as 40 persons are at work; and certain frugal employers are careful, therefore, to employ but 39. “In one such workshop,” writes Miss Squire, “the condition of the 39 women working there seemed one of grave danger; it is a large new rag sorting warehouse, so filled with bales that only narrow passages down which one person can pass are left. On the second floor the women rag sorters work, their tables ranged along a sort of gallery ... the centre of the building being open for the hoisting of bales; the only means of exit is a narrow wooden staircase with open treads, at one end of the spacious floor. Were a fire to break out below, all exit would be cut off very quickly. In this case the local authority reply they have no bye-laws and can do nothing, as less than 40 persons are employed.”^[12]

Another case is reported on the same page, in which a building originally meant for offices only has been turned into a factory and warehouses. “There is no second staircase and no exit on to the roof, which is higher than the adjoining houses.... The third floor is occupied ... by a blouse manufacturer employing between 50 and 60 women. On the top floor there is a lace warehouse where 15 women are employed finishing laces and veilings; a large amount of light inflammable material is stored on both these floors; there are no fire buckets or any means kept for extinguishing fire.” Miss Squire sent a notice to the Corporation about this building; and the Corporation replied that it “did not see its way to making any recommendations owing to the impossibility of providing an outside staircase.” Miss Squire and the City Surveyor in vain pointed out how an exit could be provided; six months later nothing had been done, and, on again approaching the Corporation, she found that authority “of opinion that no additional means of escape can be provided at a reasonable expense.” “The chief officer of the Fire Brigade told me he has himself reported this building as unsafe to the Corporation years ago in vain.” From Bristol, Mr Pendock reports a case of a clothing factory “employing about 50 females.” “The work is carried on, on the third and fourth floors, and these are reached by means of an internal wooden, winding, narrow staircase, always imperfectly lighted on account of its position.” The local authority demanded an additional staircase. The owner, on the strength of a decision in a previous appeal case, did nothing. Immediately afterwards the premises were considerably damaged by fire which, fortunately, took place in the meal time when all the workers had left the factory. Since then work has been resumed under unimproved conditions.^[13]

None of these are cases of ignorance, or even of carelessness; they are instances of the deliberate disregard, for money’s sake, of danger to the lives of fellow creatures.

Scarcely less blameworthy is the criminal negligence shown by some employers in carrying out those precautions prescribed by the law, where, as in the potteries, there is a risk of lead poisoning. Thus, Miss Vines remarks “how frequently one finds the necessary supply of soap, nail brushes, and towels missing. Yet, when giving instructions as to such irregularities, one is almost invariably met with an attitude of non possumus. Over and over again managers defend themselves by the assertion that these things, although provided by them, have been and are constantly stolen by the workers.” She goes on to quote the observation of a predecessor: “It is impossible not to believe that if expensive and highly-finished ware disappeared from the factory with the same speed and to the same degree that soap, nail brushes, and towels disappear, steps would be taken to discover the offenders.”^[14]

In one instance a girl of nineteen, after no more than six weeks’ employment at pottery dipping, suffered “acute pains, with weakness and subsequent unconsciousness for several hours.” On the premises where she had worked, the inspector found 17 persons engaged in dangerous processes. “Notwithstanding, in the lavatory for their use, which was extremely dirty, there was neither towel nor nail brush, and not more than one tiny piece of soap. Eventually one small and very dirty towel was discovered; this, it was stated, had been taken away by the foreman to dry.... There was not a single clean towel in stock or in reserve on the premises, and when I questioned the workers it appeared that this condition of affairs was normal.”^[15]

Even where no risk of poison occurs, the provision of decent washing appliances would, to most of us, appear an essential part of a civilised factory. Many employers, however, hold a different opinion. The authors of “Women’s Work and Wages” write that “regulations against washing are still found in many factories where excellence of work does not depend upon cleanliness of handling. Painters and japanners are generally provided with turpentine, etc., but the rank and file are fortunate if they can get a bucket at the sink, and there do exist places where there is a fine of 6d. for washing.”

I remember seeing girls, to the number of 50 or more, packing tea in a large room where an old and grubby sink with one wash bowl and one towel formed the sole provision for washing. Access to this room was gained by one wooden ladder-stair. Yet the manager who exhibited this place to a group of visitors was not only satisfied, but actually boastful. The personal attention of the head of the firm was called to these defects, and I am happy to say both of them have now been remedied.

The discomfort formerly undergone in many work-rooms during winter was extreme. Until the law required the maintenance of “a reasonable temperature” (generally interpreted by inspectors as 60 degrees Fahrenheit), a very large proportion of women who worked for West End dressmakers did so in rooms absolutely unwarmed, or warmed only by the gas jets meant for lighting the room. I knew of a shirt factory in East London, which was a wooden edifice erected in a back yard and entirely unprovided with any means of warming, and have known women who worked there during the bitterest days of a particularly cold winter.

On the other hand, some processes of manufacture are generally carried on in overheated workplaces. “The temperature in starch drying stoves,” says one inspector, “is the most consistently excessive I have found.... The manager of one starch works is of opinion that women stand the heat better than men do, but says those whom he employs are all hard drinkers; no temperate woman will stay.^[16]

Some processes also of lacemaking and of cotton spinning are facilitated by damp heat, and it can hardly be doubted that, but for the constant vigilance, both of the organised workers and of the inspectors, there would be still, as there were before the law intervened, many working places in which such processes would be carried on without proper ventilation or proper precautions for the health of the workers. Many people now living have seen women and girls come out of a weaving shed that has been kept full of steam, their clothes wet through and presently frozen stiff upon them as they walked home through the cold air.

The plan of reducing wages by fines and deductions is one dear to the low type of employer; and as long as workers remain ill paid and desperately afraid of being out of work, the evil will probably persist to some extent, in spite of increasingly stringent Truck Acts. There are many factories and work-rooms in which silence is more or less rigidly enforced, and fines are inflicted for talking or laughing. In many, again, some part of the material used is charged to the worker. I had in my hands, some years ago, 14 or 15 wage books belonging to skilled machinists employed in a provincial stay factory and paid by the piece. The following are the figures of 3 books for 3 successive weeks. A represents the highest, and C the lowest sums received.

These deductions represent mainly material—cotton, and tools—machine needles. Some employers oblige their workers to pay hire for the sewing machines used in the factory, and where these machines are worked by steam, gas, or electricity, a charge varying from a halfpenny to sixpence “for power” is not unusual. I have known instances in which the rent of a factory has been partly—perhaps wholly—defrayed by a charge upon the workers, who had to pay so much a week for their places in it. “Cleaning, as well as rent, is sometimes met in the same way by a weekly charge of 2d. or 3d. for cleaning the workroom. I am assured that one ingenious employer pays a man 15s. a week for performing this duty in addition to others, while the payments made by the women amount to 30s. In a certain provincial town in a factory which I visited, there was no apparent method of lighting. I was informed that in the winter the women brought their own candles. A local competitor, more acute, provides gas, and charges each girl 3d. a week throughout the dark seasons, at which rate, according to his fellow townsmen, he must make a profit on his gas bill.”^[17]

In a large box factory deductions were made for glue, for gas to heat the glue, for string to tie the boxes together, and for work books—amounting in all to 1s. 6d. per week.

A charge for hot water to make tea is not unusual, and is sometimes enforced on all workers, the resulting sum, where many are employed, being ridiculously in excess of the cost of the boiling water. One young woman known to me paid this tax (in her case 2d. a week) for six weeks, and never once used the hot water.

Deductions for spoiled work or alleged damage are those which seem the most to arouse heartburnings and that general feeling of grudge which it is so greatly the interest of an employer to avoid arousing. Where, for instance, glass or earthenware jars are filled with boiling preserve, one or two jars in every few hundreds are sure to crack. “The breakage will probably come to light under the hands of the girl who washes the jar and sticks on the label, and in some factories she is made to pay.” I have known a girl charged the full selling price for a seven-pound jar from which the bits of glass were afterwards picked out and the preserve reboiled and sold. Many instances of a similar kind from other trades might be quoted if space allowed.

Other deductions are in the nature of punishment; and of these it may safely be said that the master or foreman who cannot keep order without the use of them does not know his business. One of the best employers and kindest men whom I ever knew said, indignantly, when I asked him whether there were fines in his factory: “If I could not run a factory without fines I should be ashamed to run one at all.” My real reason for the question was that an employer of a very different stamp had within the same week defended himself against an accusation of excessive fining by a public declaration that unless he inflicted fines his factory would be a “bear-garden.” The contrast between these two men—carrying on industries not at all dissimilar—between the two factories, and, above all, between the manners, morals, and appearance of the young women working for the one and of those working for the other, formed one of the most instructive object lessons which it has ever been my lot to receive.

Deductions for lateness are sometimes made a source of profit to the employer. Men who pay a penny for an hour’s work will sometimes deduct threepence for an hour’s absence; and piece workers—who, of course, lose pay for the time of absence, are sometimes made to pay in addition. I have seen the wage-book of an umbrella-coverer, which showed that in the course of two years she had paid in fines (to the same employer) nearly £6, chiefly for coming late in the morning. The case was particularly flagrant, because she was a piece worker, and was not using a power machine, and because work in this workshop was so irregular that when she did come early she was often kept sitting unoccupied, while, if orders happened to come in of an afternoon, the women were kept late to fulfil them. Thus, although there might be no work for them, they were fined if they came late; being piece workers, they were paid nothing for the time spent in waiting for work, and they were paid at no extra rate for work done late.

Worst of all, there are factories—though I hope but very few—in which piece workers, when they have succeeded in making up a total slightly better than usual, are liable to have the surplus deducted. I have in my mind a factory where the foreman frequently deducted 1s. or 2s. from a week’s payment, on the ground that the girl who should have received it had “earned too much.”

To sum up then: workers in factories and workshops, although they are, on the whole, better off in respect of hours, and although their lives cannot at the worst, be so horribly monotonous as can that of the home worker, are frequently exceedingly ill paid, even in trades demanding considerable skill: not a few of them are employed in places that are uncomfortable, unwholesome, or even actually dangerous; their poor wages are apt to be docked by irritating fines and deductions; they have no choice as to the companions with whom they spend their days, and they share with the home worker the constant dread of being left without employment and without means to pay for lodging or food. These are the conditions in which hundreds and hundreds of young women in this country are earning what it is customary to call “their living,” although all of us are aware that no young woman can really live, in a large town, the life of a civilised human being upon ten shillings a week or less.