Women's Work

§ Linen. Dr. Purdon’s Report.—The conditions in the linen trade, the head-quarters of which are at Belfast, are similar in kind to those in the cotton trade. Careful inquiries were made nearly twenty years ago by the late Dr. Purdon, certifying surgeon of Belfast, who has devoted many years of his life to this investigation. He states that—

§ Deaths of Belfast Mill Workers.—Matters are substantially the same to-day in Belfast as they were when Dr. Purdon wrote. The factories were under the Act then as they are now, and, with the exception of raising the age of half-timers and fixing the limit of a month after confinement as the period during which a mother may not be legally employed—amendments which apply to every branch of textile and non-textile industries—no changes of any importance have been made. I am enabled to give here the mortality returns extracted from the Belfast register of the deaths of mill-workers during the year 1891, and they will show in the most convincing manner the effect of this occupation upon health.

Mortality among Women.—It will be seen that of 413 women who died in the course of the year, no fewer than 210, or more than one-half, died of phthisis, and 125 of these were under the age of 25. Again, there were 71 women who died from respiratory diseases, so that we get a grand total of 281 deaths amongst the women from pulmonary disorders. How closely this terrible state of things is connected with the nature of the occupation may be judged from the following extract from the report of the Medical Officer of Health for Belfast for the year 1892. Commenting on the fact that of the 6,537 deaths registered during 1891, 1,017 were attributable to phthisis, and 1,784 to disease of the respiratory organs, Dr. Whitaker remarks:

The sickness in the linen and cotton trade is attributable to various causes. There is the dust which rises from the material; the heat and watery vapour; the dust from the Cornish clay which is used in the weaving departments for sizing; the long standing; and the stooping position which has to be maintained in some departments. And if we add to these the strain on the attention throughout all the hours of monotonous work, the great noise, and the bad air poisoned with over-crowding and poor ventilation, we shall agree with Dr. Arlidge that we have cause enough here for disease. Accidents abound in these great mills, where the machines in rapid motion are placed so closely together that the workers are constantly in danger from loose gearing, and flying shuttles from the looms in motion often cause the loss of an eye and sometimes even of life.

Shoddy, Silk, and Lace.—The manufacture of shoddy is attended by the production of an amount of dust that is injurious to the operatives’ health, and the effluvium given off from the rags is another excessively trying feature of this trade. Those who are engaged in it almost invariably have to pass through the ordeal of what is known as “shoddy fever,” a disagreeable though not dangerous illness, the symptoms of which usually last for at least a week, and disappear as the worker grows accustomed to the presence of the dust. Silk weaving is on the whole the healthiest of the textile trades, though here we find a process, which is resorted to also in some departments of the cotton trade and largely in lace-making, which is most prejudicial to health; it is known as “gassing.” This process consists in passing the threads very rapidly through gas jets, the object being to burn away any slight irregularities. Medical evidence shews strongly the evils which befall the operatives who have to spend their time in an atmosphere highly charged with the products of gas combustion, full of fluff and exceedingly hot. The operatives in the lace trade, which is carried on mostly at Nottingham, suffer in an especial degree from “gassing.” There is not sufficient space at my disposal to go into the numerous family of trades in which the worker is liable to suffer from dust given off; but amongst them are carpet-making, hair-dressing, the flock trade, and those departments of the upholstery trade in which fluffy material is used. Unfortunately the drawback noticed by Dr. Arlidge of the lack of precise medical evidence in the cotton trade exists also in these industries.

The Potteries.—So far we have been considering dust of vegetable origin; but this forms only one group, although it is with this group especially that women are concerned. In the pottery trade, however, the workers are exposed to mineral dust, and in this trade women are very largely engaged. Experts differ somewhat in their view of the relative injury caused by organic and inorganic dusts, though it seems to be agreed that where the material is chiefly of a gelatinous character the harm done is comparatively trivial. But we need not examine closely into these matters, for the statistics of death and disease furnished by the Pottery District are conclusive as to the injuries inflicted. To a lesser degree women are employed in the subsidiary branches of the Sheffield trades, but in this case it is the men who bear the full brunt of the injury. Men and women work in the pottery trade, and the dust given off is of such a fine character that it finds its way into every corner of the factory. Thus women who may not be immediately employed in the finishing processes which are attended to by men, may still receive their share of the fine white penetrating powder. But in certain parts of the work, and those the most dangerous, women only are employed. Such are the china-scourers and the towers. It is the towers’ business to put a smooth surface on the dry ware, which is set in rapid rotation whilst sand paper or some other medium of the kind is applied. The result is that in the course of the day the workers get powdered all over with the dust that is given off, besides inhaling a considerable quantity. Where no fans are at work to draw off this dust the consequences are terribly destructive, and the tower, unless she happens to be a person of exceptionally fine constitution, succumbs in the course of a few years, sometimes of a few months, to the accumulation of fine particles in the pulmonary passages. Even where a fan is at work the presence of the white powder may be detected on the person of the worker, and as the dust is constantly blown by her from the ware, some portion of it is inevitably inhaled by the act of inspiration. Dr. Greenhow, who was sent by Sir John Simon, the medical officer of health for the Privy Council in 1861, to report on the potters’ diseases, wrote as follows about the china scourers, and the conditions to-day are precisely the same as they were then:

The evils caused by the dust are aggravated by the very close and stuffy atmosphere in which much of the work is carried on.

White Lead.—We come now to consider some of the effects caused by working poisonous materials. Foremost among these come the trades into which lead enters. By some strange and perverse fate the manufacture of this deadly commodity is, so far as this country is concerned, undertaken largely by women. This is due in a great part to the fact that their labour can be procured more cheaply than that of men, and that the operations in which they are engaged require but little skill or training. In the white lead works of Newcastle, Sheffield, and East London the women are employed in carrying heavy weights on their heads, climbing ladders while loaded in the same way, and in fact in performing those operations which are usually done by means of trucks and hoists and other mechanical appliances. Anyone who has watched the white-lead women passing backwards and forwards in their long, weary trampings under their heavy loads, clambering up and down the ladders, or passing the lead from hand to hand up a staging beside the stoves where it has to be heated, must realise how thoroughly retrograde in its tendency, as well as mischievous in its physical and moral effects, is the existence of a class of cheap and unresisting labour which the manufacturer can bend into any shape, or turn to any purpose that he chooses. The most ardent advocates of perfect freedom for women in matters industrial will scarcely defend the system of transport, and transport of a highly poisonous material, which depends upon the cheap supply of women’s heads, or the system of elevators which is kept up in the same fashion.

But the physically exacting and degrading conditions of the work, though unmatched in this and probably any other European country, are as nothing compared with the action of the lead poison upon the health of the women. No woman working in the dangerous processes of a white lead mill can escape attack, for the subtle poison permeates the system, resulting in the slighter cases in faintness, sickness, and weakness; in the graver instances in lead colic, epilepsy, paralysis, blindness, madness, or death. After all the precautions that have been adopted so far under the Factory Act, it has been demonstrated too clearly that the lead poison retains the upper hand and finds its way into the system in the form of dust, which is either swallowed, absorbed through the pores of the skin, or works in under the finger and toe nails in defiance of baths and nail brushes and the swallowing of sulphuric acid drinks. In spite of the establishment of a sort of hygienic police, which is maintained in the best works with a view to enforcing regularity in the matter of baths, lead poisoning remains to-day a common feature in white lead works. During five years 145 cases have been treated in the Newcastle Infirmary, in addition to many others at the Newcastle Union and Gateshead Union, and whilst in Poplar Workhouse 30 cases were treated in 1882, there were 28 cases in 1892. From Newcastle comes the report that the greatest human wrecks which pass under the notice of the medical charities are workers from the lead mills, and when we examine the following biographies of lead workers we shall hardly marvel at Dr. Oliver’s emphatic view as to the pernicious character of this trade for women.

Injurious Effects of White Lead.—Barbara R——, a married woman, aged thirty-three years, was admitted to the infirmary on December 4th, 1890, and died the following day from lead poisoning. She had never worked in the lead more than a few days at a time. Eliza H——, aged twenty-five, after five months working in the “stacks” was seized with colic and was ill for seven weeks. On recovery she worked for two years in the stoves, and then had another attack of colic. On getting better she was seized with a fit on her way to work at six o’clock in the morning, and was unconscious for fifteen minutes. Her comrades then helped her into the factory, where she worked all day, feeling very shaky. During the two months that followed she was better, but at the end of that time was seized with convulsions while at work. She became unconscious, and was taken to the workhouse hospital, where she had a succession of fits, followed by total blindness, and death was narrowly escaped.

Effect on Offspring.—Although the law prescribes eighteen years as the minimum age at which women may follow this occupation, two cases have occurred recently in which girls have died from lead poisoning who were under the age. Nor does the suffering cease with the men and women who work in the lead mills; they bequeath an awful legacy of sickness to their children—an amount of suffering which is almost disproportionate to their own. I came not long ago in contact with a woman who had worked for the fifteen years of her married life on the “pans” in a lead mill, a process which is considered to be non-dangerous; during her employment she had suffered little, yet this woman had never borne a living child. I give another dismal chronicle in support of my remarks.[17] “C. E., twenty-seven years of age. There was first a living child, then one miscarriage. She left the lead works and went into the country, where a second child was born. She then returned to the lead works and had two miscarriages. M. W., aged thirty-nine, a lead worker for eighteen years, has had twelve children, of whom four are now living. The remaining eight died at ages varying from five days to four, six, and fourteen months, in convulsions. She has had in addition five miscarriages, three in succession. In the case of Mary A——, aged forty years, whose mother too had been a lead worker, we have a history of eight children, all of whom died in convulsions.” In one form or another paralysis too is common among the workers. It is sometimes acute and sometimes chronic, and its commonest manifestation is in “wrist-drop,”—loss of power in the wrist. The victim of “wrist-drop” is incapacitated from lifting or moving anything or in any way using the hands, and this crippled condition sometimes lasts for life.

Greater Susceptibility of Women.—The greatest authorities on the subject of lead-poisoning, notably Dr. Oliver, lay stress on the greater liability to lead-poisoning which women show over men. Not only do we find that women are more susceptible, but they are susceptible earlier in life. Girls from 18 to 23 years of age are at the most susceptible age, while with men the dangers of lead-poisoning are greatest between 41 and 48. The fashion in which men and women suffer differs also, for we note that, while young women suffer very readily from “saturnian poison”—fall quickly victims to colic, and recover to be again and more severely attacked—men may work for long terms of years, suffering slightly and seldom, till they fall victims, at the end of long service, to paralysis. It must be borne in mind, however, that those women who have been the subject of Dr. Oliver’s investigation have been brought more directly and constantly into contact with the peculiarly dangerous processes of lead manufacture than the men.

White Lead in other Manufactures.—But the actual manufacture of white lead is only one and the first of the stages in this commodity’s devastating course. We may trace its steps in the potteries, where men and women in large numbers fall victims to the lead which is used in the glazes; in the black country, where we find it applied to the tin-sheet enamelling trade, which is now covering the railway stations and other places with advertisements; and in the colour trade and many other industries, to say nothing of that of painters and decorators. Nearly 100 cases of lead-poisoning were treated in the Wolverhampton Infirmary in 1892, the majority of which consisted of young girls who were employed in the sheet-iron enamelling trade, and there have been several cases of deaths in this industry of recent years.

Lucifer Match Trade.—Necrosis of the jaw is a disease of a peculiarly horrible character, to be found in the match-making trade. It is due to the use of phosphorus, and first attacks the jaw-bone, working its way through the teeth and gums. Owing, however, to the adoption of greater precautions and the substitution of other materials for “white” phosphorus necrosis now counts fewer victims than formerly.

Ventilation.—But great as are the evils of trade diseases, these are not general, and exist only in particular trades; whereas when we turn to the question of factory ventilation and heating, and the worker’s general environment, we find that in all directions health is being undermined, and in nearly every occupation there is something wrong. One of the worst evils of factory and workshop arrangements is the absence of proper ventilation, and the consequent lack of a supply of pure air. We may be met by the reply that the opposition of the employés is to a large extent responsible for the discomforts under which they work, and that it is impossible to ventilate rooms properly while the workpeople fill the ventilators with rags as soon as the manager’s back is turned. Such stories as these belong to the same class of anecdotes as those which detail the objection of the worker to wearing some species of gag for keeping out dust, or to the incessant repetition of the act of washing the hands or brushing the hair for the removal of injurious particles, and they do not really affect the general question. The fact is, that we are all creatures of habit more or less, and if we are accustomed to working under certain conditions the majority of us would be something more than human if ready to preserve a high hygienic standard in face of constant daily exposure to prejudicial surroundings. The sensible policy, therefore, is surely not to neglect practicable remedies because of cases of individual carelessness, but to recognise at once that the only effectual course is to make the conditions on which the worker is so largely dependent as healthy as possible. Besides, after all points of view have been considered, there is a good deal to be said for workers’ objections. Clumsy attempts at ventilation are largely responsible for the dislike to fresh air which is to be found in many workshops; just as ill-made respirators, which only succeed in checking free breathing without excluding the dust or whatever it may be that is to be kept out, may have induced a certain recklessness of precautions on the part of the operatives in certain trades. But however that may be, until we come to recognise that the hygienic condition of the factory and workshop is a matter for the scientist and the community in precisely the same way that the hygienic condition of the town is, it will be hopeless to expect the maintenance or even the recognition of any industrial standard of health. Employers are as much creatures of circumstances as their workpeople, and it would be fatuous to the last degree to hope for very much from the “moralisation of workshop environment.” If there is to be any effective safeguard it must be found in the regulations prescribed by the community as a whole, to which the enfeebling and crippling of its workers represents a very real danger.

CHAPTER VII.
INFANT MORTALITY.

The Registrar-General’s Returns.—It is obvious that the influence of occupation upon the health of married women cannot be adequately considered without some inquiry as to its effects upon the life and health of their children. As is the case with so many other vitally important branches of industrial life, there is but scanty information of a statistical kind here to guide us, though there is enough local information, taken in conjunction with the general statistics which are published from time to time by the Registrar-General, to establish a close relation between the employment of married women and a high infantile rate of mortality. In his annual report, the Registrar-General goes into the subject in some detail. He begins by pointing out that the year 1891 showed that the proportion of deaths of infants under one year to a thousand registered births was 149 per thousand, a proportion which was equalled in 1886, and slightly exceeded in 1890, but was otherwise higher than in any year of the preceding decennium. He remarks upon the wide differences to be found between the rates in the various counties, and the persistence of these differences from year to year; “the general rule being that the rate is lowest in the purely agricultural, and highest in the mining counties and those of the textile industries. It is in the towns of these latter counties that the infantile mortality assumes the highest proportion; the three towns which are invariably, or almost invariably, the worst in this respect being Preston, Leicester, and Blackburn.”

This is highly significant, and but for the fact that statistics have been successful in isolating several towns associated with certain industries in which married women are very largely employed, it might have been urged that the high rate of mortality in the towns was simply due to density of population, lack of fresh air, space, and sunlight. But the Registrar-General, by the tables which he has compiled in his last report, enables us to judge as to the effect upon child life, first, of country air and conditions; secondly, of the average urban conditions; and thirdly, of urban conditions plus the employment of women in factory labour. Seeing that Preston, Leicester, and Blackburn had the highest infantile death-rates of all the towns included in the weekly returns from 1881 to 1891, he has selected them for what we will call Group III. Then he has taken five mining or industrial counties, namely, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Lancashire, West Riding, and Durham; and three agricultural counties, namely, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire. With the help of the death registers of the various counties and towns for the years 1889, 1890, and 1891, tables have been prepared showing the causes of death and the exact ages of infants under a year old who had died, out of one hundred thousand born in each of the various districts.

Age-periods and Mortality.—The table shews at a glance that there are more than double as many deaths in the selected towns as in the rural counties—22,000 as against 10,000, whilst the manufacturing counties stand at 17,000. It must, however, be observed that this last group contains the textile districts and various other typically unhealthy trade areas, so that it is scarcely a fair criterion. An examination of more detailed statistics which have been reduced to a tabular shape shew, as the Registrar-General points out, that in the rural counties and the three selected towns the mortality is at its maximum in the first week, falls heavily in the second week, remains at much the same level during the third week, and then shews a fresh very considerable decline in the fourth. To summarise his conclusions as to the points of likeness between counties and towns: “Both shew an excessively high mortality in the earliest days of life, which becomes less and less as days, weeks, and months pass by, until the seventh or eighth month has elapsed, when the decline either is arrested or becomes very much smaller. In both the mortality is so high in the first three days, or even in the entire first week, that, were it maintained without diminution, every infant would die without nearly completing one year of its existence.” But now coming to the points of difference. We have seen in the first place that the town rate is more than twice as high as the country. But the town rate is not merely higher for the whole period, but higher for each fraction of the year. Moreover, the town rates are most in excess of the country ones, not in the earliest weeks or months of infancy, but in the later months. “In the first week of life, the town rate exceeds the rural rate by 23 per cent., in the second week by 64 per cent., in the third week by 83 per cent., and in the fourth week by 97 per cent. The same result comes out when the rates for successive months in the counties and towns are examined. In the first month the town mortality is 27 per cent. above the rural rate, in the second month 121 above it, and the excess then goes on increasing until in the sixth month it amounts to no less than 273 per cent. This is the month in which the difference is greatest, though it remains throughout the rest of the year at a not very much lower point.” This progressive increase is a most significant fact, and it is much to be wished that instead of concluding his examination at the limit of one year of age, the Registrar had continued it, say up to five years, so that he might have been able to form some notion of the further loss of life which falls upon the children in the districts where their mothers are employed in the mills and factories. There is not space here to reproduce the two tables in which the Registrar-General enumerates the causes of death in the rural and town districts, together with the ages at which death takes place. But these tables are of such extreme importance that it may be well to compare some of the more general causes of death.

The following table shews the period of death in the two districts respectively:—

Relation of Married Women’s labour to Infant Mortality. Dr. Tatham’s Evidence.—The most striking difference between the rural districts and the selected towns is in the case of diarrhœa, which, taken with enteritis, shews a mortality seven times as great in towns as in the country. These figures tell their own tale, but it may be well to add the testimony of Dr. Tatham, for many years the medical officer for Manchester and Salford, as given before the labour Commission. “In the year 1881 my attention was first seriously directed to the employment of young mothers in factories, in the course of my investigations concerning the causes of our abnormally heavy infant mortality, Salford being one of the great English towns in which infant mortality was year after year notoriously excessive. As a result of anxious inquiry, extending over many years, I was, and still am, convinced that very much of that excessive mortality was due to infant neglect, consequent on the withdrawal of maternal care within a few weeks of the birth of the children. In consequence of this practice the infants were frequently consigned to the care of some ignorant neighbour, or were nursed at home by an older child of the family. The children were artificially and often improperly fed, and a heavy death-roll was the ultimate result.”

Questioned by the Chairman as to the time, in his opinion, a mother should remain at home after the birth of the child, Dr. Tatham said, “I should not be consistent if I said less than six months.”

“That of course in your opinion would have a very important influence upon the rate of mortality?” “I think it would.”

“And upon the nurture of the children?” “I think so.”

“Is it within your experience that a considerable number of young married women work in factories?” “A very large number.”

“You speak of the effect upon infant mortality; could you say anything of the effect upon the mothers themselves?” “I have no doubt that the health of the mothers will be damaged. It must be so, I am sure; that part of the subject has not engaged my attention so much as this terrible question of infant mortality.”

It may also be interesting to add the one question which was asked by the representative of the manufacturing interest, Mr. Tunstill, a cotton spinner—“Have you considered the financial question that is involved in this recommendation of yours?” And the answer, “I have purposely avoided that; I leave that to those much better able to judge of it than I am.”

Dr. Farr’s Tables.—It is most unfortunate that there should be such a lack of medical and statistical evidence as to the effect of factory labour upon the health of mothers. For this, I suppose, we shall have to wait for the gradual development of the human element in statistical science, though local medical evidence can be produced to shew the mischief that is constantly caused to the mother’s health. This question of infant mortality is at any rate beyond the region of the speculative, and all schools of thought, however divided they may be by the great controversy between freedom and the regulation of women’s labour, must be agreed that it would be nothing short of a national disgrace to allow matters to drift on year after year as they have been doing for many years past. It is now twenty years since Dr. Farr, the great health statistician, shewed the waste of life that was going on in the textile centres. He took the towns of Oldham, Nottingham, Manchester, Salford, Leeds, Norwich, Portsmouth, and London, found the number of women of twenty years and upwards who were engaged in the textile manufactures and household duties in each, and then worked out the particulars of infant mortality from 1873 to 1875. The result, which is to be found in a table in his work on Vital Statistics, is extremely striking. Thus, in Oldham, where 11,178 women were set down as engaged in textile manufacture, out of a total of 32,343 women of twenty years of age and upwards, the infant death rate per thousand births stood at 180; in Nottingham, where upwards of half the women were similarly employed, at 200; in Manchester and Salford, where a quarter of the women were engaged in textile manufacture, at 188; in Portsmouth, where there is no textile work, 146; and in London, where there is also none, 159.

Recent Statistics.—But in 1891 the infantile death rate in the worst textile towns exceeded any of the figures produced by Dr. Farr. Thus in Preston the mortality was 220. There is a slight improvement, but only slight, in the other towns investigated by Dr. Farr. Thus in Oldham the rate is 171 instead of 180, in Manchester 178 instead of 188. None of the figures that have been published, however, give anything like an adequate account of the real state of affairs. What we want is a statement confined to the children of those employed in any given industry where married women’s labour is prevalent. To take an entire town like Manchester or Salford is only to approximate to the facts. In both these towns there are healthy suburbs and large numbers of well-to-do people whose children are taken away every year to the seaside, and there are many industries which are healthy, and where no women’s labour is employed. But anyone who cares to take the trouble to examine the Registrar’s report, and to work out the death rates of the poorer quarters of Manchester and Salford, Bradford, Burnley, and Blackburn, or to take the Potteries and make similar calculations for Hanley, Burslem, and Stoke will be appalled by the contrast between the figures of those places and the rural death rate. He will find that, instead of being twice as high, the rate of infant mortality is even four or five times as high as in the country districts. Such figures as we have however, are sufficient, as I have said, to shew the close connection between the employment of mothers in mills and the death of children.

Deterioration of Survivors.—As to the deterioration of the survivors there can be no question. The evidence of Dr. Tarrop, quoted before, and of other certifying surgeons is conclusive on this point. That school of thought which frames its industrial policy on the theory of the survival of the fittest, can scarcely point to any very triumphant results in the districts which we have been considering. They may assert, and will no doubt continue to assert, that the wholesale sweeping-off of damaged lives in the early months is a great boon to the race, and that the survivors, having stood the ordeal, are presumably more or less seasoned for the discharge of their functions. It must be pointed out, however, that the tests applied are one and all unnatural ones, and that if the laws of nature are to be consulted we shall be right in assuming that the children who have died are those who were best fitted to live. For what are we to think of the standard of living which subjects all new-comers to their capacity of assimilating adulterated and unhealthy food, dispensing with maternal care, breathing air which is foul, and existing without sunshine? Yet this is the kind of test which the pseudo-scientists of the day are so proud of applying, and the result is a weedy, sickly, unnatural generation, brought up without regard to any one of the most fundamental laws of nature. It would be every bit as reasonable to evolve a system of botany which rejected, as extinct or dying, families of plants, which could not be cultivated in a dark chamber or in a refrigerator, as to create conditions of industrial life without reference to the laws of nature or the teachings of health, and then to argue that the fitness of the race depends upon compliance with them.

CHAPTER VIII.
LEGISLATION.