DOCUMENTS AND EXTRACTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE POSITION OF WOMEN DURING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Thoughts on the Use of Machines in the Cotton Manufacture. By a Friend of the Poor. Manchester Reference Library, 677, 1, B. 12. (Barnes, 1780.)

“What a prodigious difference have our machines made in the gain of the females of the family! Formerly the chief support of a poor family arose from the loom. The wife could get comparatively but little on her single spindle. But for some years a good spinner has been able to get as much as or more than a weaver. For this reason many weavers have become spinners, and by this means such quantities of cotton warps, twists, wefts, etc., have been poured into the country that our trade has taken a new turn. All the spinners in the country could not possibly have produced so much as this, as are now wanted in a small part of our manufacture. If it were true that a weaver gets less, yet, as his wife gets more, his family does not suffer. But the fact is that the gains of an industrious family have been upon the average much greater than they were before these inventions.”

Page 16. “When I look upon our machines, with a regard to the Poor, and as their friend and well-wisher, my heart glows with gratitude and pleasure on their account, in the full hope that, by means of them, our manufactures will continue, and be extended and improved, from age to age. Perhaps, e’er long, our manufacture may be chiefly of cotton. Linen may be almost laid aside. Suppose, for instance, common yearn could be brought to market, made with cotton warps. What a sale might we expect! Such goods would have the demand of all the world. Nor is this at all unlikely to be the case, in some future time. Already cotton yarn has been offered to sale, as I am very credibly informed, almost, if not entirely, as cheap as linen yarn, of the same length. Germany and Ireland then have reason to be alarmed at our machines. Their yarn manufactures may suffer severely. But surely this will be the highest advantage to us, by increasing the quantity of labour amongst ourselves and keeping so much money at home. Perhaps, by new improvements, we may vie with the East India goods in fineness and beauty. And then—what a prospect would open upon us! But you say all this is a mere perhaps. It is so. And I only offer it as such. But, I ask, is it more unlikely than our present improvements were, twenty years ago? I believe not. Some tradesmen thought the cotton manufacture at its highest pitch then. It was then but in its infancy. Perhaps it is so yet. Human ingenuity, when spurred on by proper rewards, may leave whatever has been done already at a vast distance. We may have goods brought to market, cheaper, finer, better. The necessary consequence of this will be, the demand will increase and all the world become our customers. If we can undersell all the world, we may have the custom of all the world. Merchants are alike all the world over. They will go to the cheapest market. What a pleasing thought is this! But in order to do this it is necessary to encourage our machines, and to keep them as much as possible to ourselves.”

Description of Interior of a Cotton Mill, in A Short Essay for the Service of the Proprietors of Cotton Mills and the Persons Employed in Them. Manchester, 1784. (M/c Library, 28269/4.)

(Quotes instances of jail fever from overcrowding, etc.)

Page 9. “The Cotton Mills are large buildings, but so constructed as to employ the greatest possible number of persons. That no room may be lost, the several stories are built as low as possible. Most of the rooms are crowded with machines, about which it is necessary to employ a considerable quantity of oil in order to facilitate their motion. From the nature of the manufacture, a great deal of cotton dust is constantly flying about, which, adhering to the oil and heated by the friction, occasions a strange and disagreeable smell. The number of people who work in the mill must certainly be proportioned to the size of it. In a large one I am informed there are several hundreds.... The manufacturers, in many instances, constantly labour day and night.[70] Of course a great number of candles must be used, and scarce any opportunity for ventilation afforded. From hence it is evident that there is a considerable effluvia constantly arising from the bodies of a large number of persons (well or in a degree indisposed, just as it happens), from the oil and cotton dust, and from the candles used in the night, without any considerable supply of fresh air. There are indeed trifling casements, sometimes opened and sometimes not; but totally insufficient to subserve any valuable purpose.... What consequences must we expect from so many pernicious circumstances? What are the consequences which have actually proceeded from them? As we have already observed, it is well known that there has been a contagious disorder in a cotton mill in the neighbourhood of Manchester which has been fatal to many, and infected more.... Most of the patients that were ill, having been asked where they caught the fever, either replied that they caught it themselves at the cotton mill or were infected by others that had. Several were asked what kind of labour they followed who were first seized with the disorder. They all replied, they were the people that worked in the cotton mill.”

Leicester, 1788. British Museum Tracts, B. 544 (10).

Humble Petition of the Poor Spinners, which on a very moderate calculation consist of Eighteen Thousand, Five Hundred, employed in the Town and Country aforesaid,

Sheweth, that the business of Spinning, in all its branches, hath ever been, time out of mind, the peculiar employment of women; insomuch that every single woman is called in law a Spinster; to which employment your Petitioners have been brought up, and by which they have hitherto earned their maintenance. That this employment above all others is suited to the condition and circumstances of the Female Poor; inasmuch as not only single women, but married ones also, can be employed in it consistently with the necessary cares of their families; for, the business being carried on in their own houses, they can at any time leave it when the care of their families requires their attendance, and can re-assume the work when family duty permits it; nay, they can, in many instances, carry on their work and perform their domestic duty at the same time; particularly in the case of attending a sick husband or child, or an aged parent.

That the children of the poor can also be employed in this occupation more or less, according to their age and strength, which is not only a great help to the maintenance of the family, but inures their children to habits of industry.

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It is therefore with great concern your Petitioners see that this antient employment is likely to be taken from them—an employment so consistent with civil liberty, so full of domestic comfort, and so favourable to a religious course of life. This we apprehend will be the consequences of so many spinning mills, now erecting after the model of the cotton mills. The work of the poor will be done by these engines, and they left without employment.

The proprietors of the spinning mills do indeed tell your Petitioners that their children shall be employed after the manner of the children at the cotton mills. Your Petitioners have enquired what that manner is; and with grief of heart they find that a vast number of poor children are crowded together in an unhealthy place, have no time allowed them for recreation and exercise, are kept to work for ten or twelve hours together, and that in the night-time as well as by day; hereby they become cripples and emaciated beyond measure. That no care is taken of their morals, as your Petitioners can learn; though these very children are the means by which their masters are raised to wealth and honours too; for we have heard that a certain great mill-monger is newly created a knight though he was not born a gentleman.

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The adventurers are turning their cotton mills into jersey mills, and new ones are daily erecting; and our masters show what their expectations are by undervaluing our work and beating down our wages.[71]

1800. Broadsheet, pp. 942, 72, L. 15 (M/c Library).

(This broadsheet records the resolutions carried at a special meeting of merchants, manufacturers, and cotton spinners held at Manchester, May 2, 1800, to consider proceedings of meetings recently held for the purpose of getting Parliament to put a duty on exportation of cotton twist.)

Resolved—1. That cotton spinning is a manufacture of the first importance to this country. That it gives employment to a considerable part of the national capital and to a very large portion of the poor of this county and of several other counties, the chief part consisting of women and children who, by means of this manufacture, are rendered highly useful to the community at large instead of being a burthen on it, as they would be if not employed in cotton mills (italics added).

Broadsheet in Manchester Library (n. d.).

(Purports to be by an old weaver, deprecating attacks on machinery.) “If machinery is destroyed, how are your children to be employed, who now, at an age in which children in other countries gain nothing, can support themselves? Yes, and not only this, but can earn as much, or even more, than a hardworking man in other countries, where there are not these improvements? It is thus that our poor are enabled to marry early and support a family, as the children, instead of being a deadweight upon their parents, can more than do for themselves. So great, indeed, have been our comforts from the demand for our cheap manufactures and the plenty of employ, that people have flocked into Lancashire from all parts of the kingdom by thousands, tens of thousands, aye, and hundreds of thousands too.

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“If they (machines) are destroyed, how then are you to find support for yourselves and your families? Where will your children of seven, eight, or nine years old find employment and money to contribute to the comforts of all? Will our barren moors support them?”

From Alfred’s History of the Factory Movement, vol. i. p. 16.

When the first factories were erected, it was soon discovered that there was in the minds of the parents a strong repugnance to the employment thus provided for children: the native domestic labourers, being then able amply to provide for their children, rejected the tempting offers of the mill-owners, the parents preferring to rear their children in their own homes, and to train them to their own handicrafts. For a long period it was by the working people themselves considered to be disgraceful to any father who allowed his child to enter the factory—nay, in the homely words of that day, as will be remembered by the old men of the present age, “that parent made himself the town’s talk”—and the unfortunate girl so given up by her parents in after life found the door of household employment closed against her—“Because she had been a factory girl.” It was not until the condition of portions of the working class had been reduced that it became the custom with working men to eke out the means of their subsistence by sending their children to the mills. Until that sad and calamitous custom prevailed, the factories in England were worked by “stranger-children,” gathered together from the workhouse.

Under the operation of the factories’ apprentice system parish apprentices were sent, without remorse or enquiry, from the workhouses in England, to be “used up” as the “cheapest raw material in the market.” This inhuman conduct was systematically practised; the mill-owners communicated with the overseer of the poor, and when the demand and supply had been arranged to the satisfaction of both the contracting parties, a day was fixed for the examination of “the little children” to be inspected by the mill-owner, or his agent, previous to which the authorities of the workhouse had filled the minds of their wards with the notion that by entering the mills they would become ladies and gentlemen.... It sometimes happened that traffickers contracted with the overseers, removing their juvenile victims to Manchester, or other towns, on their arrival; if not previously assigned, they were deposited sometimes in dark cellars, where the merchant dealing in them brought his customers; the mill-owners, by the light of lanthorns, being enabled to examine the children, their limbs and stature having undergone the necessary scrutiny, the bargain was struck, and the poor innocents were conveyed to the mills. The general treatment of those apprentices depended entirely on the will of their masters; in very many instances their labour was limited only by exhaustion after many modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force continued action; their food was stinted, coarse, and unwholesome. In “brisk times” the beds (such as they were) were never cool, the mills were worked night and day, and as soon as one set of children rose for labour the other set retired for rest. We dare not trust ourselves to write all we know on this subject, much less all we feel.... The moral nature of the traffic between parish authorities and the buyers of pauper children, may be judged from the fact that in some cases one idiot was accepted with twenty sane children.... In stench, in heated rooms, amid the constant whirling of a thousand wheels, have little fingers and little feet been kept in ceaseless action, forced into unnatural activity by blows from the heavy hands and feet of the merciless overlooker, and the infliction of bodily pain by instruments of punishment invented by the sharpened ingenuity of insatiable selfishness.... Some of the helpless victims ... nightly prayed that death would come to their relief; weary of prayer, some there were who deliberately accomplished their own destruction. The annals of Litten Mill afford an instance of this kind. “Palfrey the smith had the task of riveting irons upon any of the apprentices whom the master ordered, and these were much like the irons usually put upon felons. Even young women, if suspected of intending to run away, had irons riveted upon their ankles, and reaching by long links and rings up to the hips, and in these they were compelled to walk to and from the mill and to sleep. Robert Blincoe asserts that he has known many girls served in this manner. A handsome-looking girl, about the age of twenty years, who came from the neighbourhood of Cromford, whose name was Phoebe Day, being driven to desperation by ill-treatment, took the opportunity one dinner-time, when she was alone and supposed no one saw her, to take off her shoes and throw herself into the dam at the end of the bridge, next the apprentice-house. Some one passing along and seeing a pair of shoes stopped. The poor girl had sunk once, and just as she rose above the water he seized her by the hair.... She was nearly gone, and it was with some difficulty her life was saved. When Mr. Needham heard of this, and being afraid the example might be contagious, he ordered James Durant, a journeyman spinner, who had been apprenticed there, to take her away to her relations at Cromford, and thus she escaped.”

The Factory System. Enquiry into the State of the Manufacturing Population. London, 1831.

Page 12. “As a second cause of the unhealthiness of manufacturing towns we place the severe and unremitting labour. Cotton factories (which are the best in this particular) begin to work at half-past five or six in the morning and cease at half-past seven or eight at night. An interval of half an hour or forty minutes is allowed for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and generally half an hour for tea, leaving about twelve hours a day clear labour. The work of spinners and stretchers (men) is among the most laborious that exist, and is exceeded, perhaps, by that of mowing alone, and few mowers, we believe, think of continuing their labour for twelve hours without intermission.... The labour of the other classes of hands employed in factories, as carders, rovers, piecers, and weavers, consists not so much in their actual manual exertion, which is very moderate, as in the constant attention which they are required to keep up and the intolerable fatigue of standing for so great a length of time. We know that incessant walking for twenty-four hours was considered one of the most intolerable tortures to which witches in former times were subjected, for the purpose of compelling them to own their guilt, and that few of them could hold out for twelve; and the fatigue of standing for twelve hours, without being permitted to lean or sit down, must be scarcely less extreme. Accordingly, some sink under it, and many more have their constitutions permanently weakened and undermined.

“III. The third cause we shall assign is perhaps even more efficient than the last. The air in almost all factories is more or less unwholesome. Many of the rooms are obliged to be kept at a certain temperature (say 65 degrees Fahrenheit) for the purpose of manufacture, and from the speed of the machinery, the general want of direct communication with the external atmosphere, and from artificial heat, they often exceed the temperature.... But in addition to mere heat, the rooms are often ill-ventilated, the air is filled with the effluvia of oil, and with emanations from the uncleanly persons of a large number of individuals; and, from the want of free ventilation, the air is very imperfectly oxygenated and has occasionally a most overpowering smell.[72] In a word, the hands employed in these large manufactories breathe foul air for twelve hours out of the twenty-four, and we know that few things have so specific and injurious an action on the digestive organs as the inhalation of impure air, and this fact alone would be almost sufficient to account for the prevalence of stomachic complaints in districts where manufactories abound.

“The small particles of cotton and dust with which the air in most rooms of factories is impregnated not infrequently lay the foundation of distressing and fatal diseases. When inhaled, they are a source of great pulmonary irritation, which, if it continues long, induces a species of chronic bronchitis, which, not rarely, degenerates into tubercular consumption....

“IV. The fourth cause of the ill-health which prevails among the manufacturing population may be traced to the injurious influence which the weakened and vitiated constitution of the women has upon their children.[73] They are often employed in factories some years after their marriage, and during this pregnancy, and up to the very period of their confinement, which all who have attended to the physiology of the subject know must send their offspring into the world with a debilitated and unhealthy frame which the circumstances of their infancy are ill-calculated to remove; and hence, when these children begin to work themselves they are prepared at once to succumb to the evil influences by which they are surrounded.”

At page 27. “We hope we shall not greatly offend the prejudices either of political economists or practical tradesmen when we state our firm conviction, that a reduction in the hours of labour is most important to the health of the manufacturing population, and absolutely necessary to any general and material amelioration in their moral and intellectual condition.... It will be urged in opposition that all legislative interference in commercial concerns is, prima facie, objectionable, and involves the admission of a dangerous and impolitic principle. That legislative interference is in itself an evil we deeply feel and readily admit; but it is an evil like many others which necessity and policy may justify, and which humanity and justice may imperiously demand. Legislative interference is objectionable only where it is injudicious or uncalled for. It will also be objected, and with more sound reason, that a reduction of the hours of labour would cause a corresponding reduction in the quantity produced, and consequently in the wages of the workmen; and would also diminish our power of competing with other manufacturing nations in foreign market, and thus, by permanently injuring our trade, would be productive of greater evils to the labouring classes than those we are endeavouring to remove. This objection, though very reasonable, we think is considerably overstated. That ‘a reduction of the hours of labour would cause a corresponding reduction in the quantity produced’ we entirely deny. What would be the actual loss consequent upon a reduction of the hours it is impossible to state with any certainty, but it is probable that if factories were to work ten hours instead of twelve the loss in the quantity produced would not be one-sixth, but only about one-twelfth, and in Mule Spinning perhaps scarcely even so much. We know that in some cases when the mills only worked four days in the week, they have often produced five days’ quantity, and the men earned five days’ wages. That this would be the case to a considerable extent every one must be aware; as all men will be able to work much harder for ten hours than they can for twelve. The objection above mentioned we consider to be much over-stated; and we are convinced that the loss incurred would only amount to a part of the reduction. And we think that all loss to the masters might be prevented, and the necessity of a real reduction of wages obviated, were all duties on raw materials, and those taxes which greatly raise the price of provisions, abolished by the legislature. It is principally the shackles and drawbacks to which the Cotton Manufacture is subjected which renders it so difficult, and as some think so impracticable, to adopt a measure without which all extensive and general Plans for improving and regenerating our manufacturing poor must approach the limits of impossibility. At present (in the cotton trade at least, which is already restricted by law) the hours of work generally extend from half-past five or six in the morning till half-past seven or eight at night, with about two hours’ intermission, making in all about twelve hours of clear labour. This we would reduce to ten hours (if such a measure should be rendered practicable and safe by a removal of all taxes on manufactures and provisions); and we again express our conviction, after regarding the subject in every possible point of view, that till this measure is adopted all plans and exertions for ameliorating the moral and domestic condition of the manufacturing labourer can only obtain a very partial and temporary sphere of operation. We say this with confidence, because in every project of the kind which we have been enabled to form, in every attempt for this purpose which our personal acquaintance and habitual intercourse with the people could suggest, we have been met and defeated by the long hours (absorbing in fact the whole of the efficient day) which the operative is compelled to remain at his employment. When he returns home at night, the sensorial power is worn out with intense fatigue; he has no energy left to exert in any useful object, or any domestic duty; he is fit only for sleep or sensual indulgence, the only alternatives of employment which his leisure knows; he has no moral elasticity to enable him to resist the seductions of appetite or sloth, no heart for regulating his household, superintending his family concerns, or enforcing economy in his domestic arrangements; no power or capability of exertion to rise above his circumstances or better his condition. He has no time to be wise, no leisure to be good; he is sunken, debilitated, depressed, emasculated, unnerved for effort, incapable of virtue, unfit for everything but the regular, hopeless, desponding, degrading variety of laborious vegetation or shameless intemperance. Relieve him in this particular, shorten his hours of labour, and he will find himself possessed of sufficient leisure to make it an object with him to spend that leisure well; he will not be so thoroughly enervated with his day’s employment; he will not feel so imperious a necessity for stimulating liquors; he will examine more closely, and regulate more carefully, his domestic arrangements, and what is more than all, he will become a soil which the religious philanthropist may have some chance of labouring with advantage. We do not say that a reduction in the hours of labour would do everything; but we are sure that little can be done without it.”

Arthur Arnold. Cotton Famine. 1864.

(Describing factory work.) Page 56. “In these days of automaton machinery there are many moments in every hour when the varied and immense production of a cotton factory would continue though 95 per cent of the hands were suddenly withdrawn. The work is exciting but not laborious. It quickens the eye and the action of the brain to watch a thousand threads, being obliged to dart upon and repair any that break, lest even a single spindle should be idle; and it strengthens the brain to do this with bodily labour which is exercising but not exhausting. It polishes the mental faculties to work in continued contact with hundreds of others, in a discipline necessarily so severe and regular as that of a cotton factory. The bodily system becomes feverishly quickened by thus working in a high and moist temperature. Even the rattle of the machinery contributes to preserve the brain of the operative from that emptiness which so fatally contracts its power.”

The Surat Weaver’s Song

From Edwin Waugh’s Factory Folk, p. 238.
By Samuel Laycock.

Confound it! aw ne’er wur so woven afore;
My back’s welly broken, mi fingers are sore;
Aw’ve bin stannin’ an’ workin’ among this Surat
Till aw’m very neer gettin’ as blint as a bat.
Aw wish aw wur fur eneagh off, eawt o’ th’ road,
For o’ weaving this rubbitch aw’m gettin’ reet sto’d;
Aw’ve nowt i’ this world to lie deawn on but straw,
For aw’ve nobbut eight shillen’ this fortnit to draw.
Oh dear! if yon Yankees could nobbut just see
Heaw they’re clemmin’ an’ starvin’ poor weavers like me,
Aw think they’d soon settle their bother an’ strive
To send us some cotton to keep us alive.
There’s theawsan’s o’ folk, jist i’ th’ best o’ their days,
Wi’ traces of want plainly sin i’ their face;
An’ a future afore ’em as dreary as dark,
For when th’ cotton gets done we’s be o’ eawt o’ wark.
We’ve bin patient an’ quiet as long as we con;
Th’ bits of things we had by us are welly o’ gone;
Mi clogs an’ mi shoon are both gitten worn eawt,
An mi halliday cloaths are o’ gawn “up th’ speawt”!
Mony a toime i’ mi days aw’ve sin things lookin’ feaw
But never as awkard as what they are neaw;
If there is’nt some help for us factory folk soon,
Aw’m sure ’at we’s o’ be knock’d reet eawt o’ tune.

Darwen Weavers. Report, March 1911, The Driving Evil.

During the last few months we have experienced a decided improvement in the demand for cotton goods, and which has naturally provided fuller employment for those employed in the weaving branch. We regret, however, to state that this improvement has brought with it that curse of our industry—the driving evil. We still have a number of employers who resort to any artifice in order to exact the last ounce of effort out of their work-people. Very little regard appears to be paid to the possibility that the health of the operatives may be endangered by the process; nor is much consideration given to the difficulties that they have to contend with in the shape of inferior material in the loom and the higher standard of quality demanded in the warehouse. Indeed the only thing that seems to be of any importance is the average, and woe be to the unlucky individuals whose earnings fall below it. The weak and the strong are set in competition one with another, with the inevitable result that the weaker or less efficient work-people resort to such practices as working during the meal-hour, etc., in their efforts to keep up the unequal race, whilst on the top of all is the dread of what may happen after making up time. When the earnings of an overlooker’s set fall below the amount required by the management, pressure is brought to bear on the over-looker, and in turn they (sic) are expected to put more pressure on the weaver to increase the output. The methods of speeding-up the weaver are varied. Sometimes a hint is conveyed by a distinctive mark on their wage-tickets, in other cases the weavers are spoken to about their earnings, not always in the best manner or in the choicest language. This is far from being an ideal state of things for young persons or persons of a sensitive nature to be employed in, and has in the past been responsible for some of the tragedies that are a blot on the record of the cotton industry. We think it is high time that a number of employers should give this matter their careful consideration, and look upon their work-people as human beings and not as mere machines to be worked at the utmost speed. We hope that an early improvement will be made at some of the local concerns, otherwise there is every probability of serious trouble.

Extracts from Reports of the Principal Lady Inspector of Factories, and some of her Colleagues, illustrating the Present Position of the Woman Worker.[74]

1. Women and Girls show more Courage in voicing their Needs.

While we can see a great number and variety of deplorable contraventions of the actual requirements and spirit of the law and an amount of apparently preventable suffering and overstrain and injury to life, limb, and health that is grievous to dwell upon (except for action in the way of removal), we can see also, most clearly, signs of improvement and the promise of much more. The promise lies in the fact that the movement to secure better conditions is not confined to any one class or group. The women and girls at last begin to press their claims for a better life than the one they have, not only by increasing appeals to Inspectors to put the law in motion, but also by criticism of the limitations of the law and by signs of fresh courage in organising and voicing their needs to the employers. Employers are initiating reforms not only as outstanding individuals and firms, but are beginning to do so at last by associated action and effort. Without these two responsive sides of the movement the best efforts of social reformers and legislators would end but poorly. As strikingly illustrating the need of betterment, I would point not only to the instances of excessively long hours inside and outside the factories, insanitary conditions; lack of seats, mess-rooms; accidents and unfenced machinery; employment of young workers in operating and clothing dangerous machines; in excessively heavy weight carrying, but behind, and through, and over all, to the undermining influence for the real health of the nation in the grinding methods of payment and deductions from payment of women and girls. Even of industrial poisoning Miss Whitlock says: “Poverty with its attendant worry and lack of nourishment appeared to be a predisposing cause in many cases, and the youth of many of the workers affected was noticeable,” and when a woman heavily laden and worn asks, “Is it right I should have to do this kind of work and only have 8s. a week?” the Inspector can only listen and report. The sinister instances of use of homework after the legal factory day to reduce piece rates, of new deductions covering cost of employers’ contributions under the Insurance Act, of old-standing large non-payments for work done to punish small unpunctualities in arrival at the factory, and of fine added to entire loss of a hardly-earned week’s wage for alleged damage, are only outstanding illustrations of an extensive pressure on women’s wages that prevents them from developing their full natural vitality. In every direction the testimony of the Inspectors to the value of the spirit of the industrial girl or woman is the same. Of a girl of seventeen, partially scalped, Miss Martindale says: “Her pluck and bravery were noteworthy, in fact these qualities show themselves in a remarkable degree in working girls when they meet a severe physical shock”; of another, whose hand had to be amputated after vain attempts to save it, she says that the girl mastered her disappointment, and in two or three days after the operation began to practise writing with her left hand, and in a month had become almost as proficient in writing as with the right hand. The value they attach to inspection is obvious from what follows in this report, and is shrewdly summed up in a remark overheard by a Senior Lady Inspector in a northern mill: “Yon’s a Lady Inspector, nay, but it’s time we had one.”

2. A Factory Worker’s Letter.

Miss Slocock.—The complaints outside the Acts received during the year have been interesting, and they often indicate in a remarkable way the workers’ needs and the omissions of present legislation. Irish workers express themselves graphically and exceedingly well in writing, and the following letter is a typical one: “Dear Madam, I am sure you will think it presumption on the part of a factory worker to write to you however as pen and paper refuses nothing I venture to write you this annonamos letter. When you come to inspect a factory, does it ever strike you to look around and see if any of these weary women and girls have a seat to sit down on. I am a winder myself I have worked in a great many factories for the last 30 years one looks on their workshop just like their home why should we be denied a seat I suppose you think our work very light so it is we have no extra heavy lifts we have mettle cups that I suppose they would be 2 lb. weight or more we are pushing these up continually the whole thing is tedious just look around you and you will see some winders have not so much as a lean for their backs. I hope Dear Lady you see to this. You would never think of putting a servant to work in a kitchen without a chair in it, she would not stick it, the winders are an uncomplaining lot if you asked them would they like to be provided with seats they would smile and say they were all right, it would look to them like making complaints behind backs but don’t ask us but think about us and do something for us and our children will rise up and call you blessed. I hold that rest is essential to Good Health.”

3. Lighting.

Principal.—An increasing number of complaints is received with regard to defective natural lighting and badly adjusted or otherwise defective artificial lighting. The Inspectors do what they can to secure improvements, though, as the matter is outside the Factory Act, in general no contravention notice or other official action is as yet practicable. Two bad cases concerning women compositors in different parts of the kingdom are specially reported; in both artificial lighting was required during the greater part of the day, and in only one of these instances is a remedy being supplied by removal to better premises. In the other case, when the women learned that lighting is still outside the Factory Act so far as their case is concerned, they exclaimed to the Senior Lady Inspector, Miss Squire, “but this is the most important thing of all to us.”

Miss Squire.—Badly adjusted light which hurts the eyes was found in boot factories, where out of nine visited in one town four had the sewing-machine rooms provided with ordinary fish-tail burners on a jointed bracket at every machine—these, unshaded, were on a level with the workers’ eyes and close to the face. The girls complained that the light was poor and had a smarting effect upon the eyes. The adaptation of artificial lighting to the requirements of the work receives in general very little attention, but I find that a desire for some guidance in the matter is growing among employers and managers. One difficulty is that of procuring any shade for the large metal filament electric lamps now so largely used. The glare of these in the eyes of machine operatives in all classes of factories is a troublesome accompaniment of the work, and one finds much makeshift screening by workers where such individual effort is permitted.

4. Sanitary Accommodation.

Principal.—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 Lancashire 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 space 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 glass 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 circumstances 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 space 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 Lancashire, 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 circumstances 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 wishing 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 circumstances 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 Lancashire 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 2½ 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, washing 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.

Principal.—The illustrations sent me of the mass 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 illustrations 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 Lancashire 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 Saturdays unless under exceptional circumstances. 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 Saturday, 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 assured 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 Saturday 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 Saturday 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 Saturday at all.

Miss Slocock.—(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. 10½d. respectively.

(2) Two workers employed as shirt machinists were told they would both be fined 5s. for spoiling two shirts 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 shirts 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 shirt, and a fine of 2s. 6d. from each worker (1s. 3d. for each shirt) 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 “passer.”

10. Lenience of Magistrates to Employer.

Principal.—We have to occasionally reckon with Benches who consider a few shillings’ 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)