WOMEN IN UNIONS (continued).

Women’s Unions in Germany.[37]—In Germany the obstacles have been far greater than in England. The relative prevalence of “Hausindustrie” and the greater poverty stood in the way of women’s organisation, and until a few years back the law did not allow women to join political societies. Women were not, it is true, prohibited from joining Trade Unions, but the line between political and trade societies is not in practice always easy to draw, and full membership of Unions has thus been often hindered.

The first Women’s Unions were started in the early ’seventies of the last century, by middle-class women who were also in the forefront of the battle for the Suffrage. The authorities dissolved the societies. Women-workers did not long maintain the alliance with the “Women’s Rights” Party. An independent organisation was formed, which greatly exceeded the previous efforts in numbers and significance. The immediate impulse to the formation of this Union was given by the proposal of the Government to put a duty on sewing-thread, which would have been a great burden on the needle-women who had to provide the thread. Three societies were formed, the first being the “Verein zur Vertretung der Interessen der Arbeiterinnen,” which was followed by the “Nordverein der Berliner Arbeiterinnen” and the “Fachverein der MÄntelnÄherinnen,” both of which were founded and controlled by working women. Investigations of the wages and conditions of working women were undertaken by these societies, in consequence of which a debate in the Reichstag took place, followed by an official enquiry into the wages of the women-workers in the manufacture of underclothing and ready-made garments, which only confirmed the conclusion already reached by private enquiry. The Truck Act was made more stringent, in response to the working women’s movement, but as a secondary result all the societies were dissolved and the leaders prosecuted. The authorities were taking fright at the increase in the Socialist vote and in the membership of Trade Unions; and the Reichstag, under the tutelage of Bismarck, in 1878 passed the notorious Anti-Socialist Law, under which not only Socialist societies but even Trade Unions were harassed and suppressed. During the twelve years in which the law was in force, however, propaganda work was still carried on with heroic courage and perseverance, and the solidarity and class-consciousness of the workers, both men and women, was developed and strengthened by their natural indignation against the persecution suffered.

The men’s attitude towards the women-workers, which had been formerly reactionary and sometimes hostile, gradually changed, partly because of the energy and courage the women had shown, partly through a growing recognition, which was intensified by the enormous increase in women industrial workers shown in the Census Report, 1895, that exclusion of women from the men’s Unions could only exasperate industrial competition in its worst form. In 1890 a Conference was held at Berlin at which the Central Commission of German Trade Unions was founded, and its attitude towards women was indicated by the fact that a woman was a member of its Committee. Measures were taken that in the committees of societies which excluded women from membership, resolutions should be proposed for an alteration of rules, and in most cases these were adopted. Under their guidance an agitation was set on foot to induce women to join Unions. Into this agitation the women organisers put an energy, patience, and self-sacrifice that is beyond praise. Now the German Free Unions (“freie Gewerkschaften”) are not identified with any political propaganda, and cannot legally spend money for political purposes if they have members under eighteen. But in practice they are largely led and controlled by members of the Social Democratic Party, and thus it has happened that working women, who were forced to abandon their own societies and to join forces with the general Labour Movement, are now largely under the influence and identified with the movement for social democracy. It is incorrect to speak of the Unions as “Social Democratic Unions,” and yet in fact the two forces do work in harmony.

In the Labour Movement women found their natural allies. Their co-operation secured men against “blackleg” competition, and on the other hand the social democrats have worked for women. In 1877 they petitioned for improvements in the working conditions of women, and in 1890, that women should have votes for the industrial councils that were then under consideration. Bebel’s Die Frau und der Sozialismus appeared about this time, and made a profound sensation. In this work the relations of the social question with the woman question were analysed. “Nothing but economic freedom for woman,” said Bebel, “could complete her political and social emancipation.”

In 1908 some of the remaining obstacles that impeded women from taking part in political and trade societies were done away with by the Federal Association law. The outstanding fact at the present time is the enormous relative increase in the numbers of women Unionists. Frau Gnauck gives the numbers in 1905 as 50,000 in the “Free” or social democratic Unions, 10,000 in the Christian. The figures for 1912, from the German Statistical Year-Book, will be found at the end of the section.[38] It will be observed that although, as with us, the largest group of organised women is in the textile trades, the members are more generally distributed, and the non-textile Unions show larger numbers, both absolutely and relatively, than is the case in England.

The centralised Unions undoubtedly owe their origin chiefly to the Social Democratic exertions, and are strongly class-conscious. They, however, favour the view that it is the duty of the State to protect the workers by legislation from excessive exploitation, and that it is the main business of the Unions to achieve as far as possible immediate improvements in wages and labour conditions. The comparative ease with which new Unions have been built up and existing Unions amalgamated is very largely due to Social Democratic influence. Before Trade Unions existed to any extent worth mentioning, Lassalle’s campaign for united action had taught the workers that the engineer and his helper, the bricklayer and his labourer, were of one class and had one supreme interest in common; that there was only one working class, and varieties of calling and degrees of skill were not the proper basis of organisation even for trade ends. The ideal no doubt is one great Union of all workers, regardless of occupation. This is in practice unattainable; but the Germans, in whom class-consciousness is so strong, are reducing the Unions to the smallest possible number, and are also linked closely together by means of the General Commission.

The General Commission of Trade Unions has its office in Berlin. It publishes a weekly journal called a Korrespondenzblatt, containing information of value to Trade Unionists and students of Trade Unionism. Connected with the Commission is a secretariat for women, the work of which is to promote organisation among women-workers. Still more recently it has been arranged that each Union with any appreciable membership of women should have a woman organiser. The rapid increase among women members is an indication of the increasing interest taken by the women themselves. Considerable diversity in the scale of contributions is one characteristic—young persons, as well as women, being admitted members along with adult males.

It is evident that the German form of organisation is much better calculated to catch the weaker and less-skilled classes of workers than is the more aristocratic and old-fashioned craft Union of our own country. The Germans hold that the organisation of the unskilled labourer is as important as that of the mechanic, and their great industrial combinations include all men- and women-workers within the field of operations, irrespective of their particular grade of skill. Endeavours are made to enrol all workers in big effective organisations, and the success of these tactics has been most significant. While in Germany two and a half million workers are organised in forty-eight centralised Unions, all affiliated to the General Commission as the national centre, in England there are more than a thousand separate Unions with about the same total membership. In England barely one million Unionists out of the two and a half belong to the General Federation. These facts are not without bearing on the position of women-workers. English working men complain of the competition of women; the moral is, organise the women.

Another important field of Trade Union activity is in the education of their members. There is a Trade Union School at Berlin supported entirely by Trade Union funds and managed by Trade Unionists. Care is also taken that members of Unions should be politically educated to understand their rights and duties as citizens. Women-workers in all the “freie Gewerkschaften” enjoy the same privileges as men, and are eligible for all boards or elected bodies of their respective Unions. There are as yet, however, only two Unions in Germany which have a woman president, and the majority on the executives of the other Unions are men. This is not due to opposition by men, or to rules impeding the appointment of women on these bodies, but rather to the indifference of many women-workers, who, as in England, fail to interest themselves in the affairs of their Unions. This lack of enthusiasm on the part of women is ascribed to their position in the home and to the difficulty that they have in combining household work with wage-work, and at the same time retaining any leisure or energy to concern themselves with Union matters.

Contributions and benefits are usually somewhat lower than in the case of men, because women’s earnings are usually less. Five national Unions have, however, adopted the principle of equal scales for men and women. In these cases the amount of contribution varies according to the wages earned, and benefits are graduated to prevent the risk of women becoming a greater burden on the funds than men.

It is a patent fact that the number of organised women-workers is very small when compared with men in the same organisation, but the relative increase is great, and the spirit of association is said to be gaining a strong hold on women. The fact that so many German women continue work after marriage is said to be one cause of the increasing interest taken in Unions, their position as wage-earners being not merely a temporary one, to be abandoned in a few years’ time.

The “Christian” Trade Unions contain no very large numbers of women compared to the “free” societies. They were also considerably later in coming into existence, and appear, though ostensibly non-political, to be largely due to reactionary political influences, and organised in opposition to the Socialist party. The Home Workers’ Union is mainly philanthropic and controlled by ladies. The Christian Unions have enemies on both sides, as they are naturally regarded with considerable suspicion by the “Free” or “Central” Unions, but nevertheless are also disapproved of by the authorities of the Catholic Church. The Christian Unions started with the aim of being inter-denominational (“interkonfessionelle”), including Protestants as well as Catholics, and a considerable degree of sympathy with labour was combined with their mainly reactionary propaganda; they even considered strikes a possible and ultimate resource, although they desired to avoid them. In many cases, pressed forward perhaps by the rank and file, they have co-operated with the “Free” Unions, who are so much stronger in numbers and finance than themselves. These tendencies excited the displeasure of the strict Catholic body, and not only the German Bishops, but the Pope himself, have shown hostility to the Christian Unions, which have thus been rent by internal dissensions. Catholic Unions of a strictly denominational type have been formed in opposition to the inter-denominational Christian Unions, and though the former are of little importance as organisations, they no doubt have some effect in weakening the body from which they have branched off. However that may be, the numbers in the Christian Unions, though showing a considerable percentage increase, are insignificant compared to the large “Free” Unions. In quite recent years the Christian Unions have lent themselves to strike-breaking and are becoming discredited in the labour world. The Hirsch-Duncker Unions have only a very small number of women members, and are of little importance for the women’s labour movement. These Unions were founded and are partly controlled by middle-class Liberals.

It may be interesting here briefly to compare the views of two distinguished German women writers on the question of Trade Unionism for women. Frau Braun, writing in 1901, says that the development of the great industry is the force that impelled men to combine successfully together, but industrially women are about a century behind men, and before they can be successfully organised, home-work must be repressed in every form, and women’s work must develop into factory industry much more completely than it has yet done. Home-work tends to perpetuate the dependence of women, enabling the home-keeping wife or daughter to carry on a bye-industry, and is therefore an evil. Again, the poverty of women is a great obstacle to their organisation. Economic history shows that well-paid workers organise more quickly and effectively than those who are isolated, oppressed and degraded. Women-workers most urgently need to be enlightened, but this cannot happen until they have been lifted out of the intense pressure of physical need; they must be given time to read, to follow the news of the day, to get beyond the horizon of their own four walls. This cannot be attained by Trade Union action alone. Legislative measures must be taken for the relief of the women-workers. English history shows that Lancashire women weavers before the Factory Act were as incapable of organisation, as easy a prey to the exploiter of their work, as the majority of women-workers are to-day. It was only after the law had restricted their hours of work that they began to organise in Trade Unions and Co-operative Societies.

In Frau Braun’s opinion women-workers will lose more than they gain by adopting the style of the women’s movement in the bourgeois sense. Save where absolutely necessary, organisation for women only is a source of weakness to the women-workers’ movement. The numerous societies for women-workers’ education, the independent Socialist women’s congresses, and especially the women’s Unions promoted by the advocates of “women’s rights,” all these are dangerous.

A working woman’s movement fully conscious of its aims and principles will permit this class of organisation only in the case of Unions for trades exclusively feminine, or of educational clubs or institutes when no other is accessible to women-workers. In principle they should all be avoided, for they can only confuse the issue, and exaggerate the one-sided feminist point of view which leaves out of account the class solidarity of workers and women-workers, the indispensable condition of any successful effort by the proletariat. And it follows from this point of view that co-operation with the bourgeois woman’s movement should be refused, whether in the form of admission to “bourgeois” women’s societies or the inclusion of “bourgeois” advocates of women’s rights in women-workers’ societies. Both England and France, Frau Braun thinks, offer examples of the reactionary effect of such co-operation; the numberless work-girls’ clubs, holiday homes and the like, managed by ladies of the upper and middle classes in England are one cause of the political backwardness of the English working women. Co-operation is too apt to degenerate into tutelage. The German women’s movement has steadily refused any co-operation with the bourgeois movement, because it recognises the complete divergence of principle lying at the back of the two movements, and the difference of standpoint as well as of aim.

Not that every Socialist is sound on the woman question! Far from it. Frau Braun recognises that in many a Social democrat there lurks the old reactionary philistine feeling about woman: “Tout pour la femme, mais rien avec elle.” The increase of women’s employment has considerably shaken this conviction in the Trade Unions, because the organisation of women is seen more and more to be a condition of their very existence. But more than this, they need to recognise the vast importance of educating, enlightening the working woman, binding her closer and closer to the Socialist cause. Women have the future destiny of men in their hands. They mould and shape the character of the children. If Socialism can gain the women, it will have the future with it. To bring the women into closer community with the labour movement, to translate their paper equality into living fact, is no fantastic dream; it is part of the obligation of the modern “knights of labour” in the interest of themselves and their cause.

Frau E. Gnauck-KÜhne writes in sympathy with the Catholic Unions of the older type, viz. the “Interkonfessionelle.” Like Frau Braun, she greatly prefers organisation for working women along with men to separate Unions. Separate organisations, she remarks, require double staff, double expenses of book-keeping, finance and secretarial arrangements, and are more costly, not to mention that the women’s wages are so low, the contributions they can make are so small that a sound and effective Union of women only is scarcely possible. Frau Gnauck lays stress on the psychological difficulties of organising women. For ages men have been accustomed to work in common, to subject themselves to discipline; their work brings them into relation with their fellows of the same calling, with their equals. The traditional work of women, on the contrary, has kept them in isolation; the private household was, and is still, a little world in itself, and in this world the woman has no peers—she has as housewife no relation to other housewives, and there is nothing to connect her work at home with the outside world or public matters. She is very slow to perceive the advantages of new methods, labour-saving devices, co-operation and so forth, which might so greatly lessen domestic toil if intelligently applied. With a certain sly humour Frau Gnauck points out that the housewife has no expert criticism to undergo, for her husband is often out the whole day, and understands nothing of housekeeping or the care of children if he were at home. The housewife as worker (not, be it observed, as wife) is in the position of an absolute ruler; she has no one’s opinion to consider but her own, no inspection or control to regard; she is a law unto herself. This habit of mind is not calculated to fit woman for combined action; rather does it tend to promote individualism and a lack of discipline, which hinders concerted effort in small things or in great. This is not to deny that many women are capable of the greatest devotion and sacrifice, even to the point of self-annihilation. The loftiest courage for personal action and self-sacrifice, as Frau Gnauck keenly remarks, is nevertheless in its way an emphasis of individual will and action, a heightening of self, even though for unselfish ends. Concerted action demands a surrender of individuality, the power to find oneself in the ranks with one’s equals. Men are better trained for this kind of corporate action than women normally are. The older women are too much burdened, and continually oppressed with the thought of meeting the week’s expenses, the young ones are indifferent because they expect to get married.

Frau Gnauck, however, refuses to despair even of organising the woman-worker. We must, she says, put ourselves in her place; we must realise that as no man can see over his horizon, we must bring something that the woman worker can see over her horizon, something that will strike her imagination, something that will build a bridge from her over to those large ideas, “class-interest,” “general good,” which so far she has neither time, spirit, nor money enough to understand. She must be drawn at first by the prospect of some small but concrete improvement in her own condition, which will make it seem worth while to give the time and money that the Union wants. Appeal to the feeling all women have for a home of their own. Explain to them in simple language that the Union would prevent underbidding and undercutting, and thus raise men’s wages. More men could marry on these higher wages, married women need not go to work, and both the single woman and the married would benefit.

Frau Gnauck is in agreement with Frau Braun as to the advisability of common organisation, for if the women cannot join the men’s Unions, they are helpless, and if they form a Union of their own, they will probably be too weak to avoid being played off against the men. She takes, on the other hand, a much more favourable view than Frau Braun of the various philanthropic clubs and societies formed by women of a superior class. These organisations do not of course do anything to improve the economic position, they cannot in any way take the place of Trade Unions, but they provide a kind of preparatory stage, a training in association, an opportunity for discussion, and in the present circumstances, with the isolated condition in which working women and girls so often have to live, all these experiences are a means of development and an educational help to more serious organisation later on. This is borne out by Dr. Erdmann,[39] who, whilst opposed to the Catholic Unions as reactionary, admits that even in these Unions the workers soon begin to feel the need of Trade Union organisations, and often end by joining the Socialist Union.

Numbers of Women in Unions—Germany.

The Outlook.—It will be seen from the preceding chapter and section that a general view of women in Unions presents a somewhat ambiguous and contradictory picture. In one industry, cotton, there are in England two large Unions of remarkable strength and effectiveness, in which women are organised with men, and form a majority of the Union. The women cotton weavers and card-room operatives form nearly 70 per cent of all the organised women. In the other textile industries, in the clothing trades, and some others, a comparatively small number of women are organised, either with men, or in branches closely in touch with the men’s Unions, but these Unions are of various degrees of strength, and in no case include a large proportion of the women employed. There are also some women organised in Unions of general labourers and workers, and their numbers have increased rapidly in the last few years, but are not as yet considerable. We also find many small Unions of women only in various occupations, but it is a curious fact that women have so far evolved very little organisation in their most characteristic occupations such as domestic service, nursing, dressmaking and millinery. Unions of some kind in these occupations are not unknown, but they are quite inconsiderable in comparison with the numbers employed. Yet the strategic position of the workers in some of these occupations is in some respects strong. A fairly well-organised strike of London milliners in the first week in May, or of hotel servants and waitresses along the south coast, say about the last week in July, would probably be irresistible. The same applies to women in certain factory processes when the work is a monopoly of women and cannot be done by men’s fingers. Paper-sorting is a typical instance; a paper-sorters’ strike just before the Christmas present season might be highly effective. In such occupations as these, nevertheless, Unionism is mostly conspicuous by its absence.

There is little use in denying that there are special difficulties in the way of the organisation of women. The old difficulty of the hostility of men Unionists is largely a thing of the past, but many others remain. There are difficulties from hostility and indifference on the part of the employers; long hours of work; family ties and duties; educational deficiencies among working women themselves, and the intellectual and moral effects that result from ignorance. An immense difficulty is the low rate of wages characteristic of so many women’s employments, which makes it impossible in most cases to pay contributions sufficient for adequate benefit during a strike. Competition is another difficulty, especially in low-grade and unspecialised trades, where places can easily be filled. There is the constant dread among workers of this class and low-grade home workers that, if they attempt any resistance, some other woman will go behind them and take the work for still less wages. Even collecting contributions is often a considerable difficulty; if it is done at the factory it may subject the collector to disfavour and victimisation; if not, the labour is very considerable. Another great difficulty in organising women is the prospect of marriage. A girl looks upon her industrial career as merely a transition stage to getting married and having a home of her own. This need not in itself hinder her being a “good trade unionist,” for after all the industrial career of a girl, beginning at twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, may well be eight or ten years long, even if she marries young, but it no doubt does tend to deflect her energies and sentiment from Unionism. The prospect of marriage, which to a young man is a steadying influence, making for thrift and for the strengthening of his class by solidarity and corporate action, is to a young girl a distraction from industrial efficiency, an element of uncertainty and disturbance.

Again, the position of women renders them especially amenable to social influences. Social differences between different grades of workers keep them apart from one another and make combination difficult. Women are more susceptible than men to the influence of their social superiors. In the past, and even in the present, though less than formerly, no doubt, the influence of upper class women has been and is used against the Trade Union spirit. Charity and philanthropy have tended to counterbalance the forces that have been drawing the working class together. Miss Collet found in investigating for the Labour Commission that the homes and hostels for the working girls run by religious and benevolent societies had an atmosphere unfavourable to Trade Unionism, and influenced the girls to look coldly on agitation for improved material conditions. Lack of public spirit is, in short, the great difficulty with women. Their economic position, their training and education, the influence of the classes considered superior, above all perhaps the pressure of custom and tradition, all these have combined to prevent or postpone corporate action and class solidarity.

Must we admit that women are inherently incapable of organisation, which by a kind of miracle or chance has been achieved successfully in one district and in one industry only? A further consideration of the Board of Trade figures gives a rather different complexion to the matter.

In the building, mining, metal and transport trades there are practically no women unionists, but with the exception of metal there are only a very few women employed in these trades at all. In the other non-textile trades the proportion of women organised is very small, and the proportion of organised women to organised men is also small. But it happens that in most of these trades the women employed are also few compared with the men, and the men themselves are not strongly organised. In the woollen and worsted trade organisation is not strong for either sex. In cotton alone do we get a really strong organisation of both men and women. It begins to dawn upon us at this point that the weak organisation of women is after all part and parcel of the general problem of organisation in those trades. No doubt it is an extremer and specially difficult form of the problem. But on the whole, with the exception of the metal trades, it holds good that where women are employed together with men, they are strongly organised where men are strongly organised, weak where men are weak. Even in metal trades the exceptions are more apparent than real. The strong Unions are in branches of work that women do not do; and a glance down the list of those metal workers who make the small wares and fittings in which women’s employment is increasing does not reveal any great strength of male Unionism, except perhaps in the brass-workers, who exceeded 7000 in 1910. Directly we realise this intimate connexion of women’s unionism with the Labour Movement as a whole, a light is thrown on many puzzling discrepancies.

In the case of women there have been in the last forty years or so two tendencies at work. One is towards the sporadic growth of small unco-ordinated Unions of women only. Financially weak and in some cases governed by a retrograde policy, numbers of such Unions spring up and die down again. A few achieve some measure of success, and occasionally a very small Union will show a very considerable degree of persistence and vitality without perceptible increase of numbers. Occasionally such Unions are competing with mixed Unions in the same occupation, each of course regarding the other as the intruder. It matters very little who is to be blamed for the overlapping. The only important thing is to recognise that such tactics mean playing into the enemy’s hands, with disastrous results for labour. Apart from such unfortunate instances, it would be foolish to deny that the small Unions of women only have provisionally at least a considerable usefulness. The women must be roped in somehow, and even the most precarious organisation may have a distinct educational value in evoking in its members the germ of a sense of class-solidarity and membership with their fellows. I am almost tempted to say that any force that brings women consciously into association with aims higher than petty and personal ones is ultimately for good, however destructive it may seem to be in some of its manifestations.

The other tendency is towards the organisation of women either jointly with men or in close connexion with men’s Unions. In these cases there have been many failures and some successes. The question of adjustment is highly complicated, and cannot be settled on broad lines as with the cotton weavers. “Equal pay for equal work” is not a ready-made solution for all difficulties, for the work is very often not equal at all. In most cases it is absolutely distinct, and in many there is a troublesome margin where the work of men and women is very nearly the same but not quite.

The men often regard women as unscrupulous competitors, and though they have mostly abandoned the old policy of excluding women, they are apt to try and organise them from their own point of view, without regard to the women’s special interests. Rough measures of this kind only give a further impulse to schism, confusion and bitterness. At present undeniably there is here and there a good deal of ill-feeling, especially in districts like Manchester or Liverpool, with a number of ill-organised, ill-paid trades, and competing unco-ordinated Unions.

If Trade Unionism is to be effective, if membership is to be co-extensive with the trade and compulsory, as in the future we hope it will, there is no question that better methods are needed, greater centralisation, a more carefully thought-out policy, to avoid the present waste and competition.

It is not so much a change of heart as a coherent policy that is needed. The organisation of women has been taken up merely where it was obviously and pressingly needful, in order to safeguard the interests of the men immediately concerned. In the case of the cotton weavers, an altogether special and peculiar class, the problem was comparatively simple. It was of vital importance to the men to get the women in, and on the other hand, the men could do for the women a great deal which at that stage of social development and opinion the women could not possibly have done for themselves. The cotton weavers exhibit an interlocking of interests, so patent and unmistakable that it was not only perceived but acted upon. The card-room operatives lagged behind for a time, the organisation of women being not quite so evident and apparent a necessity, but they have now almost overtaken the weavers. In other industries the problem is more complicated and has taken much longer to grasp. Take the interesting and suggestive industry of paper-making. How is the strongly organised, highly-paid paper-maker to realise that it matters very much that women should be organised in his trade? His daughter may earn pocket-money at paper-sorting, but merely as a temporary employment. She will marry a respectable artisan and abandon work on marriage. The rag-cutters, on the other hand, belong to an altogether different class, being usually wives or widows of labourers. There is not enough class feeling to bind together such different groups. It is true enough that the problem of labour is a problem of class-solidarity, and that the women must in no wise be left out. “Whoever can help to strengthen Trade Unionism among women workers will be conferring a benefit on more than the women themselves.”[40] But the depth and truth of this statement is by no means fully realised, and in many cases women have little chance of being organised by the men of their own trade. As Mr. Cole has told us, the weakness of British labour is the lack of central control and direction.

Outside the special case of the skilled workers in cotton, the organisation of women becomes more and more a question, not of craft, but of class. This is seen in the different form and type of organisation demanded by the “new unionism.” The cotton weavers need in their secretary before all things the closest and minutest acquaintance with the technical mysteries of the craft. The secretary of a modern labour Union including all sorts of heterogeneous workers cannot possibly possess intimate technical knowledge of each. Personality, power of speech, the force and warmth of character that can draw together oppressed and neglected workers and make them feel themselves one, these are the elementary gifts needed to start a workers’ Union, whether of men, women, or both together. But also if such a body is to be kept together and do effective work, it is especially in the “new unionism” that the need of central control and direction is felt. A national policy must take into consideration the needs of women and harmonise their interests with those of men. The success of the Women’s Trade Union League is very largely due, not merely to the personality of its leaders, though no doubt that has been a considerable asset, but to the fact that it has a national policy and a definite aim.

Frau Braun eleven years ago saw that the labour woman ran some danger of being caught into the feminist movement and withdrawn from her natural place as an integral part of the Labour Movement itself. It is to be hoped that she has followed English social history in the interval with sufficient closeness to be aware of the far-sighted statesmanship shown by the leaders of the Trade Union League in avoiding such a pitfall.

However unsatisfactory and inadequate the organisation of women has been and still is, a review of the situation does not suggest any inherent incapacity of women for corporate action. In the cotton weavers’ societies, although the main responsibility for organisation has rested on men’s shoulders, yet the women and girls have consistently paid contributions amounting now to a relatively high figure, and they have constantly aided in the work of recruiting new members. Experience is now showing that in certain districts where the industry is becoming more and more a woman’s trade, the women have not been lacking in capacity to take over the work of managing the Union’s affairs. The absence of women from the Committee of so many weavers’ Unions at the present day is due to inertia and long surviving habit rather than to any real incapacity. In the recent ballot on the question of political action, the enormous proportion of votes recorded shows that a large proportion of women must have used the vote. In many of the small women’s societies in Manchester a working woman is the secretary. In certain cases local Unions of women have been successful, notably the Liverpool upholstresses, the Edmonton ammunition workers and some others. The working woman is in fact beginning to show powers, hitherto unsuspected, of social work and political action. The Insurance Act has demanded women officials as “Sick Visitors” and “Pay Stewards,” and the new duties thrown on the secretaries and committee by that Act are likely to bring about an increasing demand for the participation of women. The rapidly increasing numbers of women in the Shop Assistants’ Union, the movement for a minimum wage in the co-operative factories, the increasing number of women in general labour Unions, all these are hopeful signs of a movement towards unity. The milliner and dressmaker in small establishments and the domestic servant will probably be the last to feel the rising wave. Even of these we need not despair. With the development of postal facilities, easy transit and opportunities for social intercourse, such as we may foresee occurring in the near future, there may be a considerable development of class-consciousness even among the workers among whom it is now most lacking, while the Women’s Co-operative Guild and the Women’s Labour League, in their turn, are finding a way for the association of non-wage-earning women in the working class.

Female Membership of Trade Unions, 1913.