Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study.

CHAPTER V.

Chapter 65,047 wordsPublic domain

_INDUSTRIAL TRAINING._

1. THE TRAINING.

[Sidenote: How girls are taught.]

At the present moment such training as is given generally begins in the workshops so soon as the girl has left school.[53] Girls are, in the best houses, employed on the recommendation of workers already there. Much of the work, such as folding, is merely a matter of mechanical quickness and accuracy, and after a few weeks' practice the girl is as useful as she is ever likely to have an opportunity to be. A great deal of the work women do in stationery factories (such as stamping, black bordering, numbering pages) is of a routine nature, and this work is generally paid by the piece. For such departments, no premium is asked as a rule.[54] Sometimes the beginner is paid a small wage--2_s._ 6_d._ or thereabouts--to encourage her at first. Sometimes she works a few weeks for nothing.[55] Sometimes she has to pay a tuition fee to the woman under whose charge she is put. Sometimes this woman gives her a small sum as a gift in respect of the help she renders. Some firms make the training period fairly long, in order that it may be impossible for the lower class of girls to accept the conditions of employment. By-and-by the learner is paid half of what she earns, and finally she is put on regular piecework, her advancement depending on her nimbleness. If she is in a large house she is only taught one process, but if quick, and employed in a smaller house, she may be taught several. In almost every instance she is put upon piecework as soon as possible after she begins. In an overwhelming number of cases the beginners are simply placed beside a regular hand, and pick up their skill by watching the old hand and then turning and doing it themselves. The girl who "picked up vellum-sewing and wire-stitching" whilst engaged as a folder, and she who was transferred from tie-making to stitching and folding, are types. The phrase "serving her time" survives, but the apprenticeship which is indicated hardly now exists.

[Footnote 53: "A boy learns nothing after fifteen, a girl after fourteen," is the way one employer puts it.]

[Footnote 54: Very few premiums are reported upon. In one case it was said that £10 were asked as a premium in relief stamping, but the informant admitted that the sum varied; in another well-known stationery firm a premium of £2 is asked for, but is returned with 5 per cent. interest at the end of three years. The premiums of £50 or £100 charged by certain bookbinding teachers are of course quite special.]

[Footnote 55: LEADING LONDON HIGH-CLASS STATIONERY FIRM:--_Paging Department._--Girls come for a few months for nothing, _i.e._ six months, no premium. They go on getting quicker.

_Lithographic Department._

Girls come in and pick it up: show one another how to do it.

_Vellum-binding Department._

Girls come for three years and are paid 5_s._ per week.

LEADING EDUCATIONAL SUPPLY FIRM:

_Copybook and similar Work._

"Has several little girls running about on errands for a few shillings a week, and if any of them seem promising they are helped on. Training nothing like what it used to be; girls learn only one branch."

LARGE LONDON PRINTING FIRM:--_Vellum-sewing Department._

"Regular apprenticeship still the system here." Three years given as the period for training and during this time no wages are paid. Girls come straight from school.

_Folding, etc., Department._

"No regular apprenticeship. Girls come in and pick it up; if quick they are taught other branches, like numbering, relief stamping, etc."

LONDON STATIONERY FIRM:

_Envelope Folding and Hand-cementing Department._

"Girls are put under an experienced party to whom they pay 10_s._ For six weeks, they receive nothing. For next six weeks they receive half earnings, then they are put on piecework."

_Black Bordering._

"A regular hand teaches and gets any benefit of the work during six months in return for the time she wastes in teaching." This practice is also adopted in some firms in envelope folding by hand.

LONDON PUBLISHING FIRM:

_Bookbinding Department._

"System of indenture has just been revived because it was found that otherwise the firm had no hold over the girls, so that the quick ones as soon as they had learnt went off elsewhere as full earners." Indenture for two years.

An ex-forewoman in bookbinding, who knew the London trade well, stated that much less trouble is taken with learners now than formerly. In her own case she was apprenticed without indentures for two years, and learned "all the branches right through," old work included.

Another forewoman in work stated she was in training for four years: two years at bookbinding, one year at vellum work, and one year at stationery.]

Of the firms about which we have information for bookwork and printers' folding, seven require a three years' training; twenty, two years; thirty-three, one and a half years; nineteen, one year; two, fifteen months; and seven, periods under a year. Eleven firms have no settled apprenticeship time, advancement depending entirely on the quickness of the learner. In places where gold laying-on is done the same time is usually served as for the other branches, _i.e._, from a few weeks to three years. In the case of vellum work, seven firms require three years; eight, two years; three, one and a half years; one, one and a half to two years; two, six months; and eight, no settled time.

In some of these firms, however, a genuine attempt to teach apprentices is made;[56] and in at least one large and well-known London house the system of indenture has been revived, owing to the difficulty which was experienced in retaining girls after they became competent. On the other hand, several well-known firms have ceased to employ learners because they are too troublesome, and depend upon women trained elsewhere. But we have found that in only a very few cases is the beginner, whether an apprentice or not, thoroughly taught every process of her trade. She is generally put to one process and kept at it, so that the mechanical dexterity she may acquire is in no sense genuine trade skill.[57] This distinction between trade skill and mechanical dexterity in one process must be kept in mind as a fundamental consideration in every problem concerning the woman wage-earner.

[Footnote 56: Apprenticeship is still common in vellum-sewing where skill and intelligence are required, and in places where women are doing more than supplementary work, _e.g._ Edinburgh, a regular period of training varying from two to four years is agreed upon. Apprenticeship seems to be most common in Scotland. In London our investigation into vellum work, printers' folding, and bookwork only discovered seven indentured women apprentices, two of these being engaged in vellum work. Curiously enough in paper-staining firms, although the processes are practically unskilled, indentures are signed for two years; the girl receives 4_s._ a week for the first year and a portion of her piece earnings for the second year. At the end of two years she is a full wage-earner and is paid by piece rates. What her earnings are it is difficult to discover; 12_s._ 6_d._ was given as an average, but this is probably too high. It is reported that she may make 6_d._ in less than an hour when the colours are mixed and she is finishing a job, whereas next day she will spend the whole morning before she earns her 6_d._]

[Footnote 57: _E.g._, one of the large stationery firms in London reports regarding machine ruling: "Girls come in and feed the machinery, and afterwards rise to wet the flannel. They never mind the machines, _e.g._, arrange pens and so on." Another interesting note is, "Men nearly always do illuminating, _e.g._, stamping crests, etc., in more than one colour, on notepaper, as the process requires more skill than women possess. If the women did it, the ladies would not like their notepaper." An employer defended the employment of women on the grounds of his own experience of one woman who "had been working at a secret process for years, and there is no fear of the secret being betrayed as she is without understanding or interest for the machine."]

The question of how much a girl learns during her time is a vital one. Much depends on the forewoman. As one of the workers put it, "How much you learn depends on the forelady, and whether she takes a fancy to you; some girls will have a turn at everything, others only learn sewing or folding. Dress makes a great difference; the poorer you are, the less chance you have of getting on."

The obverse of this from the forewoman's point of view is that "girls if quick are taught all branches, but with some girls it is all you can do to teach them one." It seems the general opinion amongst all the older hands that the "training is not what it used to be;" and, certainly, the few instances we have come across of women who can do bookwork, vellum work, and also stationery work, are amongst the older hands. The complaint, however, that the trade was not properly taught, occurs in the evidence given to the Commission of 1843, when it seemed to be one of the principal grievances complained of. Masters, it was said by one worker, often took girls, pretended to teach them, and discharged them at the end of their time, when they had to go elsewhere to learn. Three girls gave evidence that they were tricked into serving from three to eight months for nothing, and came away no wiser. At another shop the employer expatiated on the thoroughness of the training offered by him; but seven of his journeywomen, aged nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, and sixteen, declared indignantly that they had not learnt their business thoroughly, and would never have gone to him if they had known his methods. The truth apparently is that in 1843, as to-day, some firms are better for apprentices than others, and that a generation ago a good firm doing general work offered better opportunities for training than good firms conducted under up-to-date conditions can now give.

The following table shows the changes that have been made in the conditions of apprenticeship by certain leading London firms.

[Footnote 58: This information was procured in 1901.]

The important point, however, is not so much the nominal length of apprenticeship, but the fact that the work which an "apprentice" now does is less educative than it was, and that wage-earning considerations now enter at an earlier stage into the apprentice's thoughts.

[Sidenote: The learner as workwoman.]

The low wages paid to learners offer great temptations to employers to set these extra cheap workgirls upon certain "fat" kinds of work. Some kinds of work, _e.g._, gathering, have thus come to be regarded as learners' perquisites, and in one extreme instance a worker made as much money when a learner on half pay as she did subsequently on whole pay.[59]

[Footnote 59: These figures from typical houses showing proportions of learners and journeywomen are interesting:--

Workers. Learners. A. 75 14 B. 87 19 C. 7 3 D. 8 3 E. 12 11 F. 26 20

These houses are engaged in various kinds of bookbinding and printing.]

In several cases we have been able to trace the exact amount gained by the employer:--

1. A. in the last sixteen weeks of her half-pay period made £3 18_s._ 6_d._, an average of 4_s._ 10¾ _d._ per week. For the next sixteen weeks, when a full hand, her average was 9_s._ 8_d._

2. B. in twenty-three weeks before she became a full hand made £4 9_s._ 10_d._, or an average of 3_s._ 10¾ _d._ per week. During the next twenty-three weeks her average was 7_s._ 0½_d._, a few pence less than double.

3. C. in fifty-one weeks made £15 5_s._ 4½_d._, practically 6_s._ per week; if on full wage, her average would have been 11_s._ 11½_d._

4. D. in thirty-seven weeks made £10 19_s._ 5½_d._, practically 6_s._ per week; if on full wage her average would have been 11_s._ 10½_d._

5. E. in forty-seven weeks made £14 9_s._ 4½_d._, or 6_s._ 2_d._ per week; if on full pay her average would have been 12_s._ 3¾ _d._

6. F. in forty-three weeks made £12 12_s._ 3_d._, 5_s._ 1½_d._ per week; if on full pay her earnings would have been 11_s._ 8¾ _d._

It is obvious that when a worker is sufficiently expert to make an average of 11_s._ or 12_s._ on full pay, it is a great temptation to save on the bills by giving her as much work as possible at half-price. The employer looks upon this profit as the return made to him for teaching the girl, or, to speak more correctly, for allowing her to pick up the trade in his shop. It really means that a heavy premium is being paid in instalments. Possibly, when small fixed wages are paid, the employer's profits are even higher, but in that case the learner has not that temptation to sacrifice quality to quantity, and to be content with "slapdash" work which is the inevitable consequence of a piecework system worked under such conditions, and which is specially injurious to the young hands.

[Sidenote: Compositors.]

The training given to women compositors varies very much. As is well known, boys are apprenticed to this trade for seven years at wages which usually begin at 8_s._ a week, and rise 2_s._ a year. In some cases, however, a proportion of their piece-rate earning is given in addition.

When Miss Faithfull started the Victoria Press, girls were indentured for four years, and paid a premium of ten guineas. During the first six months they received nothing; for the remaining three and a half years they were given two-third piece rates. By 1869, when Mr. Head was running the business, this system had been changed. In an article in the _Printers' Register_ for October 6th, 1869, we read that at the Victoria Press, apprenticeship, "a relic of the ignorance and shortsightedness of our forefathers, which is maintained in our own day chiefly by the prejudices of Trades Unions, is entirely abolished. Girls begin to earn at once," with the consequence that the work is much better. The Women's Printing Society started with an apprenticeship of three or four years, the wages rising from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 10_s._

At the present time the training varies in different houses, from one where the girls are regularly indentured for four years, pay a premium of £5, and receive 4_s._ for the first year and 5_s._, 6_s._, 7_s._ a week in the ensuing years, to one where, with a premium of three guineas, the training lasts for three months only, and the worker is put on piecework after that period.

Two women compositors who had served for four years gave it as their opinion that two years were sufficient to learn; during the remaining years "you are expected to do as much as a full hand and get only half wages."

It is obvious, however, that much depends on the amount of work taught, and the complaint is reiterated over and over again that girls will only learn the easy, plain work: "they want to make money at once."

[Sidenote: Women and technical classes.]

Enquiries were addressed to the Secretaries of Technical Education Committees in every town in the kingdom where the printing and kindred trades are of any importance, asking--

"1. Whether, in connection with your technical and other schools, any provision is made for the training of women in the bookbinding or in any of the printing or stationery trades;

"2. Whether the classes have been attended by any numbers of women; and

"3. Whether you have received at any time from employers statements showing the effect of such classes upon these trades?"

Seventeen replied that no provisions were made, six that the matter was under consideration, but only in one case was it stated that classes had been opened, and then the women had not taken advantage of them. The London County Council Technical Education Board has had only one application (to which it could not accede [60]) from a woman who desired to attend bookbinding classes.

[Footnote 60: The woman was an amateur who had no connection with the trade, and the Board refused admission on that ground. See this Board's Special Report on Technical Instruction of Women.]

This shows that in these trades the school, so far as women are concerned, has not yet been brought into contact with the workshop. Nominally the classes are open to women actually engaged in the trade, but women do not attend. This seems to be partly owing to the attitude of the men, and partly owing to the lack of interest on the part of the woman worker in the few facilities afforded to her by Technical Education Committees.

The Home Arts and Crafts Association and kindred movements have taught women amateurs bookbinding and leather work in a good many centres, but this training has had no general industrial effect. The Association for the Employment of Women has offered facilities for the training of women in working the linotype, but it has met with but scanty response. "It is work which needed more skill," said one employer, "than women possessed."[61]

[Footnote 61: We have heard since this was written that women are employed on linotype machines in a prosperous provincial newspaper and general printing office.]

Here again we have had evidence of the most conclusive nature to show that the work of women is special in its simplicity, and that the craftswoman is hardly to be found anywhere. And they seem to have accepted the position, and make no attempt to move out of it.[62]

[Footnote 62: This note is typical of a good many which occur in the reports of the investigators. "There are two girls now on the black-bordering machine whom the forewoman has offered to teach to place out by hand, but they won't learn it; it is too much trouble."]

2. WHY WOMEN DO NOT TRAIN.

Some explanation is required for the fact that women have so little ambition to become skilled, especially seeing that their lack of technical knowledge and their willingness to remain at work which is merely mechanical, _i.e._, folding, etc., explain their low wages, casual employment, and careless organisation.

[Sidenote: Marriage as an industrial influence.]

The physiological differences between men and women have sociological results. These differences have no doubt been exaggerated and emphasised by traditions of propriety, and the change of opinion indicated generally by the expression, "the woman movement," has done a great deal to bring down those differences to their natural proportions and relations. If certain claims of equality, such as women's suffrage, were generally accepted, men and women might tend to occupy a much more equal industrial status. But when all false emphasis and exaggeration have been removed, a considerable residuum of difference must remain.

The special status of the married woman will no doubt survive all readjustment of traditional modes of thought, and will tend to withdraw her mind from the steady pursuit of industrial efficiency, because she will never consider wage earning to be her special task in the world. That has tempted her hitherto to steer off from the currents in the mid-stream of industrial life, and float upon those that flow more sluggishly by the margin. Hence she has entered industry, not with expectations of long employment, but with hopes of a speedy release, and she has therefore been in haste to earn money at once, and unwilling to sink capital (either in time or money) in making herself efficient. She is found in the more mechanical and more easily acquired branches of work, and also in those which provide no future for men,[63] and her willingness to take low wages has been her great protection against competing machinery. She has preferred to remain incompetent. "Out of twenty-six girls," is the report from the manager of a well-known firm for high-class artistic bookbinding, "not one could he trust as a forewoman."

[Footnote 63: An interesting illustration of this is afforded by the recent employment of women in typefounding in London. London has not been a place where women were much employed in this industry. For twenty or thirty years girls have been employed in Edinburgh typefoundries, at certain processes through which the type, when cast, has to go, but they have been introduced only within the last year or two in London, to take the place of boys who could not be got because the work offers no very satisfactory prospects for them, and because the introduction of the linotype and mono-type threatens the future of the typefounding industry. _Cf._ Aberdeen, p. 47, Manchester and Birmingham, p. 50.]

[Sidenote: The lack of openings and ambition.]

Moreover, this enquiry has shown that there is but little chance for women in these trades to improve themselves. Openings for responsible employment are few, and the ambition of the woman is not stirred by the possibility of material improvement as the reward of skill and industry. When responsible places become vacant, it is sometimes difficult to get women to consent to fill them. They seem to have little of that divine discontent which is the mainspring of progress. "They never ask for a rise as a man would, ... though after a time when they are useful, the firm would be quite willing to give one." "He finds that girls want to earn a certain wage. As a rule they will not take less, and they don't trouble to earn more." A Manchester correspondent reports: "There is very little chance of rising, and no particular desire for it, on the part of the ordinary girl, whose main aspirations are otherwise directed."

Reporting generally on her enquiries, an investigator writes: "The progressive young woman, eager to show that she is man's equal and can do man's work, seems to be a product of the middle classes. I never met girls with ambitions of that sort among the employees I talked with. On the other hand, I have met with cutting reproofs from forewomen and others in the bookbinding houses when I tried, in my innocence, to find out why they did not turn their hands to simple and easy processes which were being done by men. 'Why, that is man's work, and we shouldn't think of doing it!' is the usual answer given with a toss of the head and a tone insinuating that there is a certain indelicacy in the question." Another investigator reports: "In a paper-staining department an attempt was once made to have a forewoman instead of a foreman over the girls, but she was not successful in watching the colours and had to be replaced by a man. The employer in consequence came to the conclusion that such a feat was beyond a woman's power, and the workers themselves are of the same opinion and scorn the idea of a forewoman."

[Sidenote: Sex reputation.]

Women in slowly increasing numbers seem to be settling down to a thorough industrial training, but except when they start businesses of their own, the general reputation of woman as workers, especially their liability to marry and leave, must permanently handicap the most efficient in search of employment.

Even the woman who has paid a premium of £50 or £100 for thorough instruction in the art of bookbinding is warned that "a worker cannot be taken on anywhere, but has to set up on her own account," and even then she often does not enter the regular open competitive market, but attaches certain customers to herself, owing to her special work.

The exceptional woman will always have to bear the burden of the average woman.

The questions put to employers upon this point received very emphatic replies: "It does not pay us to train women," they said in some form or another; "We only want them for simple processes such as folding, and if we tried to make them skilled in more complicated work they would leave us before we got the same return for our trouble as we get from men."

[Sidenote: Physique, hours, etc.]

The low standard of women's living also diminishes their stamina and strength, and though in the course of this enquiry we have not discovered any very serious complaint that women were irregular at their work owing to ill-health (a common complaint against women in offices), yet the drawback has been mentioned.

Moreover, it must be noted that when a girl's work in the workshop is finished she has often to go home to commence a new round of domestic tasks from which a boy is exempted. This aggravates the seriousness of her long hours of mechanical work as a wage-earner, and increases the difficulties placed in her way should she desire to attend evening technical classes. The directors of several educational institutions and the teachers of technical classes for women have strongly urged this point upon us.

We have to face the fact that, for various reasons, in modern industrial society there is of necessity a tendency to specialise the work of men and women and centre the one in the workshop and the other in the home, and to incline women to take a place in industry second to their male relations. Hence, in the workshop women have hitherto been adjuncts to machines; they have taken up simple mechanical processes, and have shown little interest in complete series of industrial operations. They have picked up the arts, but have shunned the sciences. The factory and the workshop have been to them the scenes of "meanwhile" employment.

[Sidenote: Gentility in trade.]

In such circumstances one is not surprised to find such considerations as conventional gentility determining the branches of trade taken up by the women. The printing trades generally do not attract the most genteel girls, but there are grades within them. One informant says, "In Manchester, up to 1870, to be a folder was looked upon as being next door to being on the streets;" but now folders look down upon feeders. "Folding and sewing girls look down on the machine girls tremendously, and would not sit at the same table with them for anything." Perhaps the manager who said in a shocked tone of voice that "The women never care to talk of the Sunday's sermon" was hypercritical, but undoubtedly certain sections of these trades are staffed by rather rough specimens of women.

Then again, a folder, despised herself by those above her, is reported to "look down upon the litho and bronzing girls. They are of the very lowest class (she says), with hardly a shoe on their feet. They are on quite a different floor and have nothing to do with the folders." Or again, for reasons of gentility, girls prefer to become book-folders, where the hours are longer and the pay lower, rather than to become paper-bag makers. The distinction between these various sections is not similar to that between skilled and unskilled labour. The simple explanation is that amongst women engaged in industry convention is particularly potent in determining what trades are desirable and proper and what are not, so that when certain employments acquire a reputation for gentility, the others will be filled by a goodly proportion of unassorted girls, and will ultimately acquire characteristics which appear to justify the feminine prejudices against them. It has been suggested that these notions of gentility have, as a matter of fact, a deeper significance, and that the favoured trades are the lighter ones. To some extent this is true. The heavier employments are staffed by a rougher class of women. But, as in the case of the Manchester folders cited above, fashions change, and we must recognise that reputation for gentility is a very important factor in determining the distribution of character amongst the trades. This appears to be the main reason why high wages do not always attract the better class of girls to certain kinds of employment, and also why there is a reluctance on the part of many self-respecting girls to enter a course of industrial training.