CHAPTER VIII.

_HOME WORK._

[Sidenote: Census figures.]

The table of occupations compiled from the census of 1901 for the first time indicates the number of home workers. For these trades the figures for women are as follows:

+----------------+----------------------------------+-----------+ | _Census | ENGLAND AND WALES. | | | 1901._ +------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | | Unmarried. | Married or | Total. | Total for | | | | Widowed. | | Scotland. | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Paper | 9 | 10 | 19 | 0 | | manufacture | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Paper | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | | stainers | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Stationery | 37 | 25 | 62 | 0 | | manufacture | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Envelope | 27 | 42 | 69 | 4 | | makers | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Paper box (a) | 524 | 1,153 | 1,677 | 36 | | and paper bag | | | | | | makers | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Other workers | 54 | 52 | 106 | 2 | | in paper, | | | | | | etc. | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Printers | 73 | 46 | 119 | 2 | | [? folders] | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Lithographers, | 18 | 12 | 30 | 0 | | copper | | | | | | and steel | | | | | | plate | | | | | | printers | | | | | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Bookbinders | 129 | 145 | 274 | 9 | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ | Typecutter | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | +----------------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+ (a) Paper box making was not investigated.

It is always difficult to trace out the home worker, and the information we obtained was collected through communication with School Board officers, Charity Organisation Society secretaries, district nurses, sanitary inspectors, and workpeople. The groups of trades investigated are mainly factory and workshop trades, and are becoming more so. Home work is not so prevalent in them as it used to be, and it is now somewhat difficult to trace its effects in its present decayed importance.

[Sidenote: Home work drawbacks.]

There used to be a good deal of home work in these trades, but the growth of large firms and the introduction of machinery[82] have discouraged it.[83] The material is very heavy and sometimes costly, and has to be carefully handled. It is therefore difficult to move from workshop to dwelling-place; and when handled in kitchens or other living rooms it runs a great risk of being stained and spoiled. The home workers find some of their own material, _e.g._, paste and brushes for bag making, and they save light and rent for employers; but, on the other hand, they are apt "to send back their work with the mark of teacups upon it," or spoiled in some other way, and it is difficult to get them to return it punctually. So in these trades, home work really does not pay.

[Footnote 82: This seems to be specially the case in the provinces.]

[Footnote 83: One of the home workers (also workshop worker) visited said, "Home work is given less and less and is difficult to get now. Only three work at it--old hands--and they are going to stop it altogether, perhaps." Another investigator reports of machine-ruling in Scotland: "Two elderly women who worked a paper-ruling machine in their kitchen. They had been at the work for thirty years, having been taught by their father, and have carried on the business since his death. The father had a good business, and they can make their living by it, but say the work has sadly fallen off. They get enough orders to keep them going, and when very busy employ a girl occasionally to help them. 'It is useless to try to compete with the new machines they have nowadays. What used to be given to us at 2_s._ 6_d._, can now be turned out by the machines for 1_s._ 6_d._ We couldn't afford to do it at those rates.'" _Cf._ Appendix V.]

The Trade Unions prohibit home work when they are able to detect it. There is, generally, a healthy feeling opposed to this method of employment, and firms deny practising it.

[Sidenote: Home work processes.]

Home work is now mainly confined to book and paper folding, sewing printed matter, black bordering and folding envelopes, making paper bags, and designing and painting Christmas cards which is done at home not so much because employers encourage it, but because it is undertaken by a class of women indisposed to enter a workshop. The folding is mostly of cheap printed matter like popular almanacs and other street literature. Also, a good deal of folding thin paper Bibles and prayer books is done at home.

Some paper staining is also done in living rooms by workpeople, but the practice is less common than it was. "One paper colourer, a married woman, whom we saw, told us that her mother worked at the trade before her at home, and when she herself was a baby her cradle was rocked on the colouring board. 'Many was the night' that she sat up as a child helping her mother to do the work. She certainly throve on it and seemed immensely proud of her industrial career."

[Sidenote: The home worker.]

What home work is still done is given mainly to women employed in the workshop during the day, and is therefore illegal.[84] In addition, women who have married whilst working in certain firms, or widows of men who have been workmen in these trades, keep up old connections by occasional--if not systematic--home work. But as it hardly pays the employer to avail himself regularly of domestic workers, the work now done at home is chiefly given out to meet a temporary pressure of demand, and would practically disappear if these exceptional pressures did not take place.

[Footnote 84: The wording of the section (31 (2)) of the Act, however, makes it difficult to enforce.]

[Sidenote: Paper-bag making.]

The making of paper bags is, of this group of trades, most extensively and systematically practised as a home industry. This is particularly the case in the neighbourhood of busy street markets, such as are found in South London. The work is mostly done by married women of a rough class, as a supplement to their husbands' wages.[85] Reporting upon one such worker an investigator says: "Mrs. ---- is one of nine daughters, and seven are paper-bag makers. All her cousins, aunts and relations-in-law have taken it up.... A niece of hers was consumptive and could not earn her living, but she was fond of dress. Mrs. ---- taught her paper-bag making and she soon earned 8_s._ or 9_s._ a week." The profit which yielded this income is stated to be 6_d._ or 7_d._ per thousand bags. Many women who occasionally work at paper-bag making only do so to earn a particular sum of money of which they are in need--say 10_s._ When that is earned they cease work. Such is the casual nature of the employment and the disorganised state of the labour employed in it.

[Footnote 85: "In nearly all the cases that Mrs. ---- (an employing bag maker in the Borough) knows there are bad husbands. Mrs. ---- is in the trade herself to supplement her husband's earnings because she has nine children and he cannot earn enough to keep them in comfort."]

[Sidenote: The homes.]

The practically unanimous report of the investigators is that these home workers' home conditions are of the very worst. "A very squalid and evil-smelling slum:" "Very poor and miserable house shared by others," are typical descriptions of the dwellings to which the home work investigations led us.