CHAPTER II

WORKERS IN FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS

Wherein factory workers are better off than home workers—Life on five to ten shillings a week—Health—Ancillary processes—Paper bags—Packers—Case of a cocoa filler—Of a cartridge filler—Jam fillers—Pay sheets of confectionery workers—Observations of an uninstructed observer—Slack times—Long hours—Some cases—“Emergency” processes—Discomforts—Some cases—Danger of fire—Lead poisoning—Instances—Washing appliances—Extremes of temperature—Fines and deductions—Divergent views of two employers upon fines—“Earned too much”—Summary.

The poorer class of workers in factories and workshops are financially little better off—if, indeed, better off at all—than the poorer sort of home workers; but they have some other advantages. Their hours and conditions are in some degree regulated, and at least some degree of change and variety enters into their lives. But for them too existence is a hard battle. Upon a wage of from five to ten shillings a week life cannot but be narrow and stinted. Food, clothing, and lodging must all be of the poorest; an omnibus fare, a halfpenny newspaper, a penny stamp are luxuries in which only the thriftless indulge; and good health, as the middle class man or woman knows it, is a treasure seldom enjoyed. There is, indeed, no fact more painfully forced upon the middle class observer who becomes intimately acquainted with ill paid workers than the frequency with which they succumb to ailments that would be regarded in the observer’s own circle as trifling. Many girls injure themselves permanently by going to work when they are actually seriously ill. To stay away means loss of pay and possibly loss of employment, so they hold out to the last gasp.

Many of the worst paid workers are engaged in various processes that facilitate buying and selling, rather than in actual manufacture. The paper-bags into which a civil shop assistant so obligingly pops our small purchases are given nominally without charge to us, and are bought in very large quantities at a very low rate by the shopkeeper, their real cost being paid in flesh and blood by the women who make them. Some of these women, as appears in the previous chapter, work at home; some, possibly, in well-appointed workshops, but many, as the women factory inspectors truly observe, “in the poorest kind of workshop, badly lighted, ventilated, and heated. To these conditions, no doubt, the weak, inflamed eyes so often seen among the workers are due, at least partly. The workers themselves attribute it to the strain involved in counting over the bags.”[6] This remark shows us that the simple and time-saving plan of weighing instead of counting (which is employed for wares so valuable as those of the Royal Mint) is not in use in paper-bag manufactories. Packing of various kinds occupies vast numbers of women and girls, most of whom are paid at low rates, by the dozen or the gross, and some of whom attain a celerity almost incredible. No foreman in the world can drive so hard as her own low wage drives the piece worker who has to support herself and, often enough, to help to support relatives. The most worn-out girl whom I remember ever to have seen was engaged upon no harder task than the packing of cocoa. My attention was called to her, in a room full of girls, by her ghastly appearance. She may have been eighteen or nineteen; she was absolutely colourless, and although there was no sign about her of any specific illness, seemed exhausted literally almost to death. She sat day after day pouring powdered cocoa into ready made square paper packets, of which she then folded down the tops and pasted on the wrappers. She received a halfpenny for every gross. In the week previous to that in which I saw her she had earned 7s. Each shilling represented 24 gross of packets; she had therefore filled, folded and pasted, in the week, 188 gross, or 21,792 packets. Her mother, who was present, said that the drive was killing her and that she must leave. The cocoa was of a brand well known in its day and sold in good shops, but the firm has now, I believe, disappeared. Would that its methods had disappeared with it.[7]

Tea packers and jam fillers often receive wages barely higher. Girls whom I have known personally have been paid at the following rates for filling pots with boiling jam or marmalade: 11 lb. pots (in four trays of thirty-six pots), 2d. per gross; 2 lb. jars (in six trays of twenty-four jars) or 3 lb. jars (in nine trays of sixteen jars), 2½d. per gross. Two girls worked together, and my informant reckoned that the pair could fill a gross of the largest size in about half an hour. This would bring the wages of each to the comparatively magnificent figure of 2½d. an hour, or over 11s. a week. In some factories these heavy trays have to be lifted and stacked by the girls, the weight of the jars being added to that of the contents.

I was fortunate enough, some years ago, to obtain possession of a number of “pay sheets” showing the wages received in two consecutive weeks by girls employed in a large London confectionery factory. For the first week I had 107 sheets; for the second 98. Five sheets in the first week and ten in the second were left out of my reckoning as probably not representing a full week’s work; in each of these the total was below 4s. The highest net payment (there was a deduction for a compulsory sick club) was, in the first week, 15s. 9½d.; in the second, 16s. 1½d. The girls who received these wages (both well known to me) were superior young women of from 22 to 25 years old; both helped to support widowed mothers with younger children. There were, in the first week, 20 girls, and in the second 24, who received from 10s. to 16s., and most of them came much nearer to the lower than to the higher figure. In the first week 78, and in the second 64, received from 5s. to 10s. (57 out of the 78, and 49 out of the 64 earning less than 8s.); while in the first week 9, and in the second week 10, received from 4s. to 5s. Two-thirds, therefore, of the whole 190 sheets (excluding 15, which showed less than 4s. received) testified to a net weekly wage of less than 10s.—the average being a fraction over 7s. 6d. a week. Yet so easy is it for the inexperienced enquirer to be misled that a lady actually published an account of this very factory, in which she assured the public of wages “rising steadily to 18s. a week,” and declared that a girl, “if she ultimately becomes a piece worker, may make as much as 24s. to 25s. a week.” This lady was evidently not aware that piece work is not a state “ultimately attained,” but the usual system throughout the establishment. Nearly all—probably, indeed, every one—of those 190 pay sheets represented piece work wages. Upon the basis of this illusory wage of 24s. and upwards the writer proceeded to compare the payment of confectionery “hands” with that of High School mistresses, forgetting, however, to compare the hours of a school with those of a factory, or to deduct those slack seasons to which the confectionery trade is so sadly liable. A High School mistress, moreover, works forty weeks in the year and is paid by the year; a confectionery worker often works for less than forty weeks in the year, and since she is paid by the week her blank weeks are blank to her exchequer, so that even if she did earn £1 a week (which she does not) she would not earn £52 a year. Seasonality—the word is so useful that it must be admitted—though it falls one degree less heavily upon the factory worker than upon the worker at home, is to her too a terrible evil. The long “slack times” of the West-End tailor or tailoress reduce a wage that looks handsome in a pay sheet of May or June to a very meagre annual income; and many a West End dressmaker who has worked overtime—as often as not without extra pay—through the long hot evenings of the London season finds herself, in January or February, shivering, without work or pay, beside her own empty grate.

Long hours, which are in effect one form of low wages, have been checked by the Factory Acts, but not yet ended. The inspector for West London writes: “The Jew tailor of West London has an idea that seven days a week is not too long to work his hands.”[8]

From Birmingham a case is reported of a Christmas card maker, who had already been cautioned for keeping “female young persons,” _i.e._ girls under eighteen, at work till 9 of an evening. He was found to be keeping two women and a girl at work till 6.15 on Saturday, a day on which work should, by law, end early, and was said to be keeping his hands at work on Sundays also—a privilege which the law allows only to the laundry proprietor. “On the succeeding Sunday,” writes the inspector, “the place was inspected, but with difficulty. It was only after considerable delay that admittance was obtained, and then, although the place had every appearance that work had been going on, no females were found. The upper parts of the premises were in use as residence, and I had reason to think that women had been sent up there upon my arrival, but the occupier would not allow me to go up. It has subsequently been admitted that eight women and two female young persons were at work and hidden as suspected.”[9]

That such cases would be not the exception, but the rule, if there were no legal prohibition and no fear of fines, may be judged by the state of things actually existing in laundries, where, although the law allows the monstrous stretch of 14 consecutive hours of work, the permitted hours are frequently exceeded. The report of the lady inspectors contains a significant paragraph on this subject. “The hours worked in London laundries by women and girls,” says Miss Vines, “seem to be increasing in length, and to be more excessive than ever.... The firm I prosecuted in February had employed several young women, one of them only 17 years of age, for 28 consecutive hours, from 8 A.M. on Friday till 12, midday, on Saturday; while their hours, including meals on the previous days of the week, had numbered 14 on Thursday, 12 on Wednesday and Tuesday, and 11 on Monday. The 28 hours’ period included 2½ hours’ interval during the night, when the girls were permitted to lie on the floor of the calendar-room with their coats for pillows ‘for a rest!’ I prosecuted the other firm twice in June, and on the second occasion it was proved at the hearing of the case that an ironer had been employed for 37 consecutive hours, including meal times and short breaks, and another, an ironer and calendar worker, 32½ hours ... 14 days previously I had taken proceedings against the same firm.... It was then proved that, in one week, a young packer had been employed by them, exclusive of meal hours and absence of work, for 73½ hours; and two girls, aged respectively 16 and 17, for 68½ hours.”[10]

Very similar results ensue in the jam-making industry, where, on the pretext of emergency, the law permits the working of prolonged hours. “In more than one case,” writes the inspector, “I have found emergency created by the simple expedient of allowing fruit to lie untouched at the factory till the close of the normal working day, when workers from all departments were turned on to it.”[11]

It must be remembered that, in the case of workers paid by the day, as is usual in dressmaking establishments, and in some departments of laundry work, there is frequently no extra payment made for overtime. I have indeed heard a West-End working woman declare that overtime would cease if the law made payment for it compulsory; and although that assertion was much too sweeping, the experience of strong trade unions shows that when employers are compelled to pay at a higher rate for overtime, that necessity for overtime of which so much is heard whenever the Factory Acts are under discussion, does diminish in a very remarkable manner. Meanwhile, the law does its best to make undue hours of work costly by prosecuting persistent offenders. In 1905 the fines inflicted in the North-Western district of England alone, for illegal overtime, amounted to no less than £728, 4s. 0d., and the accompanying costs to £627, 16s. 0d.; and this in spite of the fact that magistrates in certain localities are decidedly hostile, and inflict derisory penalties. When we further reflect that the North-Western district contains both a large number of highly-organised workers, ready to complain of any breach of law, and also a large number of exceedingly enlightened employers who believe long hours to be inimical to their own true interests, we may fairly infer that there are other districts in which things are considerably worse, and in which the inspectors, zealous though they are, fail to discover all or nearly all the offenders.

Sanitary conditions are still sometimes far from satisfactory, although greatly bettered of late years. There is perhaps no point upon which the influence of women inspectors has been more beneficial. A case is reported to me, by a most trustworthy witness, of a box factory, where “women and men worked together in a room in which was the lavatory, with seldom a flush of water.” The same witness reports another case, in a rope factory employing both men and women, the details of which are so repulsive, that it is impossible I should print them.

Nor are long hours and underpayment the only ills from which factory workers suffer. In spite of laws and of inspectors, dangers and discomforts are still prevalent in many workplaces—especially in those where workers are ill paid. Many instances may be gathered from a single year’s Report of the factory inspectors; and of course the inspectors neither discover all the instances nor print all that they discover. Looking into the Report for 1905, we find, on p. 13, an account from Southampton of the tea-room “provided by a high class dressmaker employing about 60 females.” This apartment was “underground with concrete floor and walls and the ceiling only 6 feet high, with no ventilation and no natural light.” Not a few women employed by West-End firms may be found at the present day, not only eating, but also working, by artificial light, in basement-rooms that are little better than cellars, or in cramped upper rooms, from which there would be little hope of escape in case of fire. The law, in its wisdom, does not require a special fire escape except in places where as many as 40 persons are at work; and certain frugal employers are careful, therefore, to employ but 39. “In one such workshop,” writes Miss Squire, “the condition of the 39 women working there seemed one of grave danger; it is a large new rag sorting warehouse, so filled with bales that only narrow passages down which one person can pass are left. On the second floor the women rag sorters work, their tables ranged along a sort of gallery ... the centre of the building being open for the hoisting of bales; the only means of exit is a narrow wooden staircase with open treads, at one end of the spacious floor. Were a fire to break out below, all exit would be cut off very quickly. In this case the local authority reply they have no bye-laws and can do nothing, as less than 40 persons are employed.”[12]

Another case is reported on the same page, in which a building originally meant for offices only has been turned into a factory and warehouses. “There is no second staircase and no exit on to the roof, which is higher than the adjoining houses.... The third floor is occupied ... by a blouse manufacturer employing between 50 and 60 women. On the top floor there is a lace warehouse where 15 women are employed finishing laces and veilings; a large amount of light inflammable material is stored on both these floors; there are no fire buckets or any means kept for extinguishing fire.” Miss Squire sent a notice to the Corporation about this building; and the Corporation replied that it “did not see its way to making any recommendations owing to the impossibility of providing an outside staircase.” Miss Squire and the City Surveyor in vain pointed out how an exit could be provided; six months later nothing had been done, and, on again approaching the Corporation, she found that authority “of opinion that no additional means of escape can be provided at a reasonable expense.” “The chief officer of the Fire Brigade told me he has himself reported this building as unsafe to the Corporation years ago in vain.” From Bristol, Mr Pendock reports a case of a clothing factory “employing about 50 females.” “The work is carried on, on the third and fourth floors, and these are reached by means of an internal wooden, winding, narrow staircase, always imperfectly lighted on account of its position.” The local authority demanded an additional staircase. The owner, on the strength of a decision in a previous appeal case, did nothing. Immediately afterwards the premises were considerably damaged by fire which, fortunately, took place in the meal time when all the workers had left the factory. Since then work has been resumed under unimproved conditions.[13]

None of these are cases of ignorance, or even of carelessness; they are instances of the deliberate disregard, for money’s sake, of danger to the lives of fellow creatures.

Scarcely less blameworthy is the criminal negligence shown by some employers in carrying out those precautions prescribed by the law, where, as in the potteries, there is a risk of lead poisoning. Thus, Miss Vines remarks “how frequently one finds the necessary supply of soap, nail brushes, and towels missing. Yet, when giving instructions as to such irregularities, one is almost invariably met with an attitude of _non possumus_. Over and over again managers defend themselves by the assertion that these things, although provided by them, have been and are constantly stolen by the workers.” She goes on to quote the observation of a predecessor: “It is impossible not to believe that if expensive and highly-finished ware disappeared from the factory with the same speed and to the same degree that soap, nail brushes, and towels disappear, steps would be taken to discover the offenders.”[14]

In one instance a girl of nineteen, after no more than six weeks’ employment at pottery dipping, suffered “acute pains, with weakness and subsequent unconsciousness for several hours.” On the premises where she had worked, the inspector found 17 persons engaged in dangerous processes. “Notwithstanding, in the lavatory for their use, which was extremely dirty, there was neither towel nor nail brush, and not more than one tiny piece of soap. Eventually one small and very dirty towel was discovered; this, it was stated, had been taken away by the foreman to dry.... There was not a single clean towel in stock or in reserve on the premises, and when I questioned the workers it appeared that this condition of affairs was normal.”[15]

Even where no risk of poison occurs, the provision of decent washing appliances would, to most of us, appear an essential part of a civilised factory. Many employers, however, hold a different opinion. The authors of “Women’s Work and Wages” write that “regulations against washing are still found in many factories where excellence of work does not depend upon cleanliness of handling. Painters and japanners are generally provided with turpentine, etc., but the rank and file are fortunate if they can get a bucket at the sink, and there do exist places where there is a fine of 6d. for washing.”

I remember seeing girls, to the number of 50 or more, packing tea in a large room where an old and grubby sink with one wash bowl and one towel formed the sole provision for washing. Access to this room was gained by one wooden ladder-stair. Yet the manager who exhibited this place to a group of visitors was not only satisfied, but actually boastful. The personal attention of the head of the firm was called to these defects, and I am happy to say both of them have now been remedied.

The discomfort formerly undergone in many work-rooms during winter was extreme. Until the law required the maintenance of “a reasonable temperature” (generally interpreted by inspectors as 60 degrees Fahrenheit), a very large proportion of women who worked for West End dressmakers did so in rooms absolutely unwarmed, or warmed only by the gas jets meant for lighting the room. I knew of a shirt factory in East London, which was a wooden edifice erected in a back yard and entirely unprovided with any means of warming, and have known women who worked there during the bitterest days of a particularly cold winter.

On the other hand, some processes of manufacture are generally carried on in overheated workplaces. “The temperature in starch drying stoves,” says one inspector, “is the most consistently excessive I have found.... The manager of one starch works is of opinion that women stand the heat better than men do, but says those whom he employs are all hard drinkers; no temperate woman will stay.[16]

Some processes also of lacemaking and of cotton spinning are facilitated by damp heat, and it can hardly be doubted that, but for the constant vigilance, both of the organised workers and of the inspectors, there would be still, as there were before the law intervened, many working places in which such processes would be carried on without proper ventilation or proper precautions for the health of the workers. Many people now living have seen women and girls come out of a weaving shed that has been kept full of steam, their clothes wet through and presently frozen stiff upon them as they walked home through the cold air.

The plan of reducing wages by fines and deductions is one dear to the low type of employer; and as long as workers remain ill paid and desperately afraid of being out of work, the evil will probably persist to some extent, in spite of increasingly stringent Truck Acts. There are many factories and work-rooms in which silence is more or less rigidly enforced, and fines are inflicted for talking or laughing. In many, again, some part of the material used is charged to the worker. I had in my hands, some years ago, 14 or 15 wage books belonging to skilled machinists employed in a provincial stay factory and paid by the piece. The following are the figures of 3 books for 3 successive weeks. _A_ represents the highest, and _C_ the lowest sums received.

_A._ Nominal wage 9/8½ 8/– 10/2½ Deductions 1/4 9½ 1/6 Wage received 8/4½ 7/2½ 8/8½

_B._ Nominal wage 9/2½ 8/6 8/4 Deductions 2/2 1/7 1/11 Wage received 7/8½ 6/11 6/5

_C._ Nominal wage 5/3½ 5/3 5/5 Deductions 1/4 1/9 1/9 Wage received 3/11 1/5 3/8

These deductions represent mainly material—cotton, and tools—machine needles. Some employers oblige their workers to pay hire for the sewing machines used in the factory, and where these machines are worked by steam, gas, or electricity, a charge varying from a halfpenny to sixpence “for power” is not unusual. I have known instances in which the rent of a factory has been partly—perhaps wholly—defrayed by a charge upon the workers, who had to pay so much a week for their places in it. “Cleaning, as well as rent, is sometimes met in the same way by a weekly charge of 2d. or 3d. for cleaning the workroom. I am assured that one ingenious employer pays a man 15s. a week for performing this duty in addition to others, while the payments made by the women amount to 30s. In a certain provincial town in a factory which I visited, there was no apparent method of lighting. I was informed that in the winter the women brought their own candles. A local competitor, more acute, provides gas, and charges each girl 3d. a week throughout the dark seasons, at which rate, according to his fellow townsmen, he must make a profit on his gas bill.”[17]

In a large box factory deductions were made for glue, for gas to heat the glue, for string to tie the boxes together, and for work books—amounting in all to 1s. 6d. per week.

A charge for hot water to make tea is not unusual, and is sometimes enforced on all workers, the resulting sum, where many are employed, being ridiculously in excess of the cost of the boiling water. One young woman known to me paid this tax (in her case 2d. a week) for six weeks, and never once used the hot water.

Deductions for spoiled work or alleged damage are those which seem the most to arouse heartburnings and that general feeling of grudge which it is so greatly the interest of an employer to avoid arousing. Where, for instance, glass or earthenware jars are filled with boiling preserve, one or two jars in every few hundreds are sure to crack. “The breakage will probably come to light under the hands of the girl who washes the jar and sticks on the label, and in some factories she is made to pay.” I have known a girl charged the full selling price for a seven-pound jar from which the bits of glass were afterwards picked out and the preserve reboiled and sold. Many instances of a similar kind from other trades might be quoted if space allowed.

Other deductions are in the nature of punishment; and of these it may safely be said that the master or foreman who cannot keep order without the use of them does not know his business. One of the best employers and kindest men whom I ever knew said, indignantly, when I asked him whether there were fines in his factory: “If I could not run a factory without fines I should be ashamed to run one at all.” My real reason for the question was that an employer of a very different stamp had within the same week defended himself against an accusation of excessive fining by a public declaration that unless he inflicted fines his factory would be a “bear-garden.” The contrast between these two men—carrying on industries not at all dissimilar—between the two factories, and, above all, between the manners, morals, and appearance of the young women working for the one and of those working for the other, formed one of the most instructive object lessons which it has ever been my lot to receive.

Deductions for lateness are sometimes made a source of profit to the employer. Men who pay a penny for an hour’s work will sometimes deduct threepence for an hour’s absence; and piece workers—who, of course, lose pay for the time of absence, are sometimes made to pay in addition. I have seen the wage-book of an umbrella-coverer, which showed that in the course of two years she had paid in fines (to the same employer) nearly £6, chiefly for coming late in the morning. The case was particularly flagrant, because she was a piece worker, and was not using a power machine, and because work in this workshop was so irregular that when she did come early she was often kept sitting unoccupied, while, if orders happened to come in of an afternoon, the women were kept late to fulfil them. Thus, although there might be no work for them, they were fined if they came late; being piece workers, they were paid nothing for the time spent in waiting for work, and they were paid at no extra rate for work done late.

Worst of all, there are factories—though I hope but very few—in which piece workers, when they have succeeded in making up a total slightly better than usual, are liable to have the surplus deducted. I have in my mind a factory where the foreman frequently deducted 1s. or 2s. from a week’s payment, on the ground that the girl who should have received it had “earned too much.”

To sum up then: workers in factories and workshops, although they are, on the whole, better off in respect of hours, and although their lives cannot at the worst, be so horribly monotonous as can that of the home worker, are frequently exceedingly ill paid, even in trades demanding considerable skill: not a few of them are employed in places that are uncomfortable, unwholesome, or even actually dangerous; their poor wages are apt to be docked by irritating fines and deductions; they have no choice as to the companions with whom they spend their days, and they share with the home worker the constant dread of being left without employment and without means to pay for lodging or food. These are the conditions in which hundreds and hundreds of young women in this country are earning what it is customary to call “their living,” although all of us are aware that no young woman can really live, in a large town, the life of a civilised human being upon ten shillings a week or less.