B. L. Hutchins

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But for women wage-earners the industrial revolution does mean a certain advance in status. The woman-worker in the great industry sells her work per piece or per hour, not her whole life and personality. I shall perhaps be told indignantly that the poor woman in a low-class factory or laundry is as veritable a drudge as the most oppressed serf of mediaeval times, and I do not attempt to deny it. ”

“ The class that felt it most keenly as an evil and a wrong, were the hand-loom weavers whose earnings were so depressed that they could not maintain their families, and found at the same time that the labour of their wives and daughters was more in demand than their own. Where the industry had been carried on by the family working together, and, for a time at least, had been sufficiently lucrative to afford a comparatively high standard of comfort, the disintegration of this particular type of organisation was, not unnaturally, resented as an outrage on humanity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just as the working classes are striving through Syndicalism to express a rising discontent, not only with the economic conditions of their work, but also with the fact that they have no voice in its regulation and control, so women are striving, not only for political freedom and economic betterment, but for a voice in the collective control of society. Women have, until very lately, been left out from the arrangement even of matters which most vitally concern them and their children. ”

“ And in those branches in which superior efficiency is shown by the male workers, the inferiority of the wages of the female employees is altogether out of proportion to the difference in the character of the work done by the two sexes. From this cause—the payment of unfairly low wages to women simply because they are women—arises a desire on the part of grasping employers to reduce the wage-standard by engaging women in preference to men, while in many cases the conditions of female employment are onerous and oppressive to an extent which involves the greatest danger to health. ”

“ They are able to appreciate the newer wants of society, the claim for more leisure and amenity of life, for a share in the heritage of England’s thought and achievements, for better social care of children, for the development of a finer and deeper communal consciousness. This is the new spirit that is beginning to dawn in women. ”

“ The right to a living wage, fair conditions of work, and a voice in the collective control over industry are not yet fully recognised, but are being claimed more and more articulately, and can less and less be silenced and put aside. The woman wage-earner indeed appears in many ways socially in advance of the middle and upper class woman, who is still so often economically a mere parasite. Woman’s work may still be chaotic, but the chaos, we venture to hope, indicates the throes of a new social birth, not the disintegration of decay. ”

“ To the organiser of women into Trade Unions is furnished all of the common obstacles familiar to the organiser of male wage-earners, including short-sighted individual self-interest, ignorance, poverty, indifference, and lack of co-operative training. But to the organisers of women is added another and most disconcerting problem. When men marry they usually become more definitely attached to the trade and to the community and to their labour Union. Women as a rule drop out of the trade and out of the Union when marriage takes them out of the struggle for economic independence. ”

“ When one thinks of the perpetual striving, the work which must never slacken, the noise which never ceases and of the legs which are weary with constant standing, of the heads which ache, because the noise is so great no voice can be heard above the din, one can understand that to sit on the floor for a few moments’ talk, as I have often seen, is a rest which under even such horrid circumstances is better than nothing. ”

“ The strain occurs in the long hours the women are at work, most of them having to stand all the time, and the close attention that has to be given. Every broken thread means pro tanto a stoppage of wages, and eyes and fingers have to be constantly on the alert to see and do instantly what is necessary. All this time, in most cases, the women are on their feet; all this time, in many cases, breathing an unnaturally heated air, sickened by the disagreeable smell of the oil and size, the ceaseless din of machinery in their ears, dust and fluff continually ready to invade the system. ”

“ Through the factory, in spite of its many abuses, women have attained not only an improvement in their economic circumstances, but also the experience of comradeship and even of a citizenship which, although incomplete, is very real as far as it goes.
Women have undoubtedly gained on the whole by the widening of their sphere of employment. But women cannot possibly do all kinds of industrial work, and to leave the matter unregulated either by law or by Trade Union action is to leave too much to the discretion of the employer, with whom profit is naturally the first consideration. ”

“ Why, then, in distinctively women’s occupations should the wages paid be lower than men’s? The answer is not easy, but the key to the problem is to be found in the broad statement that the field of employment of women is much more restricted than that of men. Hence the competition of women for employment reduces their general wage level to a lower point than that of men, or, as an economist would put it, the marginal uses of female labour are inferior to those of male labour. ”

“ Women had been accustomed to do the work that no one else wanted to do. The servile position of the woman-worker, the absence of combination among the operative class, and the lack of State or Municipal control over the conditions of industry and housing, all combined to provide “cheap and docile workers” for the factory system. And no doubt the factory system took full advantage of the opportunity. Capital inevitably seeks cheap labour. The governing class had carefully and deliberately provided that labour should be cheap. ”

“ It may be true that the women in a certain industry or town, in spite of low wages, are all in fact well nourished and comfortable, members as they are of families which as families are well-to-do. Great as may be the respect which kinship deserves, it is submitted, however, that no normal woman should be compelled by economic exigencies to live with persons towards whom she has not voluntarily undertaken responsibilities, and that the freedom which economic independence implies is a right to which every woman willing to work may properly lay claim. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the same time an attempt should be made to encourage in girls some sense of craftsmanship and loyalty to their callings, so that their organisation in trade unions or guilds would become possible. With a few exceptions collective bargaining and the collective maintenance of a standard of remuneration are, as regards women’s employment, merely sporadic and intermittent. It is the young woman, the irresponsible immature untrained amateur worker, without an industrial tradition to guide her, who is the despair of organised labour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The machine, replacing muscular power and increasing the productivity of industry, does undoubtedly aid the woman in quest of self-dependence. In the era of the great industry she has become to an increasing extent an independent wage-earner. Low as the standard of women’s wages is, there is ample proof that it is on the whole higher under the factory system than under other methods, and as a general rule the larger and more highly organised factory pays higher wages than the smaller, less well-equipped. ”

“ Human nature is far too strong to make it credible that any large number of women will deliberately decline the prospect of husband, home and children of their own for the sake of teaching little girls arithmetic or inspecting insanitary conditions in slums. If a woman has to choose between marrying a man she cares for and earning her own bread, I am sentimental enough to believe that nearly all women would choose the former. ”

“ It was not surprising that men of the upper classes, accustomed by their mothers and wives to believe that for women ignorance and innocence were one, and that no painful reality must ever be mentioned before them or come near to sully their refinement, should recoil from the idea of trusting them with difficult duties and responsible work. It is to the few pioneer women like Florence Nightingale, Josephine Butler, and others who came out and braved reproach—from women as well as men—that we owe the introduction of worthier social ideals. ”

“ Cotton-weaving offers the very unusual, perhaps unique example of a large occupation employing both man and woman, and on equal terms. The earnings of the male weaver are, however, very inferior to those of the spinner, and he cannot unaided support a family without being considerably straitened, according to the Lancashire standard. But, in point of fact, a weaver when he marries usually marries a woman who is also working at a mill, and if she is a weaver her earnings are very likely as good as his. In this industry women attain to very nearly as great skill and dexterity as do men ”

“ We may expect in the future that the care of adolescence and the care of maternity will be considered more closely than it ever has been; also that such social provision for maternity as may be made will be linked up with the working life of women, so that marriage shall not be penalised by requiring women against their will to leave work when they marry, and on the other hand, that the home-loving woman of domestic tastes shall not be forced, as now so often happens, to leave her children and painfully earn their bread outside her home. ”

“ In case of failure there is a machinery needless to detail here by which meetings of employer and employed can be arranged through successively higher grades of representative authority, until in the last resort, if all attempts at settlement fail, a strike is called. The impressive feature about all this negotiation from our present point of view is that the whole strength of the Union, the brains and time and care of the secretary, can be invoked for the protection of the woman, the youthful or childish worker, as much as for the adult skilled worker at a craft. ”

“ It is curious to compare the criminal neglect here indicated with the self-complacency of the governing classes of this country, and the immense claims for admiration and respect often put forth on account of their control of home and local administration. In this tremendous crisis in the social life of the country, the complex changes of the industrial revolution, the classes in power sat by, apathetic and uninterested, taking little or no pains to cope with the problem, or interfered merely with harsh or even cruel repression of the workers’ efforts to combine for self-defence. ”

“ The occupation of women in many fields of employment with which they are still principally associated, such as spinning and the making of clothes, is probably as ancient as the industries themselves. The employment of women as wage-earners in such work is, however, comparatively recent. As a member of a family, or as a servant or retainer, woman has worked for generations in many tasks which formerly were, but now, with the increased specialisation of industry, have ceased to be, part of the ordinary routine of domestic activity. ”