Authorities
CHAPTER I.
Introductory.
Pearson, Karl. Woman as Witch, in the Chances of Death, vol. ii.; and Sex Relations in Germany, in the Ethic of Freethought, p. 402.
Mason, Otis. In the American Antiquarian, Jan. 1889, p. 6.
Ellis, Havelock. Man and Woman. Fourth Edition. Introduction and chap. xiv.
Reclus, E. Primitive Folk, pp. 57-8. Contemporary Science Series. 1891.
Frazer, J. G. The Magic Art, ii. 204.
Man, E. H. Journal of the Anthropological Institute. August 1893.
Servants in Husbandry.
Thorold, Rogers. History of Agriculture and Prices, i. pp. 273-274, and iv. 495. Compare Bland, Brown, and Tawney, English Economic History, p. 347, for approximation between men’s and women’s wages.
Eden, Sir Frederick. State of the Poor, iii. lxxxix.
Textiles: Wool and Linen.
Schmoller. Strassbürger Tücher- und Weberzunft, p. 354.
Archaeologia. Vol. xxxvii. pp. 91 and 93; vol. x. Plates XX., XXI., and XXII.
Andrews. Old English Manor, p. 272.
Deloney. Jack of Newbury, p. 59.
Wright, T. Womankind of Western Europe, pp. 59, 177-8.
Aubrey. History of Wiltshire. Quoted in Archaeologia xxxvii. p. 95.
Warden, A. The Linen Trade. Longman, 1867. (2nd ed.), pp. 355-6.
Rock, D. Textile Fabrics, p. 11. 1876.
Eckenstein, Lina. Women under Monasticism.
Ancren Riwle. Reprinted in the King’s Classics, p. 317.
Bücher. Industrial Evolution. Translated by S. M. Wickett, pp. 265-7.
James, John. History of Worsted, p. 289.
Victoria County History. Yorkshire, ii. p. 43.
Wright, T. Homes of Other Days, p. 434.
Chaucer. Wife of Bath’s Prologue.
Beard, C. Industrial Revolution, p. 25.
Fitzherbert. Book of Husbandry. 1574. Edited by Skeat, par. 146.
Temple, Sir W. Quoted in Cunningham’s Growth of Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, p. 370. (Ed. 1907.)
Shuttleworth Accounts, Chetham Society, vol. xlvi. p. 1002.
Markham, G. The English Housewife, pp. 167, 172. (Ed. 1637.)
Weaving and Spinning as a Woman’s Trade.
Abram, A. Social England in the Fifteenth Century, pp. 133-4.
Ancient Book of the Weavers’ Company. (Facsimile in the British Museum Library.)
Fox and Taylor. Weavers’ Gild of Bristol, p. 38.
Unwin, G. Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, p. 229.
Lambert. Two Thousand Years of Gild Life, pp. 206-10.
Thomson, D. The Weaver’s Craft, p. 22.
Records of the City of Norwich, ii. p. 378.
For Rates of Pay to Weavers, etc., see a volume of tracts in the British Museum Library, numbered 1851, c. 101.
Howard Accounts. Published by the Roxburgh Club, vol. li.
Markham, G. The English Housewife, pp. 174-5. (Ed. 1637.)
Dunlop and Denman. English Apprenticeship and Child Labour, chap. ix.
Development of Capitalistic Industry.
Unwin, G. In the Victoria County History, Suffolk, ii. pp. 258-9.
Baines, E. History of Cotton Manufacture, p. 91.
Green, Mrs. Alice. Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. p. 100.
Ordinances of Worcester. Edited by Toulmin Smith. Early English Text Society.
Hamilton. History of Quarter Sessions, pp. 164, 273.
Leonard. Early English Poor Relief.
Ashley, W. J. English Economic History, Part II., chapter on the Woollen Industry.
Young, Arthur. Northern Tour, vol. i. p. 137. Second edition. 1770.
Young, Arthur. Tour in East of England, ii. pp. 75, 81.
Warner, Townsend. In Traill’s Social England, vol. v. p. 149.
Mantoux. La Révolution industrielle, p. 36.
Bonwick. Romance of the Wool Trade, p. 435.
Lancashire Worthies, i. p. 307.
Weber, Marianne. Ehefrau und Mutter, Tübingen, 1907, p. 252.
Silk.
Campbell, W. Materials for History of the Reign of Henry VII., pp. 13, 15, 168, 170, etc.
Victoria County History, Derby, ii. p. 372.
Other Industries.
Traill. Social England, vol. i. p. 658.
Lapsley, G. T. “Account Roll of a Fifteenth-Century Ironmaster,” in the English Historical Review, vol. xiv., July 1899, p. 51.
Victoria County History. Derbyshire, pp. 328-9, 332, 343.
Some Account of Mines. British Museum, 444, a 49, p. 62.
Galloway. Annals of Coal Mining, pp. 91, 232, 234, 354 passim.
Case of Sir H. Mackworth. British Museum, 522, m. 12 (2).
Case of the Mine Adventurers in the same volume, No. 26.
Young, Arthur. Northern Tour, vol. ii. pp. 189, 254-5. Second Edition. 1770.
Young, Arthur. Six Weeks’ Tour, pp. 150, 109. 1768.
CHAPTER II.
The Cotton Industry.
Baines, Edward. History of the Cotton Manufacture, 1836, pp. 97, 100, 115, 116 n., 446.
Guest. History of the Cotton Manufacture.
Radcliffe, W. Origin of the New System of Manufacture, 1828, p. 59, etc.
Gaskell, P. Manufacturing Population of England, 1833, pp. 42, 43, 60.
Beard, C. A. The Industrial Revolution.
Mantoux. La Révolution industrielle, pp. 208-11.
Ellison, T. The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 1886.
Law, Alice. Social and Economic History, in the Victoria County History, Lancashire, vol. ii. p. 327.
Chapman, S. J. The Lancashire Cotton Industry.
Cunningham, W. Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, p. 654. (Ed. 1907.)
The Decay of Handspinning.
Eden, Sir Frederick. State of the Poor, vol. iii. pp. 768, 821, 847.
The Handloom Weaver’s Wife.
Gaskell, P. Manufacturing Population, p. 40.
Mantoux. La Révolution industrielle, pp. 442-3.
Report of Committee on Ribbon-Weavers, 1818, vol. ix. p. 124.
Report on Handloom Weavers, 1834, vol. x. Evidence of Brennan.
The Factory.
Tuckett, J. D. History of the Labouring Population, pp. 208-9.
Aikin, J. Country Round Manchester, pp. 167, 192.
Ure. Philosophy of Manufactures, pp. 312-3.
Gaskell, P. Manufacturing Population of England, chap. i.
Taylor, W. Cooke. Factories and the Factory System, 1844, pp. 1, 45-6.
Fielden, J. Curse of the Factory System, 1836, p. 43.
Assistant Poor Law Commissioners. Report on Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, p. 25. Parliamentary Papers, 1843, xii.
Gaskell, Mrs. Mary Barton.
The Woman Wage-Earner.
Report on Artizans and Machinery. Parliamentary Papers, 1824, vol. v. Evidence of Dunlop and Holdsworth, compare evidence of M‘Dougal and William Smith.
Report on Manufactures and Commerce. Parliamentary Papers, 1833, vol. vi. p. 323.
Report on Combinations of Workmen. Parliamentary Papers, 1838, viii. q. 3527-31.
Report on Handloom Weavers, 1840, vol. xxiii. p. 307.
Gaskell, P. Artizans and Machinery, pp. 143, 331.
Gaskell, P. Manufacturing Population of England, pp. 186-8.
Report on Employment of Children in Factories. Parliamentary Papers, 1834, xix. p. 297.
Schultze-Gävernitz. The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent. Translated by O. S. Hall. 1895.
The Industrial Revolution in Non-Textile Trades.
Children’s Employment Commission. 1843. Reports on Birmingham District.
Children’s Employment Commission. Parliamentary Papers. 1864, vol. xxii.; Third Report, p. x.
Timmins, S. Resources of Birmingham and the Hardware District. 1866.
Labour Commission. Reports on Employment of Women, by Miss Orme, Miss Collet, Miss Abraham, and Miss Irwin. Parliamentary Papers, 1893-94, vol. xxxvii.
British Association, 1902-1903. Reports to the Economic Section by the Committee on the Legal Regulation of Women’s Labour.
CHAPTER IV.
Women in Unions.
Report on Combination Laws. Parliamentary Papers, 1825, vol. iv. Appendices 6, 10, 16.
Board of Trade. Seventeenth Report on Trade Unions, 1912.
Board of Trade. Sixteenth Labour Abstract, 1915.
Articles of the Manchester Small Ware Weavers, printed at Manchester, 1756. (Manchester Library.)
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. History of Trade Unionism, pp. 104-5, 121-3, etc.
Chapman, S. J. History of the Lancashire Cotton Industry, pp. 213-5, etc.
Report on Standard Piece Rates of Wages in the U.K. Parliamentary Papers, 1900, vol. lxxxii.
Reports of the Women’s Trade Union League, 1874 to present time. (34 Mecklenburgh Square.)
Women in the Printing Trades. Edited by J. Ramsay MacDonald. 1904.
Report by Miss Busbey on Women’s Unions in Great Britain. Bulletin of the Labour Department, U.S.A. No. 83.
Labour Commission. Evidence of Mrs. Hicks and Miss James. Parliamentary Papers, 1892, vol. xxxv.
Reports of the National Federation of Women Workers. (34 Mecklenburgh Square.)
Also reports of trade union and other societies and information given privately.
America.—History of Women in Trade Unions. Vol x. of Report on Women and Child Wage-Earners in the U.S.
Admission to American Trade Unions. By F. Wolfe, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1912.
Women in Trade Unions in San Francisco. L. R. Matthews University of California Publications in Economics, vol. iii 1913.
Making Both Ends Meet. Clark and Wyatt. New York: Macmillan, 1911. Chaps. ii. and v.
The World of Labour. G. D. H. Cole. Bell, 1913. Chap. v.
Report on Strike of Textile Workers in Lawrence, Mass., in 1912. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1912.
CHAPTER IVa.
Women in Unions (continued).
Germany.—Braun, Lily. Die Frauenfrage, 1901.
Gnauck-Kühne, Elisabeth. Die Arbeiterinnenfrage. M. Gladbach, 1905.
Sanders, W. Stephen. Industrial Organisation in Germany. Special supplement to the New Statesman, October 18, 1913.
The Organisation of Women Workers in Germany. Special Report to the International Women’s Trade Union League of America. Submitted by the Women Workers’ Secretariat of the General Commission of Trade Unions of Germany. Berlin, 1913.
Erdmann, A. Church and Trade Unions in Germany. Published by the General Commission of Trade Unions in Germany. Berlin, 1913.
CHAPTER VII.
Effects of the War on Women’s Employment.
Reports of the Board of Trade on the State of Employment in the United Kingdom in October and December 1914, and February 1915.
Footnotes
1 I.e. Cots or cottages.
2 Departmental Committee on Sickness Benefit Claims, Evidence 40446, Bondfield.
3 Ibid. 40462, Bondfield.
4 37 Edw. III. c. 6, quoted in Cunningham’s Growth of Industry and Commerce, I. 353 n. (5th ed.).
5 See a volume of tracts at the British Museum numbered 1851, c. 10.
6 S.P. Dom. Eliz. 1593, vol. 244. Reprinted in English Economic History, Bland, Brown and Tanney, p. 336.
7 Cf. a report of a workhouse in 1701 (catalogued as 816. m. 15. 48 in the Brit. Mus. Library), where ten poor women were employed to teach the children to spin.
8 Tour in East of England, vol. ii. pp. 75, 81. I am indebted to Mrs. C. M. Wilson for drawing my attention to these passages and for suggesting the remarks immediately following.
9 Defoe in his Plan of English Commerce says that after the great plague in France and the peace in Spain the run for goods was so great in England, and the prices so high that poor women in Essex could earn 1s. or 1s. 6d. a day by spinning, and the farmers could hardly get dairymaids. This was, however, only for a time; demand slackened, and the spinners were reduced to misery.
10 James, History of Worsted, p. 289. This pleasant custom may remind us of lines in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, i. 4:
“The spinsters and the knitters in the sun
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones.”
11 Philip Gaskell, who was, however, so prejudiced against the factory system that his views must be taken with caution, says that the wives of manufacturers who had risen from poverty to affluence were “an epitome of everything that is odious in manners,” their only redeeming point being a profuse hospitality, which however, Grant attributes to “a sense of vain-glory.”—Manufacturing Population, p. 60.
12 Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, p. 654 (ed. 1907).
13 History of Cotton Manufacture, p. 446.
14 Factory Inspector’s Report dated August 1835, quoted in Fielden’s Curse of the Factory System, 1836, p. 43.
15 Country round Manchester, p. 192. Compare Mrs. Gaskell’s descriptions in Mary Barton, fifty years later, for a very similar account.
16 Athenaeum, August 20 (probably 1842), quoted in W. C. Taylor, Factories and the Factory System, pp. 3, 4, London, 1842.
17 L. Braun, Die Frauenfrage, p. 209. Cf. E. Gnauck-Kühne, Die Arbeiterinnenfrage 23.
18 Woman and Labour, p. 50.
19 Registrar-General’s Report for 1912, p. xxxvii.
20 “Prospects of Marriage for Women,” by Clara Collet, Nineteenth Century, April 1892, reprinted in Educated Working Women, P. S. King, 1902.
21 The servant-keeping class often shows a tendency to regard social questions mainly from the point of view of maintaining the supply of domestic servants.
22 See Appendix, p. 270.
23 Webb, History of Trade Unionism, pp. 104-5.
24 Parliamentary Papers, 1838, viii. qq. 360, 1341-2.
25 “Select Committee on Manufactures,” Parliamentary Papers, 1833, vol. vi. p. 323, q. 5412-3.
26 Rules of the Nelson and District Power-Loom Weavers’ Association, 1904, p. 13, “Advice to Members, etc.”
27 Report of N.C. Amalgamation, June 1906.
28 Evidence is not unanimous on this point.
29 Report of S.E. Lancashire Provincial Association, Dec. 1912.
30 See Women in the Printing Trade (edited by J. R. MacDonald) for an excellent study of the whole circumstances and conditions of the trade.
31 G. Oakeshott, “Women in the Cigar Trade in London,” in the Economic Journal, 1900, p. 562.
32 Second Report of the W.T.U.L.
33 In Mr. Keighley Snowden’s words, from which this account is taken (Daily Citizen, 12, xi. 1912): “If foreign competition at last threatens us, it is in consequence of this heartless folly.”
34 Space does not permit us to give a full account of the efforts for co-operative action for social purposes made by working women at this period, or of the interesting study of social conditions made by Leonora Barry, the investigator of women’s work under the Knights of Labour. See Report on Women’s Unions, Chapter IVa.
35 Quoted in the Cotton Factory Times, September 18, 1885.
36 Report of the Strike of Textile Workers in Lawrence, Mass., p. 63.
37 This chapter was written before the outbreak of war.
38 It is a curious reflection on the tardiness of our Government statistical work, that figures for German Trade Unions are here actually accessible for a more recent date than those of English Unions. [Written early in 1914.]
39 A. Erdmann, Church and Trade Union in Germany, 1913.
40 Report of Gas-workers’ and General Labourers’ Association, March 1897.
41 This chapter was written before the outbreak of war.
42 Many worthy folk to this day even show by the use of the phrase “giving employment” that they suppose themselves to be conferring a benefit on persons who work for them, irrespective of wages paid, and it is unlikely that our ancestors were more enlightened on this point than ourselves.
43 G. Slater, English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, Constable, 1907, p. 266. Compare Hammond, J. L. and B, The Village Labourer, chap. v.
44 See, e.g., the cases mentioned in the Factory Inspectors’ Report for 1912, p. 142, and compare the case reported by Miss Vines in the Report for 1913, p. 97. In a Christmas-card factory the women were being employed two days a week from 8 to 8, three days a week from 8 A.M. to 10 P.M., and Saturdays 8 to 4. “The whole staff of workers and foremen looked absolutely worn out.”
45 School Child in Industry, by A. Greenwood, p. 7. Workers’ Educational Association, Manchester, price 1d.
46 See the Englishwoman for June 1914.
47 The work of a “big piecer” is practically identical with that of a spinner, only that responsibility rests with the latter.
48 See Cadbury Matheson and Shann, Women’s Work and Wages, p. 212; Macdonald, Women in the Printing Trades, p. 53.
49 See in Chapter IVa. pp. 162-3. Frau Lily Braun’s views on the subject.
50 See an article by the present writer in the Englishwoman, April 1911.
51 Northern Counties Amalgamation of Weavers, etc. Report for July 1913.
52 I owe the suggestion of a “cleft” (Spalte) in the woman-worker’s career to Madame E. Gnauck-Kühne, who developed it in her book, Die deutsche Frau. Compare “Statistics of Women’s Life and Employment,” Journal of the Statistical Society, 1909.
53 Earnings and Hours Enquiry: Textile Industries, Cd. 4545, 1909; Clothing Trades, Cd. 4844, 1909.
54 Raised to 3½d. on 19th July 1915.
55 Elements of Statistics, 2nd edition, pp. 37, 38, and 39.
56 1,091,202 out of a total of 4,830,734.
57 Women’s Industrial News, July 1912, p. 56; compare The War, Women and Unemployment, published by the Fabian Society.
58 This chapter was prepared during the first year and the early part of the second year of war. It is necessarily incomplete, as war is still raging; but it is hoped that a brief summary of the position of women-workers in war time, and of the expedients adopted to ease and improve it, may not be without interest.
59 Article by G. H. Carter, Economic Journal, March 1915; see also Notes in the Women’s Trades Union League Review, January 1915.
60 Article by Jas. Haslam, Englishwoman, March 1915, and information given privately.
61 See article by C. Black in the Common Cause, February 12, 1915.
62 Westminster Gazette, October 16, 1914.
63 See a letter by Mr. A. J. Mundella, L.C.C., in the School Child for December 1914.
64 New Statesman, November 7, 1914.
65 Report on Outlets for Labour after the War, British Association, Section F., Manchester, 1915.
66 See The National Care of Maternity, by Margaret Bondfield, published by the Women’s Co-operative Guild. The proposals include the administration of Maternity Benefit by the Public Health authorities in lieu of the approved societies, the raising of maternity benefit to £5, and other changes.
67 B. Kirkman Gray, History of Philanthropy.
68 Daily News and Leader, June 24, 1915. It may be remarked here parenthetically, though not strictly germane to the subject, that not only the local authorities, but the Departments, even the War Office itself, might utilise the services of professional women more freely than they do, with great advantage to themselves. Women have among other things a very sharp eye for the detection of fraud and corruption. It was to the initiative and energy of one woman that the greatest improvements in the organisation of the Army Hospital Service in the nineteenth century were due. It is admitted that no change in the administration of the Factory Department has been so fruitful for good as the appointment of women factory inspectors. Why, then, are not professional women called in to aid in the organisation of commissariat, the inspection of clothing stores, the “housekeeping” of the Army, especially in the case of the needs of raw recruits? Incalculable waste, diversified here and there by actual lack of food, is reported from the camps. The help of expert women might here be of enormous value, and not only avoid waste, but ensure the provision of more wholesome food and more comfortable clothing. Some valuable hints on this subject are to be derived from an article by Mrs. Janet Courtney in the Fortnightly Review, February 1915, “The War and Women’s Employment.”
69 The War and Democracy. Introduction by A. E. Zimmern, p. 14. London, 1914.
70 It should be observed that the first proprietors of some cotton mills, alarmed by the consequences of obliging their servants to work incessantly, have shut up their mills in the night.
71 A certain manufacturer of worsted threatened a sister of ours, whom he employed, that he would send all his jersey to be spun at the mill; and further insulted her with the pretended superiority of that work. She having more spirit than discretion, stirred up the sisterhood, and they stirred up all the men they could influence (not a few) to go and destroy the mills erected in and near Leicester, and this is the origin of the late riots there.
72 It is, however, important to mention that cotton mills are materially improved of late years in most of these particulars, and that in some mills they exist in a much less degree than others, which shows them not to be essential and inherent.
73 It is a curious circumstance, and one which amply merits attentive consideration, that the fecundity of females employed in manufactories seems to be considerably diminished by their occupation and habits; for not only are their families generally smaller than those of agricultural labourers, but their children are born at more distant intervals. Thus the average interval which elapses between the birth of each child in the former case is two years and one month, as we have found upon minute enquiry, while, in country districts, we believe, it seldom exceeds eighteen months. The causes of these facts we have at present no space to enlarge upon.
74 The extracts are slightly compressed in transcription.
75 The barber knotter is a small appliance worn on the hand to assist the work of winding.