Women -- Employment -- Great Britain; Women labor union members -- Great Britain; Working class women -- Great Britain
In the case of spinning, the division of work between men and women was
attended with considerable complications, and it appears that the masters
confidently expected to employ women in greater proportions than was
actually feasible. A comparison of the evidence by masters and men
respectively given before the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery
throws some interesting sidelights on the question, though it does not
make it absolutely clear. Dunlop, a Glasgow master, had frequent disputes
with the "combination" as the union was then called. He built a new mill
with machinery which he hoped would make it unnecessary to employ men at
all. In a few years he was, however, again employing men as before, and
his account of the matter was that this change of front was due to the
violence of the men's unions. Two of the operative leaders, however, came
up at a later stage to protest against Dunlop's version. They showed that
the persistent violence attributed to the men really narrowed down to a
single case of assault some years before, when there was not sufficient
evidence to commit the men accused. They denied the alleged opposition to
women's employment and declared that there was absolutely no connexion
between the outrage complained of and the substitution of men for women,
which had in fact been effected by Dunlop's sons during his absence in
America, and was due to the fact that the women could not do as much or as
good work on the spinning machines as men could. Dunlop also had given an
exaggerated account of the wages paid, making no allowance for stoppage
and breakdown of machinery, which were frequent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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