Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study.
General
Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study.
Printing industry -- Great Britain; Women -- Employment -- Great Britain; Women printers -- Great Britain; Working class women -- Great Britain
Girls are employed to "feed" the machines and to "take off" the
impressed sheet. A girl will learn "taking off," or "flying," in a
couple of days; but except in the old-fashioned and smaller
jobbing-shops flying is now done entirely by machinery. Machine feeding
is not so easy and simple a process as it seems. The girls stand and
perform the same movement repeatedly, each time giving to the sheet the
precise swing required to send it accurately into the grips. The work
requires little intelligence, and the extent to which it can be
characterised as exhausting depends partly on the speed of the machine,
but chiefly on the length of the "run." Three methods of treating the
girls may be distinguished. In some shops where there are very long
runs, perhaps extending to a couple of weeks, as in the case of the
printing of low-priced Bibles, the work is tiring. At the close of a
long run the machines have to be prepared afresh, and the girls enjoy a
spell for a day or two. This leisure they are sometimes inclined to
abuse by interrupting the work of others with conversation, and
consequently attempts are being made to employ them on other machines
during the interval. This innovation the girls are resisting. In other
shops the fatiguing nature of a long run is mitigated by removing the
girl to another machine with a different movement, but the "right" of a
girl to be so moved about and rested is not recognised; it is simply a
matter for the consideration of the foreman. To allow the claim to
frequent shifting might prove inconvenient in times of pressure. Lastly,
in establishments where the bulk of the work involves short runs, as,
for example, in printing the official matter of a municipality or a
college, the necessity for frequently preparing the machines affords
considerable leisure to the feeders. These intervals explain the groups
of girls often to be seen chatting and knitting in odd corners of the
machine-room. Some of these shops recognise the right of a girl to feed
and keep clean "her own machine" and no other. Where this is the case a
girl may be employed feeding for no longer than a quarter of the normal
working week of fifty-two and a half hours owing to the shortness of the
runs and the length of time spent in re-adjustment. The work is dirty
but not dangerous, as all machinery is well-fenced, and accidents are
of very rare occurrence. The day's work usually starts at 6.15 a.m. and
ends at 6 p.m., with meal hours at 9 and at 2 o'clock and half an hour
for tea when engaged on overtime. Saturday's shift is from 6.15 a.m.
until 10 a.m. Girls are paid 5_s._, in a few shops 6_s._, a week as
beginners. They get their first rise in three months, and are gradually
advanced to an average wage of 10_s._, while an expert feeder may earn
11_s._, or at the outside 12_s._, a week. When girls find that they can
feed well after a comparatively short time in a shop and that they are
getting only 7_s._ or 8_s._ a week they commonly seek and obtain the
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