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
But the opposition to women lingered on after the attempts to introduce
them more generally had ceased. In 1879 the London Society of
Compositors decided that none of their members should finish work set up
by women, and the firm of Messrs. Smyth and Yerworth was struck by the
men's Union.[10]
[Footnote 10: It is interesting to note that in these days also the
women only set up the type and the men "made it up."]
Commenting on this trouble, the _Standard_, in a leading article
(October 8th, 1879) cynically remarked: "What women ask is not to be
allowed to compete with men, which the more sensible among them know to
be impossible, but to be allowed the chance of a small livelihood by
doing the work of men a little cheaper than men care to do it. This is
underselling of course, but it is difficult to see why, when all is said
and done, men should object to be undersold by their own wives and
daughters."
"_Capital and Labour_," as quoted by the _Victoria Magazine_,[11] put
the case for the women thus: "This work is much more remunerative, and
far less toilsome and irritating than the occupation of the average
nursery governess, and we anticipate that, with proper arrangements,
there will be a large addition to the number of women compositors. The
reasons assigned against their employment in this capacity seem to be
the outcome of pedantry, prejudice, and jealousy; and no trade rules can
be permitted to interpose obstacles to the attainment of such a
desirable object as furnishing occupation to a number of females who are
qualified by deftness of hand and mental capacity to earn in it an
honourable livelihood. What would one of the men, who chose to leave
Messrs. Smyth and Yerworth at the behest of the Union, say, if having a
daughter of his own to assist him in his occupations, she were to be
compelled to sit idle while he was made to employ a male assistant at
high wages? Yet these men, though intelligent, capable, and industrious,
deliberately throw themselves out of work, and become for the time
paupers of their Union, because it will not permit them to assist in
perfecting any processes which have been begun by women. This is the way
in which men run their heads against a brick wall."
[Footnote 11: November, 1879.]
In December, 1882, the _Printers' Register_ published the following
notice: "In a West End office, objection having been made to the
introduction of female labour, and an undue number of turnovers, a
strike appeared imminent, but the Committee of the Society succeeded in
settling the dispute to the satisfaction of both sides."
The question does not appear to have troubled the London Society again,
but in 1886, a Conference of the Typographical Societies of the United
Kingdom and Continent, held in London (October 21st-23rd), resolved:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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