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
the need of paying for strength, at another it makes a new opening for
strength. Thus the displacement which occurs, and the competition set up
are often more apparent than real.
[Footnote 40: As a type of the reports from firms employing women
compositors, the following from Edinburgh firms may be summarised: Seven
girls are employed on each machine (monotype), five on the keyboards and
two correcting proofs. A man is kept for every ten or twelve girls, his
work being to "make up" the girls' work. Another firm employs a man to
attend to every three monotype machines used, for the purpose of keeping
things going. Another says it employs two men compositors and one
labourer for thirty-eight girls.]
[Footnote 41: Machinery has also tended to increase the employment of
women in stamping and embossing.]
[Footnote 42: An official of a Bookbinders' Union states: "In A works
there was much gloom among the men when the rounding and backing machine
came in; profitable work was taken away from the 'rounders' and
'backers,' but they had more 'lining-up' and other work to do in
consequence, so nobody was turned off."]
[Sidenote: A miscellaneous survey.]
In the more miscellaneous trades over which this enquiry ranged a
considerable mass of evidence points to the displacement of men by
women. General statements to this effect are common in the evidence of
both employers and employed. In firm A. it is alleged that women do the
same work in card mounting as used to be done by men, and are paid 2_s._
for work which used to be paid for at 10_s._ Paging and numbering used
to be men's work, but is now almost exclusively done by women. Plain
relief stamping and black bordering have also drifted into the hands of
women, whilst in various directions, such as the making and binding of
cases, wrappering, or feeding printing and particularly lithographic
machines, women are beginning to encroach upon men. These displacements
are very often only local. Manchester has one experience; Edinburgh
another. Leeds was agitated because women were displacing men on a
French ruling machine, whilst elsewhere no similar move was taking
place. But it must be emphasised again that in many of these instances
careful enquiry shows that when men were employed they did something
that the women do not now do,[43] and that the employment of women was
owing to an increased volume of trade, when new machinery or some other
change had made a greater subdivision of labour possible and profitable.
In some cases girls displace boys for no other reason than that boys
cannot be found to do the work; this was the case in Manchester some ten
years ago, when girls took the place of boys in letterpress work.
[Footnote 43: An Edinburgh employer put that in this way: "If women were
paid the same rates as men they would have to pay for their overseers
and assistants."]
[Sidenote: Conclusions.]
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