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
Among the younger women--the girls who have had no experience of
conditions before 1867, the opinion about overtime is not so unanimous.
Some few like what little overtime is allowed to them and say they would
not mind more. One such worker was met, just arrived home from her
factory late one Saturday afternoon. She had been working overtime as a
consequence of the Queen's death--the envelope makers and black
borderers were all working late just then. It was a bleak and wet
afternoon, and she came in in high spirits, evidently regarding all life
as a joke, and frankly confessing that factory life especially was a
joke, particularly when they had overtime. "It is 'larks' working late,
and the governor he up and spoke to us so nice. He says, 'Girls, you
won't mind doing a bit of overtime for the sake of our dear Queen?' and
we says 'No.' _I_ shouldn't mind doing overtime every day of the week. I
like the factory and should hate to be out of it." A few such girls
there are who are in excellent health, like the work and don't find it
monotonous, and, above all, enjoy the larger life that they meet in a
factory just as girls in another social scale enjoy public school or
college life. It is these who revel in their day's work and are not
tired at the end of it, but how in actual fact they would like longer
hours or systematic overtime it is impossible to say. It is probably the
rarity of it, the stimulus and excitement of working against time for
once in a way, the being put on their mettle by the "governor" himself,
that make the enjoyment. We must also remember that the younger hands
are those who take the most anti-social views of work and care least
about industrial conditions. But even by these few, when the idea of
all night work is suggested, it is scouted with horror. On the whole,
the view adopted is that when you have done your day's work, you have
done enough. A worker in the stationers' trade assured us that overtime
means a doctor's bill, so you don't really make anything by it. The
experience of two women who had tried nightwork illegally was also
instructive.
[Sidenote: Overtime experience.]
A. an apparently strong woman was once offered a night job when she was
hard up, and thought that it would be a "lark" to take it. She went in
about 8 a.m. on Friday and worked on with intervals for meals till 3
p.m. on Saturday, being paid piece rates for the day hours and 6_s._ for
the work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. She was utterly done up in
consequence of this work and lost more money next week than she made by
the whole job.
B. once worked all night in a City shop for 5_s._ and got no good out of
it, for she was so done up that she could not work at all next day, and
very little the day after.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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