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 way in which the displacement is brought about is of some interest.
We have, to begin with, the general apparent inability of women to
manage machines, and we find that the folding machine has tended to
reintroduce men to aid in work which for many years has been exclusively
women's.[80] Here we have a case of men and machinery doing women's
work. On the other hand, the sewing machine does not appear to have had
that tendency, the only explanation apparently being that convention
determines that in these trades sewing machines and women go together.
Sewing machines are domestic implements in men's eyes. It is very
curious that it should be so, but we are driven to that as the only
possible explanation of well-observed facts. In this instance machines
alone displace women.
[Footnote 80: The manager of a firm with an extensive business in
popular periodical literature says: "Folding, which was all hand work
and women's work, is now largely done by machines managed by men.
Wrapping, of which the same was true, is also largely done by machines
which are managed by men.... If the machine is large and complicated,
men will replace women, if it is small and simple, women will replace
men."]
No process--excepting the few rare instances in the typographical
trade--seems to have been opened up to women in consequence of the
introduction of machinery; and, on the other hand, the instances where
young persons, either boys or girls, have been put to women's work owing
to the introduction of machinery are very rare. So all that has happened
has been that machines have somewhat changed the character of women's
work, and their chief effect, beyond the displacement of sewers, has
been to prevent the taking on of some learners who otherwise might have
been employed in certain branches of these trades.
Conclusions can be arrived at with more accuracy in respect of the
paper-colouring and enamelling processes.
Paper colouring and enamelling hardly exists as a separate trade now.
Paper is coloured or enamelled, as a rule, in the mill where it is made,
and the processes are carried out by machinery.
This trade, then, affords a definite instance of the replacement of
women's work by machinery, handwork being now a rare survival. In one
firm where forty-five women were formerly employed twelve now work. The
process of colouring by hand is very simple. The sheet of paper to be
coloured is placed in front of the woman who wets it over with the
required colour by means of a long thin brush like a whitewash brush,
which she dips into a bowl. She then takes another round brush, about 10
ins. in diameter, and brushes over the whole surface, so that the colour
shall lie quite evenly. The process is now complete, and the sheet of
paper is taken up and hung on a line to dry. Enamelling is done in
precisely the same way, enamel, instead of colour, being applied.
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