WOMEN GLOVE-MAKERS.

Evening Star, Issue 6759, 26 November 1884, Page 4

WOMEN GLOVE-MAKERS.

Glove-making is unique as an employment for women. It stands midway between the textile industries, which can only be carried on in large factories, and the ordinary hand sewing which is done by seamstresses at home, for making a glove is a very elaborate affair, consisting of many processes, each of which has its own special workmen and workwomen. Out of the 10,000 or 15,000 who are more or less constantly employed in making the gloves, only 300 or 400 are at work in the famous Worcester factory, which may be regarded as the head quarters of the English glove-trade. The rest work at home; but, as they go from the factory to the home, so they return from the; homo to the factory, for the plain sewing is only one of the many processes through which the skin passes in its progress from the back of tiie kid to the back of the hand of its future wearer. To the requisite materials for the gloves sold by a single firm alone—which, However, it is fair to say has. more than'half the trade in its own hands—nearly 6,000,000 kids and lambs are slaughtered annually. That is to say 16,000 of the two month-old innocents are killed every working day, year in and year out, to supply “Dents” with material for their gloves. More glovts, however, are sewn by women at home, and the employment thus afforded for the span hours of wives and daughters in the obunties' of Worcester, Hereford, Oxford, Somerset, Devon, apd Gloucester,. Is one of the ' most important sources of female, income, U The whole system is very elaborately organised,. The glove-making counties are'mapped out into circuits, each of which has its sewing; clerk or commercial traveller. The firm employ a number of clerks, who have each their own districts, and round these they travel every week, taking a cart load each round. The glove-sewers of the district assemble at a fixed place—generally the village inn—and receive their work, which they tike home and deliver next week when, the clerk comes rounds again. As a rule,' there are twenty to thirty workers in each village who do plain sewing, some by band and some by machine. They earn from five to eight shillings the week, which is the pay for one to two dozen pairs of gloves,