WHERE CHEAP GLOVES COME FROM.

Northland Age, Volume 2, Issue 41, 22 May 1906, Page 8

WHERE CHEAP GLOVES COME FROM.

Many, cheap gloves are imported from Bohemia. Before the introduction of the glove-sewing machine, which took place in 1870, a simple apparatus was in use consisting of two brass plates, in which the stitches were incised, and which held tightly together the leather parts of the gloves, while the needle of the sower followed easily the incised stitches.

It was easy work, not at all injurious to body or eye, and an industrious girl could, without any exertion, sew two pairs of gloves a day, for which she received 24d. to 3d. each, equal to about fid. to 6d. a day. Very poor wages indeed, for the “good old times" were not generous. But it is as well to bear in mind that this money was earned in a comfortable homely way. Let us now compare what progress these girls have made in the golden era of machinery. The poor sewers are never in a position to acquire the requisite sum to be owners of these machines. The district to which we refer is a poor, mountaneous part, the men mostly miners of an Imperial silver mine, with daily wages of 16d. The requisite machines are owned by middlemen, called factors, to whom the glove manufacturers from all of Austria send their unfinished gloves for sewing. These factors are proprietors of a certain number of machines, from twenty to a hundred, which are fitted up in workrooms, most of them very indifferently suited for the purpose.

The poor girls from the neighbouring districts have often to walk‘a distance of eight miles to find work in such workrooms. They leave their miserable cottages at 4 a.in. to begin their day’s work at six a.m. After hard labour for twelve hours at a most complicated machine, and after passing another two hours on their way home, their whole earnings amount to 7d.

One sewer can sew 10 pairs of gloves a day, another finish about the some quantity, for which each is paid 7d., equal to weekly wages of 3/6 for sewing sixty pairs. The sewer cannot, as formerly, work at leisure in ber own home. Including the hours she loses on the road she work,s ninety r six hours a week for 3/6, her body continually bent over a most complicated machine, her eyes watching leather, thread, and needle incessantly, her foot moving continually, amidst the rattle of many machines, in a most sickly atmosphere. This is how cheap gloves are made.