TWENTIETH CENTURY

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144083, 30 April 1913, Page 8

TWENTIETH CENTURY

“There is nothing more abominable in .British industry than the way that the labour of women has been used to make cheap' goods and high oroflts,’’ says the Co-operative ; News. .“It is utterly impossible to convey in 'words the evils that have been involved in trades where'females have been almost wholly employed. “Disorganised and unacquainted with the ways of the world, individual employers . and limited companies have paid little or no attention to the need of a living wage for ; them, or to the necessity of providing healthy conditions. Indeed, the, increasing, influx of women into industrial occupations during the past half-century has enabled 'employers to perpetuate some of the worst sweating conditions that existed among men in the days of ‘Alton Locke.' SOME PITIFUL MINIMUMS. “It was only in 1909 that the Trade Boards Act came to us with the intention of removing certain disgraces that had existed for many decades; and in cases where this beneficient, but very much limited, piece of legislation has been applied the improved conditions are still below what should be considered decent or satisfactory.

“Thti Act was made applicable to four trades: they were -chain-making, macliine-maclo laco, and net finishing, cardboard-box-making, .. and tailoring. Since the Act-received Boyal Assent, those trades have been elevated to the minimum required by its terras. And what is this minimum’? Generally, tor women chain T ntakers it is 2|d per hour; for lace finishers it is 2ld per hour; for cardboard-box makers it,is 3d per hour; for women in ready-made and wholesale bespoke tailoring it is 3id per hour. There is no fear of female workers being supertaxed out of these liberal earnings. “It means that the reward of a female handchnmmerer. of chains is JOs Cd for a week of fifty hours. ; For a generation or more before that her wages had been about 5s nor week. Before the- application of the Trade Boards Act,' women in the tailoring trade not infrequently earned. only _ss, and 6s per 'week.- These -were the wage's of Semi-starvation, of bad health, of immorality in too many.cases. _ “There are several women's industries which still come within the scope of ‘sweating.’; 'An attempt is to be made shortly to bring these .under the. Act. A large meeting is to bo called for tho nurnoso next month, in London. They include, among others, laundry work and shirtinaking. For over sixty' vears now neoolc have been moved bv Hood’s. ‘Song, of-the Shirt,’ with its sad; - dirge-like, penetrating phrases. But the nation has not been moved to the extent of redressing, fully, the terrible wrongs inflicted upon women -in order that ,we may have cheap shirts, and manufacturers may have cheap, substantial profits; and t wh.it 1 oni Hood lamented in the forties it is still necessary for us to try -to? remove in this year of 1913. BLACKNESS OF CLEAN SHIRTS. “Shirtinaking is still a sweated industry. whether in Manchester, London. Aho West of England,-. or the North of Ireland. It is not merely that it is a low-paid occupation, but in many cases it is carried on under conditions that yield disease as well as poverty. The workers are too crushed and starved to become rebellious. “Laundry work, which might have been one of the cleanest and healthiest occupations for women, has been one of the most .dangerous from a health point of view. , i - .■■ “But tho -whole field .of industrial Work for women —except in one or two of the textile trades —is something that no honest man can. feel proud about; If we have any regard for the , womanhood and the'motherhood ,of the-na-tion. we should never rest till the whole circumstances of women’s industries are put on a level - beyond re-