The Industrial Position of Women.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4813, 29 November 1893, Page 1

The Industrial Position of Women.

Lady Dilke has an article in the Fortnightly upon '<The Industrial Position of Women." She quite convinces the reader that the position of ■ woman in many branches of industry is deplorable, but Bhe fails to suggest any remedy for the evils she describes.. As a rule the trades in which they are engaged require no special training or skill, and there are alwayß hundreds ready to take any vacancy that occurs. To a great extent, too, they make their own position one of peculiar hardship by accepting wages fox which/no man would perform ; the same amount of laboqr. The men engaged at Halifax in a cairpet mill earned 35s a week, and they struck against a threatened reduction ; but the women betrayed them, taking their placeß at 20s per week. "Ihe causes which appear to be at the bottom of this unfairness that' prevails even in the skilled frades are the causes which drive women everywhere into the worst, the most fluctuating, unskilled, . and underpaid industries. The economic independence of women cannot become a stable factor in a renewed society as long as the same importance is not attached to their training— either by themselves or by their families— as in the case of meu, because both they aiid their friends look always to throwing up their industry on marriage. They drop naturally into the lowest category of labour, and when they marry are too often thrown back on the market, forming a fluctuating mass whioh seeks occasional or partial employment. The bad results of these conditions are plainly shown in such trades as that of the bookbinders in London, who say "they reckon from 2000 to 3000 Bkilled women workers— as near as may be conjectured — but are embarrassed by 'as many as 5000 of 'the flotsam and jetsam of the trade who are in it half the year, and who do nothing or follow some other calling throughout the other half.* " Lady Dilke offers no remedy for this Btate of affairs, ahd apparently distrusts her own sex so much that she doubts whether female overseers would be any improvement upon the present men who superintend their work.