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[Transcriber's note: Underscores have been used to indicate _italic_
fonts. Original spelling variants have not been standardized. In the
tables, _s._ or s. was used for Shillings; and _d._ or d. for Pence. "It
should also be noted that slight errors of a few farthings in the
additions have crept into the totals of some of the columns, but as they
do not affect the accuracy of the wage figures the Appendix has been
copied exactly as it was published." (Appendix VI.)]


WOMEN IN THE PRINTING TRADES:

A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

EDITED BY

J. RAMSAY MACDONALD,

WITH A PREFACE BY PROFESSOR F. Y. EDGEWORTH.

INVESTIGATORS:

MRS. J. L. HAMMOND, MRS. H. OAKESHOTT, MISS A. BLACK, MISS A. HARRISON,
MISS IRWIN, and Others.

LONDON: P. S. KING & SON,

ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER.

1904.




PREFACE.


My only qualification for writing this preface is the circumstance that,
as a representative of the Royal Economic Society, I attended the
meetings of the Committee appointed to direct and conduct the
investigations of which the results are summarised in the following
pages. From what I saw and heard at those meetings I received the
impression that the evidence here recorded was collected with great
diligence and sifted with great care. It seems to constitute a solid
contribution to a department of political economy which has perhaps not
received as much attention as it deserves.

Among the aspects of women's work on which some new light has been
thrown, is the question why women in return for the same or a not very
different amount of work should often receive very much less wages. It
is a question which not only in its bearing on social life is of the
highest practical importance, but also from a more abstract point of
view is of considerable theoretical interest, so far as it seems to
present the paradox of _entrepreneurs_ paying at very different rates
for factors of production which are not so different in efficiency.

The question as stated has some resemblance to the well-known demand for
an explanation which Charles II. preferred to the Royal Society: there
occurs the preliminary question whether the circumstance to be explained
exists. The alleged disproportion between the remuneration of men and
women is indeed sometimes only apparent, or at least appears to be
greater than it is really. Often, however, it is real and great where it
is not apparent.

On the one hand, in many cases in which at first sight women seem to be
doing the same work as men for less pay, it is found on careful inquiry,
that they are not doing the same work. "The same work nominally is not
always the same work actually," as the Editor reminds us (Chapter IV.
par. 1). "Men feeders, for instance, carry formes and do little things
about the machine which women do not do." In this and other ways men
afford to the employer a greater "net advantageousness," as Mr. Sidney
Webb puts it in his valuable study on the "Alleged Differences in the
Wages paid to Men and to Women for similar Work" (_Economic Journal_,
Vol. I. pp. 635 _et seq._). The examples of this phenomenon adduced by
Mr. Webb, and in the evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, are
supplemented by these records. To instance one of the less obvious ways
in which a difference in net advantageousness makes itself felt,
employers say: "It does not pay to train women: they would leave us
before we got the same return for our trouble as we get from men." At
the same time it is to be noticed in many of these cases that though the
work of women is less efficient, it is not so inferior as their pay. For
instance, a Manchester employer "estimated that a woman was two-thirds
as valuable in a printer's and stationer's warehouse as a man, and she
was paid 15_s._ or 20_s._ to his 33_s._," (p. 47, note).

In other cases the difference between the remuneration of men and women
for similar work is not obvious because they work in different branches
of industry. For example, only five instances of women being employed as
lithographic artists are on record (Chapter IV. par. 1). Other branches
of the printing trade are as exclusively women's work. Such data afford
no direct and exact comparison between the remuneration of the two
classes in relation to the work done by them respectively. As Mr. Webb
concludes, the inferiority of women's wages cannot be gathered "from a
comparison of the rates for identical work, for few such cases exist,
but rather from a comparison of the standards of remuneration in men's
and women's occupations respectively." "Looked at in this light," he
continues, "it seems probable that women's work is usually less highly
paid than work of equivalent difficulty and productivity done