It

In going to the office building, where the men executives of the unions from this district have their offices, the writer was impressed with the number of women workers passing in and out in groups. was in the evening, and the gray shawls and "clogs," that had scurried through the streets to the factories in the morning, had given place to rather well fitting, sometimes mildly ornate clothes. To the secretary of one of the largest unions their appearance was commented upon as a demonstration of the success of the woman factory operative in effective organization.

"Yes," he replied, "they come here to report grievances and collect benefits for these are precarious occupations and this union pays good benefits. But although the division of membership is the same as it is in the trade, or about nine women to one man, and the women have gained an increase of 50 per cent in wages since the union was started 20 years ago, they are too indifferent to the success of the union to come out to the meetings. And this year they put in such a poor appearance at the annual meeting that the woman who had represented them for 14 years at their trades council was defeated and a man sent in her place."

This woman was interviewed, and her testimony, based on an experience of over 20 years, as to this indifference of the woman worker to the possibility of power in the union to which she belongs, was even more forcible.

"They let the men run the unions," she said, "and then wonder` why the legislation they, by the mere weight of their membership in the unions, help the men to secure, is always given an interpretation more favorable to the male operative. There are now in this town. posted notices that women touching their machines during meal time are in violation of the factory acts, while the men are allowed to clean theirs and thus gain a half an hour or so in work time. Moreover, according to the standard log worked out between the organized operatives and the employers, men and women are supposed to receive the same pay for mule spinning work, yet there is no woman trade unionist in charge of these machines. They say it is because women would be obliged to turn in the neck of their waists and go stockingless on account of the humidity necessary in these rooms, but if more women asserted themselves at their trade-union meetings with the men the false modesty myth would disappear, I think."

The Bolton and District Power Loom Weavers' Association has 5,800 women members to 520 men, yet the officials of this union are all men. And this leads to a consideration of what has been and what is the attitude of the male trade-unionist toward the women's trade union movement.

ATTITUDE OF MALE TRADE UNIONISTS TO ORGANIZATION OF WOMEN.

Aside from the attitude of traditional superiority with which men would naturally regard any attempt of women to organize, there was economic argument back of their steady resistance to the combination of women workers either in trade societies of their own or as co-members in the men's unions. Women's labor was cheap labor, liable to undersell that of the men in many branches of trade, and the strengthening of this form of competition by any form of organization was looked upon askance. At the first annual meeting of the Society of Women Employed in Bookbinding there was read a letter of cordial greeting to the new society from its brother organization in the trade, but when a similar congratulatory resolution was moved at the London Trades' Council it met with considerable opposition. (")

But the demand for women's labor increased. The introduction of machinery easy of operation in the manufacturing industries was favorable to the employment of women, and "to the factory system, and the consequent growth of the ready-made trade, must also be traced the great increase in the number of girls employed in the tailoring trade,” (") and the employment of female labor in the great industry of boot and shoe making greatly increased between 1881 and 1891.(c)

In all these trades the women were not brought in direct competition with men in the higher branches, but they were replacing them in different departments at a lower rate of pay, and male trade-unionists realized that a large mass of underpaid, unorganized labor is bound to affect detrimentally the average worker, and that it was clearly to their own interest to induce women to cooperate for a higher wage rather than to compete for lower.

But it is difficult to determine just what the opinion of the male trade-unionist of the present day is in regard to the advantages or necessity of unionism among industrial women. A high official in the General Federation of Trade Unions points to the fact that in the highest branches of cotton spinning in Lancashire, where more care has been devoted to women's organization than anywhere else, men's wages are lower than in Yorkshire, where trade unionism amounts to only a third of that found in the Lancashire district, and he asserts that outside the textile industries women's trade unionism is a negligible quantity. Among the trade union men in Birmingham this same pessimism exists. Here, however, the women workers are

• Women in the Printing Trades, by J. Ramsay Macdonald, p. 36. Statistics on Employment of Women and Girls, Board of Trade, 1894, p. 11. c Idem, p. 73.

4764-No. 83-09-2

scattered, a few in each industry, and organization is made impossible.

In Manchester the men trade union leaders are enthusiastic over the work accomplished by the women unions throughout Lancashire. With so many women in the industries here, they say, it is necessary to have their organized support for concurrent action in case of trade disputes, and they point to the great benefit that the maintenance of the log of equal earnings of men and women has wrought in presenting a stable economic condition.

For illustration, take a table of average earnings of highly skilled men and women cotton weavers in Lancashire:

AVERAGE PIECEWORK EARNINGS IN THE LAST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER, 1906, OF COTTON-CLOTH FOUR-LOOM WEAVERS WORKING FULL TIME. [From Report of an Inquiry by the Board of Trade into the Earnings and Hours of Labor of Workpeople of the United Kingdom. I. Textile Trades in 1906, pp. 63, 72.]

a Computed from data shown in original report.

The men trade-unionists in the printing trades have offered serious opposition to the organization of the women. This was particularly expressed by the action taken in 1886 at a conference of the typographical societies of the United Kingdom and the Continent, held in London, which resolved:

That while strongly of the opinion that women are not physically capable of performing the duties of a compositor, this conference recommends their admission to membership of the various typographical unions upon the same conditions as journeymen, provided always the females are paid strictly in accordance with scale.

This resolution was subsequently adopted by the London Society of Compositors, with the result that it became practically impossible for any women to join the society. (")

a Women in the Printing Trades, by J. Ramsay Macdonald, p. 28.

The principal reason why women are employed in this highly skilled trade is their cheapness, and if they demanded the same wage as the men they would not be employed, because the labor of the male compositor is more efficient. One woman was able to avail herself of this resolution. She joined the Society of Compositors on August 30, 1892, but she has ceased to be a member. The reason for this determined opposition of the male compositor to admitting women to their unions is that their presence in the trade must always be a menace to maintaining the standard wage. Women compositors are regarded as so inferior to men that only among employers in a small way, doing business on limited capital, where low wages are a great enough advantage to counterpoise the lack of technical skill, can they find employment. In better equipped houses women do only part of the work, the heavier or more technical part being done by men. The men who have served long apprenticeships naturally resent the infusion of women's inferior workmanship, and above all combat trade combination with her generally lower rate of wage. To show how effectively this exclusion has been carried out, it may be stated that in 1901 in the seven unions of men covering the printing trades there were 41,907 members, while the total membership of women's unions was well under 1,000. (a)

In other occupations than printing, owing to the development of machinery there is a margin of labor where women are called in to take over processes formerly done by men, and in the readjustment, before the men are absorbed in other and higher branches of the same trade or in different industries, there has been friction over the attempted organization of the women. The exclusion of the women. from the compositors' union constitutes the only statistical evidence available of what is called "trades-union jealousy." And this, as has been explained, was not discrimination against female members because they were women, but because they presented less skilled labor, underselling the technical skill of the man worker in an immobile trade, where men could hope neither to move out of line to avoid competition nor to raise the women worker's pay. In Edinburgh in 1849 a union of women compositors was formed, but it failed at the end of a year for the same reason that had convinced the men that it did not pay to organize them-that their wages were fixed by their inefficiency, and that any attempt to better them would only displace men workers.

But abrupt and absolute failure has been encountered rarely by the organizers of women workers in England. At the beginning of the women's trade union movement there were many instances of

• Women in the Printing Trades, by J. Ramsay Macdonald, p. 41.

organizations which were formed and which expired after a feeble life of weeks or months, because trade unionism for women was represented as the solution of all labor troubles. Even now the organizers of the Women's Trade Union League enroll every year thousands of members of women's trade unions, knowing perfectly well that if half the number enlisted is retained it will be perhaps a higher average than usual. An instance of this lapsing in membership on a large scale is seen in the recent organization of the women employed in the boot and shoe trade at Leicester. When this work was started by an organizer in 1904 for some reason the women flocked into the union. The local branch in Leicester sprang up in a few months from a membership of about 400 to as many thousands, but a year later it was found that all these enthusiastic recruits had allowed their membership to lapse. Renewed efforts saved the union from disorganization, and it has now a membership of about 1,000.

The phenomenal desertion in this instance has been attributed to the fact that the officials of the union were men who had also to attend to their men members; that a great deal of work had to be done in enforcing a new minimum rate wage for men; and that in attending to this the women were perhaps neglected. A sufficient number of meetings was not held, sufficient attention was not paid to the collection of contributions, and the result was that a large proportion of members were dropped. A woman official has been appointed secretary of the branch in Leicester, and it is slowly and steadily regaining much of the ground lost. The men are now`paying more attention to the women members and are endeavoring to get the manufacturers to recognize the women members of the union in the agreements between the unions and the manufacturers' association.

There are other groups of women in the industries, among whom the spirit of trade unionism seemed to have evaporated, but who appear later in the guise of affiliated strength. For instance, after the several small unions in the miscellaneous clothing trades in and about Oxford had struggled along and suffered the eventual termination of the weak union, through financial handicap and other vicissitudes, there was formed in 1881 the Protective and Provident Society of Women for this district. This revivified the various nuclei and combined them under one executive organization. This society, which still survives, never reached even fair proportions, because the trade groups are so limited in membership in this locality; but the same principle of organization was exemplified in the National Federation of Women Workers, established in the latter part of 1906, with headquarters in London and with a woman secretary, which has already secured a membership of over 3,000, with 20 branches. Under