Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/491

 WOMEN'S WORK IN LEEDS 46cj and inefficient women compelled to support themselves and their families;and the factory system has such immense advantages over the domestic system that there is good ground for hoping that East London will either lose its clothing trade entirely, or save t by adopting the much more economical factory system. In considering wages paid to the women and girls in clothing factories, we have always to bear in mind that the ratio of learners and improvers to experienced hands varies considerably in different shops. The wages given below have been obtained from the books of wholesale clothiers employing altogether 2,300 women and girls, and at first it seemed to me that statistics of wages in these large factories would give a misleading average, making the percentage earning good wages higher than the facts justified. But I afterwards found that the smaller clothing factories and workshops have  smaller proportion of learners than the larger ones. The custom in the trade is to put a girl on piece work after she has been taught for a month or six weeks, and as she is so soon paid the same rate as anyone else doing the same work, the smaller clothiers endeavour to get experienced workers who can get a greater quantity of work out of one machine. The large clothiers, being in greater need of hands, take girls straight from school, and therefore the percentages of those earning low wages when in full work are, I believe, larger in these shops than in the small ones. In the Jewish workshops the women, except the button-holers, are paid by the day, the rate being of course deter- mined by the amount the worker is able to get done in the day. They work the full ten and a half hours, whereas in the majority of the clothing factories the hours are only nine and a half a day. The Jewish masters have also the reputation of driving heir hands more than is customary in the English and Scotch factories. Miss Beatrice Potter and Mr. Burnett have already given us a statement of the day wages paid in these coat-making shops, and of the general condition of employment under Jewish masters. Even if we take the men's statement as more correct than that of the masters, both of which are given in Mr. Burnett's Report on the Sweating System in Leeds, we see that women can earn as good wages in the Jewish workshops as the average in a factory, although they probably give more in return, and their yearly earnings must be less if the statements of the men as to irregu- larity of employment given in Mr. Burnett's Report be correct.  The wages of the 2,300 women and girls which I have pu  The title of Mr. Burnett's Report is misleading. There is a system in Leeds but it is not a sweating system. 