Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/669

Rh The latter remark applies to practically all my remaining instances.

In salt making women often perform work elsewhere done men, and they are said to work better in the heat of stoves than the men; and to be more 'neat-handed' in 'tapping the squares.' But they do less work, two men taking the places of three women. The men get £1 a week, the women only 10s., so that it would seem that the women were paid not only lower 'time wages,' but also lower 'task wages' than the men.

In brush making the men and women do different work, the men bore the holes and the women, at a lower wage, put in the bristles. But latterly, women have in some cases been put on to do the boring by machinery, at a lower rate of wage than the men. Except in East London, and that only recently, the women have no Trade Union, and the men refuse them admission to theirs, professedly on the ground that the women cannot obtain the Union scale of piece-work rates, which is strictly maintained. The men state that they do not object to women working at 'drawing' (putting in ordinary bristles) but they will not allow them to do the boring or to 'work at pan' (fastening in the bristles by pitch), on the plea that their introduction would merely be used to reduce wages. It may, however, be observed that this line of division between men's and women's work is not so much a scientific frontier as an assertion of the existing line of demarcation, which is doubtless due to historical reasons, and which leaves the higher paid work to the men.

In many cases work now done by women was formerly performed by men, and the women almost invariably receive less than the men did. Sometimes the substitution has been occasioned by the introduction of new machinery. When the machine known as the 'roundabout' began to be used for banknote engraving, young men were at first employed as 'layers on,' at 18s. per week. Now women do this work for 12s. per week, exactly as well and as fast as the men.

In other cases the substitution of women for men has taken place without any change in the industrial process, merely by the effect of the industrial 'survival of the less fit.' In a factory of tins for preserved food, men were formerly employed in a certain process of closing the tins at from 15s. to 20s. per week. Women now do this work less quickly, but they receive only 7s. to 10s. per week. Similarly women now often stamp the gilt lettering on book covers. Men formerly worked with great efficiency the automatic steam-press which performs this operation, and earned,