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 it 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 a 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 determined 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 their 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 irregularity of employment given in Mr. Burnett's Report be correct.1

The wages of the 2,300 women and girls which I have put

1 The title of Mr. Burnett's Report is misleading. There is a system in Leeds but it is not a sweating system.

together in one table represent the wages earned in an ordinary busy week; in one factory where there was a smaller proportion of learners than in the others, I have taken a week when the total wages paid came exactly to the average paid per week throughout the whole year, including holiday weeks and stock-taking weeks. In the other cases a week has been chosen which fairly represents the average for all weeks except these. The hours of work are from 8 A.M. to 6.30 P.M.

PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN AND GIRLS EARNING

Under 10s.

36

10s. to 15s.
32.5

15s. to 20s.
25.5

Over 20s.
6

Supposing the proportion of girls under eighteen to be the same for the whole 2,300 that I know it to have been for 1,500 of them, viz. 33 per cent., we get a very close correspondence between the numbers under eighteen, and the numbers earning less than 10s. a week. It is considered that the youngest learner should be earning at least 5s. per week within two or three months of her starting, and an older one, say from seventeen or eighteen years and upwards, ought to be earning 10s. at least within five or six months.

With regard to the amount of wages earned in special branches, I have only particulars from one large firm, and therefore do not give specific tables. Here the majority of the machinists earn between 10s. and 18s.; the binders range from 15s. to over 30s. ; the average earned by the braiders is 30s. 3d. in this particular week; by the button-holers 20s. 5d., three-fourths earning above 188., but none going so high as 30s.; the pressing-machine hands (who press the seams) average from 8s. to 9s. In the finishing department the earnings of the suit finishers range from 2s. to 23s., with an average of 10s. 4d.; of the trouser finishers from 3s. to 16s., with an average of 9s. 11d.; of the button-holers from 6s. to 23s., with an average of 13s. 4d.; and of the buttoners from 3s. 6d. to 10s., with an average of 6s. 3d.

Of the work given out, coats are given to the Jewish masters, trousers, vests and juvenile suits to women, and in a few cases to men; but the Jews never take the latter class of work. Of the poverty and wretchedness to be found amongst the home workers in East London, there is almost nothing in Leeds. It is difficult to make any general statement with regard to home workers so far as their economic position is concerned, for it is always dependent on the circumstances of their family life; in every case it is necessary to dwell on the social aspect of the question, and to con

sider circumstances, trivial in themselves, but affecting the happiness of the women considerably, often sufficient to turn the balance in favour of home work for them, and against factory work.

The exceptionally favourable position of Leeds, its easy access to Hull and Liverpool, its proximity to coal and iron mines, its position as the centre of the cloth trade, have all combined to attract wholesale clothiers from Scotland and from other English towns. The great diversity of skilled men's labour ensures the existence of a class of girls whose work is more likely to be efficient than that of the daughters of unskilled labourers. Four large factories have been established by Glasgow firms. The wages earned by machinists and finishers in Glasgow are considerably less than the wages earned in Leeds, but Leeds supplies a better class of labour, which is really less costly than that of Glasgow.

The results of a small census of girls working in a wholesale clothing factory give some notion of the classes from which this new industry has been recruited. The willingness to satisfy abstract curiosity is not universal; nearly 800 cards were given back to me in sealed envelopes of which nearly 300 were blank; a few conveyed an intimation of the writer's opinion of the impertinence of the questions, and 479 answered carefully and accurately except on one point. Several stated that their mothers before marriage had had no occupation, but a large number merely left a blank, and, although I believe, that this was considered as equivalent to no occupation' or at home,' this cannot be assumed.

I can here only touch upon the wages earned in other industries, such as the boot and shoe trade, cap-making, nail-cutting by machinery, paper-bag-making. The wages in these trades are largely determined by the two principal industries in the town. In East London the wages of the majority of adult women of the factory class, will be found to lie between 8s. and 13s. a week. In Leeds, except in the lowest class of labour, which is but a small proportion of the whole, they may be expected to lie between 11s.

1 The occupations of the fathers are too numerous for classification. The following are a few of them:-Shoemaker, joiner, dyer, tile-maker, boiler-maker, brewer, mason, moulder, brickmaker, clerk, tailor, gamekeeper, greengrocer, chemist, currier, painter, cabinet-maker, leather-dresser, engineer, marble carver, forgeman, traveller, drayman, upholsterer, miner, foreman, wheelwright, machinery agent, farmer tobacconist, policeman, &c.

and 16s. In other words, the proportion of efficient women-workers is much greater in Leeds than in East London. Of the wages and condition of dressmakers and milliners in Leeds, I know nothing. There were 4,000 of them in 1881, and their numbers must have considerably increased in the last ten years. The number of domestic servants was 6,597 in 1861, and rose to 9,636 in 1881, the population of Leeds increasing 50 per cent. during that period. It is noteworthy that in both these occupations the numbers above twenty years of age are considerably greater than the numbers below; the reverse is the case in the textile industries. This must be remembered in any comparison of the employment of women with the employment of men. If every girl in a certain class goes into the factory, nearly every girl comes out of it again. Regrettably high as the percentage of married to single women (excluding girls) in factories may be, the percentage of married women in factories to married women out of them is very small. In the census of 1881 the Industrial Class in Leeds included over 26,000 females and over 83,000 males; but the majority of the males were men, while the majority of the females were girls.

Cigar-making has not yet made its way in Leeds, notwithstanding the large Jewish population. The Dutch Jews, however, do not go to Leeds, and this may explain why the trade has not been taken up. In one small cigar factory where about thirty women and girls are employed, several have come from Nottingham, Leicester, Liverpool, or other towns, although to attract Leeds girls the usual five years' apprenticeship has been reduced to three, and high wages can be earned.

In

Nowhere but in this cigar factory and in a Jewish workshop have I seen men and women doing the same kind of work. both cases I was struck by the difference in intensity of application. The men worked much harder than the women; it seemed a means of livelihood to the former, merely an occupation to the latter. In the cigar trade men are said to have a lighter touch than women, and to produce cigars of more equal quality than women as a rule. In the Jewish workshops the men machinists are paid a higher daily wage than the women, and the indifference with which the Jewish masters take on men or women at the different rates seems to show that women in the clothing trade are really being treated on equal terms with men, and that a substitution of men for women, although most improbable, is not inconceivable.

CLARA E. COLLET