The Employment of Working-Class
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Employment of Working-Class Women in Leeds, 1880-1914 by June B Hannam Submitted for the degree of PhD in the Department of Economic and Social History, University of Sheffield November 1984 The Employment of Working-Class Women in Leeds, 1880-1914 by June B. Hannam SUMMARY Between 1880 and 1914 women's industrial employment in Leeds was transformed by the introduction of the factory system in the consumer-goods trades. Women came to predominate in ready-made tailoring, but have been neglected in histories of the city. Recent studies have argued that a. focus on the sex division of labour in social production challenges conventional interpretations of working-class history. This thesis contributes to current debates by examining women's work in Leeds. It argues that the sex division of labour and the tensions between sex and class had a critical impact on the development of the local labour movement. Studies of women's work have shown the importance of regional variations in the pattern of female employment. Leeds provides the opportunity to study a hitherto neglected group, - female factory workers employed outside cotton textiles. Wonen's subordinate role within industry and their attitudes to work were structured by the experience of work itself as well as by their early socialisatjon and role in the family. The first section examines the conditions of women's industrial employment. It suggests that job segregation by sex structured the specific features of women's work in Leeds. Section two locates the extent and type of womens work in Leeds in the context of the social conditions of family life and contemporary expectations of appropriate sex roles. The varied family backgrounds, age and marital status affected the attitudes of individual women to paid employment and modified its effects.. The final section examines the attitudes of the Leeds labour movement towards women workers and the tensions between sex and class. The labour movement failed to address women's needs and to offer a real challenge to their subordinate industrial position. This weakened union organisation and independent labour politics in the city. CONTENTS List of abbreviations Intro duct ion 1 Section One: Women's Work in Leeds, 1880-1914 Chapter 1. The Structure of Female Employment in Leeds, 1880-1914 46 Chapter 2. The Organisation of Women's Work and the Sex Division of Labour in Leeds, 1880-1914 91 Chapter 3. The Sex Division of the Labour Force in Leeds: Some Explanations 144 Chapter 4. Conditions of Women's Employment, 1880-1914 193 Chapter 5. Women's Wages in Leeds, 1880-1914 239 Chapter 6. Women's Wages, 1880-1914: Sex and Regional Variations 289 Section Two: Work and Family, 1880-1914 Chapter 7. The Changing Context of Family Life 324 Chapter 8. The Social Context of Working-Class Life in Leeds, 1880-1914 366 Chapter 9. The Extent and Type of Employment of Women in Leeds, 1880-1914 407 Section Three: The Leeds Labour Movement and Working-Class Women, 1880-1914 Chapter 10. The Labour Movement, Female Workers and the Organisation of Women, 1880-1914 463 Chapter 11. Women's Trade Union Organisation in Leeds, 1880-19 14 496 Chapter 12. Some Explanations of the Weakness of Female Trade Unionism in Leeds 542 Chapter 13. The Leeds Trade Union Movement and Women Workers 582 Chapter 14. The Response of Leeds Socialists and the Leeds Labour Representation Committee to the Female Industrial Worker 615 Chapter 15. Conclusion 661 Appendices 1 - 6 667 Bibliography 694 i ABBREVIATIONS AST&T Amalgamated Society of Tailors and Tailoresses AUCO Amalgamated Union of Clothing Operatives GUTW General Union of Textile Workers HPL Huddersfield Polytechnic Library ILP Independent Labour Party LCA Leeds City Archives LDN Leeds Daily News LM Leeds Mercury LRC Labour Representation Committee LWC Leeds Weekly Citizen NFWW National Federation of Women Workers NUWSS National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies SDF Social Democratic Federation TUC Trades Union Congress WRPLWA West Riding Power Loom Weavers' Association WCOU Wholesale Clothiers' Operatives' Union WLL Women's Labour League WPPL Women's Protective and Provident League WTUL Women's Trade Union League WTUPL Women's Trade Union and Provident League YEN Yorkshire Evening News YFT Yorkshire Factory Times ii YLCE Yorkshire Ladies' Council of Education YP Yorkshire Post 1 INTRODUCTION This thesis examines women's industrial employment in Leeds in the period 1880 to 1914. It argues that an analysis of the sex division of labour in social production is crucial for an understanding of the specific features of male and female work in the city and of the developments which took place within the labour movement. 1 Wonen made up at least one third of the large labour force in Leeds during the period and formed the bulk of workers in two staple industries, wool and worsted textiles and ready-made tailoring. 2 And yet their importance in the city's economy and their contribution to the labour movement have received little attention from historians. It has become commonplace to note the absence of working-class women from historical enquiry, and in particular from the standard texts of labour history. 3 Little attention has been paid by historians to the significance of the sex division of labour for an understanding of working-class history or to the ways in w1th the labour movement confronted sexual inequalities at the workplace and in the home. 4 When women workers are mentioned at all, they are usually seen as a problem for male workers because they were difficult to organise and could be used as a source of cheap labour. 5 The reliance on official union and Labour Party records reinforces this problem-oriented approach and institutional developments are seen "through the eyes of committee men" who view outside challenges as "dangerously weakening diversions".6 The overall neglect of women workers must be seen as a result of ideas about what is historically significant. Labour historians have 2 concentrated on the formal organisations of the labour movement in which women rare1 assumed leadership positions or were not included at all.7 When women did play a greater role in many mixed-sex organisations, their contribution has been underestimated. 8 Only the struggle for womenrs suffrage has received sustained attention because it fits in with a more general interest in the achievement of the vote. 9 As Patricia Hollis notes, this results in "a Whiggish obsession with the origins of the Labour Party on the one hand and with the mesmeric activities of the suffragettes on the other". 1 ° It does not, however, encourage historical enquiry into the less spectacular and less visible activities of ordinary working-class women in the home or in the workplace. A more recent interest by social historians in sex roles, family life, popular culture, work and class relations has helped to broaden the base of labour history away from a preoccupation with institutional developments and has drawn attention to the experience and historical significance of unorganised rank and file workers, both male and female. 11 This has not necessarily led, however, to a greater interest in the sex division of labour and women's waged work, in particular in the most recent texts of labour history. Hinton and Burgess,for example, focus upon the organised working class and on predominantly male areas of employment such as mining, heavy industry and transport, where workplace struggles are seen as crucial for the development of independent labour politics and a class conscious working class.12 Consequently, female work, which was largely unorganised and concentrated in the service sector and in the sweated branches of the consumer goods trades, is seen as far less important.13 3 This emphasis stems largely from the theoretical framework most commonly employed to analyse class structure and relationships. As already noted, discussion is focussed upon the direct relationship between economic struggles at the workplace in key male industries, trade union organisation and the growth of class unity. 14 Underpinning this approach is an acceptance that work and family are separate spheres and. little attempt is made to analyse the interrelationship between "the work situation and the domestic economy". 15 Women are identified with unpaid labour within the home,which is not accorded the "label and dignity of work", while their role in social production is seen as marginal.16 Women are thought, therefore, to derive their class position and attitudes from their role in the family and from the occupation of the male head of household. As late as 1978 Bobsbawm was able to write that a woman "aimed to stop work once married ... once married she belonged to the proletariat not as a worker, but as the wife, mother and housekeeper of workers".' 8 In recent years emphasis has shifted away from a focus on class unity towards an interest in the fragmentation of the working class.' 9 Research has concentrated, however, on the importance of skill in differentiating the working class and divisions based on sex have received far less attention.2° Work by feminist historians, including Alexander, Davin and Taylor, has challenged this neglect of the female worker. 21 Their studies have reassessed women's contribution to well-known movements and have drawn attention to hitherto unexplored areas such as sexuality, unpaid domestic labour and women's community networks. 22 By placing the sex division of labour at the centre of historical enquiry their work not 4 only fills in gaps in women's history but also implies a new approach to the study of labour history. 23 As Alexander notes, "the history of production under capitalism from a feminist perspective is not simply the class struggle between the producer and the owner of the means of production.