Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XXXVI. Some industries employing women paupers. A supplement to the report (Appendix vol. XVII) by Miss Constance Williams and Mr. Thomas Jones on the effect of outdoor relief on wages and the conditions of employment.
- Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905-09
- Date:
- 1910
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XXXVI. Some industries employing women paupers. A supplement to the report (Appendix vol. XVII) by Miss Constance Williams and Mr. Thomas Jones on the effect of outdoor relief on wages and the conditions of employment. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![situation of the pauper and of the pauper's children (where such were at work) were compared with similar facts relating to the workers generally with a view to discovering the economic effects of pauperism. Over 250 firms distributed over 30 towns were inter- viewed in this way, and by about four-fifths of them permission has been granted to pubhsh most of the particulars in an anonymous form. There is so little accurate data available regarding women's employment and wages (outside the textile industry), that even the small addition supphed in the following pages will not be unwelcome to students. The information is exhaustive for no industry. It only furnishes samples selected from the standpoint of pauperism. But all of it has the advantage of having been submitted to employers for correction and approval.* The wages in every case were furnished by the employers themselves and were often transcribed by us directly from the wage books of the firm. We regret that it was not usually found practicable to distinguish adult women and young girls in the returns, nor to give comparative figures over a series of years. Permission to pubhsh an interview was sometimes refused because of some adverse comment on the conditions of work or character of the workers. Employers naturally do not hke their premises described, even anonymously, as dirty, or their workers as rough or slovenly or intemperate. It must be distinctly understood that the pauper connection of some of the firms described was of the slenderest. In some cases the particulars supphed by the reheviug officer were inaccurate or out of date, and no pauper or pauper's daughter was to be found employed at the time of our visit. For the sake of convenient reference we reproduce here the relevant conclusions reached in our final report.f 1. About 70 per cent, of the women paupers are sixty years of age and upwards, and about the same percentage of the occupied women paupers are engaged in casual domestic occupations. The remainder are to be found chiefly in precarious employment like hawking or small shop-keeping, or in sack sewing and rag sorting, in aerated water and jam factories, and in laundries. Such industries permit of irregular attendance, and therefore reheved widows, with children, are attracted to them. 2. Some well-organised firms which offer the greatest net advantage to the worker in wages, hours, and regularity of employment dehberately aim in various ways at attracting the best workers and dismissing inferior ones. There is a process of selection always going on in such firms. The women paupers, however, are as a rule industrially handicapped by a sick husband or by children or by physical infirmities. They therefore tend to move away from the larger, highly organised firm to the smaller firms where they can come and go more freely. Hence they are found predominantly in such irregular employments as those mentioned above. 3. We found no evidence that women wage earners to whose famihes out- relief is given cut rates. Such wage earners are invariably found working at the same rates of pay as the much larger number of women not in receipt of rehef, who entirely swamp them. The number of subsidised paupers competing for jobs compared with the supply of workers available is too small to affect the general level of rates. 4. Wage-earning women paupers consist of two main classes, women with children dependent on them, and women without young children. The first class IS, as a rule, relieved on the children's account; the second consists mainly of women over sixty relieved on account of old age. All the forces which operate on the wages of women workers in general are present in the pauper cases, and tiey are specially handicapped by age, debihty, widowhood, children to mother, si^k husbands to tend. These disabihties will inevitably be reflected in their earnings. The majority will tend to fall between the median and the lower quartile. Where they are still lower, the physical or domestic handicap is probably correspondingly severe. 5. Wage-earning daughters in families in receipt of out-rehef are found indifferently in all firms, good and bad. With this class also the process of selection is always going on in the better firms. Perhaps fifty girls will be taken * In a few cases the firms could not subsequently be traced and our application was returned marked Gone, no address, or In liquidation. f Outdoor Relief and Wages, Appendix Vol. XVII. [Cd. 4690], pp. 72, 257, 340, et fassim. . ..^](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24400105_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
