A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE 



Since 1893 detailed rules have been issued by the Home Office 

 similar to those in use in the pottery workshops, and these have done much 

 to reduce the dangers to health. 813 



In Sedgeley, Upper Gornal and Lower Gornal many women and 

 girls are engaged in the fast-declining hand-wrought nail trade, but every 

 year fewer children are being brought up to the work. The hours are long 

 and the wages poor 6s. or js. being an average weekly wage for an indus- 

 trious woman. Some time ago the women in the Sedgeley district were 

 formed into a union, but it has since died out, experience having proved 

 once again how difficult it is to get overworked, ill-nourished, isolated 

 home-workers to combine for a common object, even if that object is to 

 improve the conditions of their own work, since they are lacking in both 

 the physical and mental vitality necessary for successful union. 



The only holiday or change these women allow themselves, apart from 

 seasons of slackness, seems to be the yearly visit to the hop-districts, which 

 many of them make in the hopping season, and which provides them with 

 a change of scene and of occupation, if not a rest. 



The wages of women in the harness trade averaged in 18934 from gj. 

 to ioj. per week, rising to i2s. in busy times, and this is a common weekly 

 wage for industrial women. During the South African war the trade was 

 good and wages better, but the present rate of wages seems to be about 

 what it was in 1893. The motor-car industry has damaged this trade as it 

 has also affected the saddlery trade, owing to the lessened demand for horses 

 and horse equipments. The trade of Wolverhampton may thus be said to 

 have gained at the expense of the women workers of Walsall. 214 



The work done by women in the saddlery industry largely consists in 

 making suits for horses, either of kersey or blanketing, at the rate of about 

 4-r. per suit. Working ten to twelve hours per day a woman can earn an 

 average weekly wage of 13-1-. iod., though she may get as much as i8j. some 

 weeks. The chief drawback to this trade is its irregularity, and it has 

 declined within the last fifteen years for reasons given above. 215 



In Leek, where the silk industry has been established since the seventeenth 

 century, women work in the silk factories, earning in 1893 4 an average 

 weekly wage of i is. 6</. 218 



Compared with other industrial counties, Staffordshire does not show a 

 large proportion of trade-unionists compared with its total population, despite 

 the fact that one of its principal industries is mining, which is the most 

 highly organized of all the industries. In 1892 it only stood twelfth on the 

 list of English counties, with 4-49 per cent, of unionists to its whole popu- 

 lation, and since 1900 there has been almost without exception a decrease 

 in the membership of every trade union in the county. The North Staf- 

 fordshire Miners' Federation is a striking example of this, having fallen 



1J From a widespread investigation in the Birmingham district, the average wages of japanners of eighteen 

 years and over is estimated at izs. 4</., with a maximum wage of l8/. and a minimum of^j. among all 

 workers. Probably the same rate may be taken to hold good for the South Staffordshire district, which 

 closely adjoins the area investigated. E. Cadbury, M. Matheson, and G. Shann, Women's Work and Wages 

 (1906), 315. 



114 Women 't Work and Wages (1906), 83 ; Rep. of Labour Com. 1893-4, xxiii, 58. 



115 Handbook of the Daily News Sweated Industries Exhibition, 1906, pp. 84, 121. 

 "' Rep. of Labour Com. 1893-4, xxiii, 135. 



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