ON women's labour. 359 



111 some cases ' a. single shirt will pass through seven or eight different 

 machines in the process of ironing alone.' As regards use of machinery 

 generally in smaller as well as larger lauiidries, Miss Deane stated in 

 1900: 'The old-fashioned washerwoman is fast disappearing, and is 

 superseded by the enterprising young " laundry proprietor," who turning 

 the tubs out of the back-kitchen fills their place with washing machines, 

 and connecting them with a little gas engine . . . blossoms forth as the 

 owner of a factory laundry ready to deal with six times the amount of 

 work. . . . Side by side with this development in the smaller laundries is 

 to be found the rapid multiplication of the large companies and syndicates, 

 certain of which own as many as a dozen or more fine well-equipped 

 laundries . . . organised into departments, in which the division of labour 

 is at least as marked a feature as in the majority of non-textile factoi-ies.' 

 In the smaller factory laundries in the same district organisation is not 

 developed in the same way. ' The labour-saving methods adopted in well- 

 urganised businesses are ignored, and in many places the work is carried 

 on ... as it was before power was introduced, and the output was pro- 

 bably not a fifth of what it is at present. This is to me one of the most 

 sti'iking features of the laundry development. Machinery of an ex- 

 pensive and intricate kind is bought and installed without as far as one 

 can judge an effort being made to secure that the most shall be made of it. 

 Even tlie risks attending its use are very imperfectly appreciated ' (Miss 

 Paterson, 1901). 'The number of steam laundries on our register has 

 increased by over 13 per cent., the number of hand laundries by over 9 per 

 cent. . . . Most of the additions to steam laundries have been by 

 transformation of the hand laundry through introduction of motor power' 

 (Miss Anderson, 1901). There is nothing to show that an impetus was 

 given by the Act to the introduction of machinery. Possibly such an impetus 

 might have been given by the more rigid limits of ordinary factory hours. 



(d) and (e) Health and Efficiency of Women employed, and Prosperify of 



the Trade. 



The foregoing account of the organisation and hours of labour of 

 women in laundries, before and after limits were introduced by the Act 

 of 1896, indicates that no clear estimate can be formed of the gain to 

 women in health and efficiency by the provisions applying to women (as 

 distinguished from men). As lately as 1900 the Inspector's reports insist 

 on the immense practical difficulty of enforcing, at all closely, the daily 

 and weekly maxima of hours. In that year the Secretary of State issued 

 a prescribed form for notice of period of employment, the use of which 

 was binding on occupiers who altered at any time the notice of employ- 

 ment for the day, the object being to secure closer observance of the legal 

 limits by showing at any moment the proposed total period for the week, 

 as well as for the single day. In so far as the law has checked, and this 

 it certainly has done in a considerable degree, the excessively long night 

 and day turns of work at the middle and end of the week, gain must hav.e 

 accrued to the workers in lessening the number of cases of complete 

 exhaustion. No systematic inquiry into the system of lialjility of laundry 

 workers to special forms of disease has, so far as we know, been reported 

 before Miss Deane's repor)^ for 1900 (see Annual Pteport of the Chief 

 Jpspe.ctor, pp. 3S3 and tf.). ,SJ|e g^vp figures from examination of record^ 



