570 



TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION P. 



that there is a shortage of male labour and that the women are paid the same 

 rates as the men displaced. By this time, however, the shortage both of male 

 and female labour is very obvious. 



Hosiery. 

 Since tlie War the hosiery trade has been steadily and more than usually 

 busy, and the employment of women has considerably increased. For some 

 years the number of women drawn into the trade has been proportionately larger 

 than that of the men, whose numbers have slightly decreased, as the following 

 figures show : 



The men in the trade are mostly elderly, and there has been no displace- 

 ment of men by women. Considerable efforts are being made to capture German 

 trade, and employers are laying down more plant. 



(a) Small machines of the Griswold type on which women are employe*]. 

 (&) Large machines of the Cotton's type on which men are employed. 



Trade is very brisk, large Government orders having been placed for pants 

 and vests, which are being made on Cotton's machines (men's process), and 

 for socks, which are being made in huge quantities by women on seamless 

 machines. I'here is a shortage of women in the trade, especially in the rural 

 districts, although they have been drawn in in large numbers, particularly 

 in the East Midlands from the lace trade. Belgian refugees have also found 

 employment in this trade. Old men are being employed as winders. In 

 London, women from deiioressed trades, such as Court dressmaking, have been 

 successfully employed by the Central Committee for Women's Employment 

 in making socks. 



Silk Trade. 



The following figures show the percentage decrease in this trade of male and 

 female labour over the ten years 1901 to 1911 : 



It will be seen that of recent j^ears the silk trade has been a declining 

 one. 



At the end of the first six months of war the contraction of the number 

 of women employed was 3"4 per cent, of the number employed in the previous 

 July. The number of men recruited was 13-7 per cent., and the contraction 

 in male employment was 8 per cent., leaving places to the extent of 5*7 per 

 cent, of the total number of men employed in July to be filled. 



Women are normally employed as Winders, Coppers, Denters, and Spoolers. 

 They are employed in Weaving in places outside Leek, and the employment 

 of women weavers 's increasing in towns like Cheadle, Derby, Prestwich, 

 Macclesfield, Manchester, and Nuneaton. The men's union in Leek has made it 

 impossible to employ women in that town, with the consequence that the 

 silk-weaving industry, save the very high-class trade, which employs only 

 about 120 men, has almost entirely disappeared from Leek. Since the War the 

 Leek men's Union has financed the organisation of the women weavers outside 

 Leek into a Trade Union. 



