580 



TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



Percentage of Wages. Working full time — continued. 



Pottery Trades. 



The pottery trades are a group of trades producing pottery, closely allied 

 by reason of locality, process, and conditions, and include the making of gsneral 

 earthenware, china, sanitary tiles, and Rockingham and jet and brown ware. 

 Women are employed direct or as attendants on others. 



The numbers employed in 1901 and 1911 were : 



During the last ten years great changes in methods of production, mechanical 

 and otherwise, have been introduced, and women have been in consequence 

 drawn into the trade in increasing numbers. A notable example is the develop- 

 ment of casting. The caster, who is generally a woman, has almost entirely 

 displaced the hollow-ware presser, who was generally a man. In the words of 

 a working potter : ' Before the War it was pitiable to see the number of 

 hollow-ware pressers, skilled handicraftsmen, begging for labourers' jobs.' 

 Men casters receive piece-rates about one-third higher than the women. In 

 casting, as in pressing, the process is complicated by the introduction of the 

 team system, by which a skilled man or woman presses or casts the article, while 

 an unskilled woman, who is paid 12s. per week, finishes it. 



Since the War the pottery trade has been among the depressed ones, but its 

 workers have transferred to other industries, e.g., silk, and many of the men 

 have enliste-d, which has resulted in certain cases in a shortage of male labour, 

 and especially of youths, who have been attracted by the good money to be 

 earned in the coal pits. The skilled males employed in the trade are mainly 

 elderly men. 



Before the War women were employed as : 



Decorators and Transferers. — Average wages \\s. to 12s., save in the case 

 of ground-layers, who receive about 20s. on piece-work rates. 



Clay-workers — ' pressers ' or ' jolliers '—women receive about 20s. per week 

 on piece-work rates. 



Pressers' Attendants — 'finishers,' 'spongers,' 'towers,' and 'mould-runners' 

 (in which boys are sometimes employed). The wages earned by women on these 



