Women Workers and Gender Identities, 1835-1913 by Carol E. Morgan

Author:Carol E. Morgan [Morgan, Carol E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415239295
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2001-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Gender conflict in the Black Country metal trades

Women chain- and nailmakers of the Black Country were acutely aware of the extent to which their families depended on them. In one instance, at a meeting in 1883 arranged to oppose the possible exclusion of women from these trades, this awareness led to some humor when one woman declared, if such a policy were put in place, “There would be no marriages.” Her comment was followed by laughter.103 But of course the necessity of women’s work was a serious matter and their labor was clearly vital. Rather than being confined to a period of their youth prior to marriage, women worked throughout the life cycle, as indicated earlier. Even where husbands worked at other trades, earning adequate wages, wives continued to labor, purportedly neglecting their domestic duties, leaving their children alone or in the care of someone else, or keeping them “in some corner of a smoky, draughty, unhealthy workshop, open to every wind that blows.” Their labor in a single day often exceeded the limit imposed by factory and workshop legislation, at times reaching fifteen hours “while the ‘master’ only puts in eight hours a day in the pit.”104 Where possible, children assisted, with girls apparently remaining at home “helping mother” rather than entering domestic work.105

Despite these deplorable conditions and long hours, evidence emerges of a sense of identification with their work among the women workers. In reference to chainmaking, a reporter for the Labour Tribune called attention to the “hereditary skill” that “enters very largely into the trade.” Describing the work in some detail, he wrote:

The proper heat has to be maintained, and then since the iron is very light in the small chain it must be manipulated with great rapidity and dexterity. From the moment of cutting off the bit of iron that is to form the link until it is properly heated, bent, linked, and welded, less than half a minute is occupied in the case of what is known as No. 1. And in this brief space of time the worker has to take the iron out of the fire, and put it back again, and use the anvil twice. It is simply astonishing what a degree of dexterity is required and attained …106

Women understandably exhibited pride in such skill. Thus the woman of 70 mentioned above, working alongside her son, may have been “shrivelled” and “bent almost double” but she had no doubt that she had been “a good ’un” in her time. Another woman, also visited by the Sunday Chronicle correspondent, explained “with some volubility the mystery of her craft,” while another responded to her husband’s smug comment that “thou’rt not so brisk as thou wast once,” with the rejoinder that “there’s plenty o’ men as can’t do so much as a woman.”107 Chain- and nailmaking were clearly skills in which the women took pride. But perhaps of greatest importance in this respect, and this to some extent is conjecture, is not only their own

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