Women exercised to the full the powers that were attached to the land either by proxy, by bailiffs, or in person. 'T'hey levied troops, held courts of justice, coined money, and took part in the assembly of peers that met at the court of the lord. ''14

Parallel with the decline of the feudal system is the rapid growth of towns. Women did not take a conspicuous part in the work carried on in the towns, but that they were not excluded from the industries is apparent when we find them in the trade guilds as early as the fifteenth century. "Labor disputes arose over the questions of wages and piece-work of holidays, of the employment of women and cheap workers.

2915

Before the great pestilence of 1348, women were employed as agricultural laborers. Their wages were invariably lower than the wages of men. This difference in wages can be partially accounted for on the ground that there existed a marked difference in the nature of their work. Women as farm hands were employed in "dibbling beans, in weeding corn, in making hay, in assisting the sheep-shearers and washing the sheep, in filling. the muck carts with manure, and in spreading it upon the lands, in shearing corn, but especially in reaping stubble after the ears of corn had been cut off by the shearers, in binding and stacking sheaves, in thatching ricks and houses, in watching in the fields to prevent cattle straying into the corn, or armed with a sling, in scaring birds from the seed of ripening corn, and in similiar occupations. When these failed, there were the winding and spinning of wool 'to stop a gap.' These were the employments not only of the laborers' wives; the wife and daughters of the farmer took their part in all farm works with other women, and worked side by side with their husbands and fathers. After the 'black death', women shared for a time in the general rise of wages, and were seldom paid less than twopence for a day's work, a sum not unfrequently paid a woman for her daily work in the fields before the time of the great pestilence. This amount of wages, however, was diminished by one of the statutes of labourers, which required that every woman not having a craft, nor possessing property of her own,

14 Ostrogorski, The Rights of Women, p. 2.

15 Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, II, p. 88.

should work on a farm equally with a man, and be subjected to the same regulations as to wages as her husband and brothers, and like them should not leave the manor or district in which she usually lived to seek work elsewhere. "'16

In the early stages of industry "wool and silk were woven and spun in scattered villages by families who eked out their subsistence by agriculture."

Often in the sixteenth century the wealthy graziers were clothiers and employed the men and women of the neighborhood to make into cloth the wool raised upon their own lands. "In many districts the farmers and labourers used few things which were not the work of their own hands, or which had not been manufactured a few miles from their homes. The poet Wordsworth's account of the farmers' families in Westmorland, who grew on their own land the corn with which they were fed, spun in their own home the wool with which they were clothed, and supplied the rest of their wants by the sale of yarn in the neighboring market town was not so far inapplicable to other parts of England as we might at first imagine." 18

With the introduction of machinery the paternal attitude of the master toward the employee disappeared. Since the workman at this time had no political rights the decline of the spirit of paternalism exposed him to easy industrial exploitation.

Under the domestic system of industry the entire family was engaged under one roof in the spinning or weaving of cloth. The spinning was done by the women and children, and the weaving by the men. Often it took as many as six spinners to keep one weaver busy, thus necessitating the employment of the women in the neighborhood when there were not sufficient spinners in the household.19

This system of industry was revolutionized by the invention. of the spinning-jenny, the water-frame, and the self-acting mule, and the application of the steam engine to cotton manufacture. With the introduction of these inventions into the cotton industry the modern factory system arose. Those employers who

16 Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, pp. 219–220.

17 Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution. p. 15.

18 Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, p. 181.

19 Cheyney, Industrial and Social History of England, p. 206.

could not compete with the new methods were forced to give up their small domestic factories and seek employment in the towns. In 1811 the agricultural population of England was 35 per cent of the whole, and within twenty years it had declined to 28 per cent.20

Before the introduction of machinery, industrial occupations kept pace with increasing wants, but so little progress was made from one generation to the other as to give the impression of a static condition. Class lines were sharply drawn, and all authority rested with those whose property holdings were sufficient to place them with the privileged classes. Their political power increased with their material prosperity but neither political power nor material prosperity fell to the laboring classes. 'Except as a member of a mob, the labourer had not a shred of political influence. The power of making laws was concentrated in the hands of the land owners, the great merchant princes, and a small knot of capitalists, manufacturers who wielded that power-was it not natural in the interests of their class, rather than for the good of the people."21

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From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century little change was effected in the home life of the people. Many of the houses had "but a single great fireplace." At the beginning of the nineteenth century came many improvements in household affairs. "The common use of the friction matches after 1830 saved an infinitude of pains to the cook, the workman, and the smoker; instead of the iron pots and Dutch ovens came the airtight cook stove, an unspeakable good friend to the housewife; for the openfire was substituted the wood-stove, and then the coal-stove, which leaked gas but saved toil and trouble; for the labor of the needle which has kept feminine fingers employed from the time of Penelope, came the sewing-machine, rude enough at first, which revolutionized the making of clothing.

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History shows from the earliest times the employment of women of the higher social classes within doors. Although the women of the laboring classes are employed extensively in the

20 Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, p. 88.

21 Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, p. 186.

22 Hart, National Ideals Historically Traced, pp. 188-189.

fields there is always an apparent tendency for them to center their activities about the hearth. The performance of out-door tasks among women is determined as much by their class status as sex status. The outdoor work of women resulted less from the tyranny of one sex over another than from the tyranny of one class over another. Whatever the lot of the women field laborers, the lot of their husbands and brothers was little better. The difference between the status of men and women is estimated by the nature of their work when engaged in the same general occupation as agriculture. Women seem to be deprived of the element of choice in their work since they perform the most monotonous and uninteresting tasks, and the men perform the work allowing for the greatest play of individuality and skill. How much this division of work is due to differences of authority, and how much to the difference in the assumption of responsibility, is difficult to say. It is certainly more convenient for women not to assume responsibilities for out-door work when they have to care for small children; and what may be attributed to an exercise of authority of men over women, may be due to custom having its basis in convenience. It is interesting to note that in practically all civilized societies women are the first to profit by any change doing away with the necessity of all the members of the family being employed in the field. This fact alone would indicate a common recognition of the necessity of protecting women from the severest work for the good of the race. It may have its basis, too, in the inherent chivalry of man toward woman.

CHAPTER III

THE EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL CHANGES UPON THE HOMES OF THE WORKING POOR

Under the domestic system of industry the lord or the master assumed a moral responsibility for the welfare of his working people. It was his recognized duty to care for them when in distress. Although this system of industry centered great power in the hands of a few, and admitted of great abuse, it relieved the workman of a sense of responsibility for the future. With the introduction of machinery, this protection afforded by the master ceased along with the servitude of the worker. A prop was removed from the working people as well as a weight. The immediate result was almost disastrous.

Under the old domestic system there was little encouragement of individual initiative, and the routine of life was subject to few, if any, disturbances that thrust great responsibilities upon the individual. Initiative was a characteristic of the master but the poor worker was taught obedience from the cradle. He was never stimulated nor encouraged to start out on a new line for himself. In other words, he and his family were protected from the uncertainties and responsibilities imposed upon the modern workman. His standard of living was necessarily low. Hunger was not unknown, but it was apt to be a hunger common to all in his class, and so seemingly inevitable, rather than a hunger endured by his family because of his failure in the every day industrial struggle.

The cheapened cost of production of machine industry played havoc with the small domestic manufacturer. His employees were forced into the cities to compete for work at the machine a new experience which was markedly reflected in the homes of the workers. The industrial conditions of the domestic workers in England when forced to compete with machine industry, were similar to those pictured by Dawson when he says of Ger