working life of women seventeenth century - School of Economics ...

TEXTILESbranches of the woollen industry, spinning was apauper trade, a " sweated industry," which did notprovide its workers with the means for keepingthemselves and their families in a state of efficiency,but left them to some extent dependent on othersources for their maintenance.Comparing the various branches of textile industrytogether, an interesting light is thrown uponthe reactions between capitalistic organisation oflabour and wornep's economic position.Upper class women had lost their unique positionin the silk trade, and the wives of wealthy clothiersand wool merchants appear to have seldom takenan active interest in business matters. Thus it wasonly as wage-earners that women were extensivelyemployed in the textile trades.Their wages were lowest in the luxury tradesi.e., silk, silver and gold, and in the linen trade. Theformer were now wholly capitalistic, but the demandfor luxuries being limited and capable of littla expansion,the labour available in the pauper classeswas sufficient to satisfy it. The situation was differentin the linen and allied trades, where the demand forthread, either of flax or hemp, appears generally tohave been in excess of the supply. Although thelarger pqt of the linen manufactured in England wasstill produced under the conditions of domesticindustry, the demand for thread for trade purposeswas steady enough to suggest to Parish Authoritiesthe value of spinning as a means of reducingthe poor rates. It did not occur to them, however,that if the wages paid for spinning were higherthe poor would have been as eager to learn spinningas to gain apprenticeship in the skilled trades,and thus the problem of an adequate supply ofyarn might have been solved at one stroke with theproblem of poverty itself ; no attempt was made toraise the wages, and the production of thread forTEXTILEStrade purposes continued to be subsidised out ofthe poor rates. The consequent pauperisationof large numbers of women was a greater disasterthan even the burthen of the poor rates. Insteadof the independence and self-reliance which mighthave been secured through adequate wages, motherswere not only humiliated and degraded, but theirysical efficiency and that of their children wasowing to the inadequacy of the grudgingassistance given by the Churchwardens andOverseers.The woollen trade, in which capitalistic organisationhad attained its largest development, presentsa more favourable aspect as regards w~~men's wages.Already in the seventeenth century a spinster couldearn sufficient money to maintain her individual self.In spite of periodic seasons of depression, the woollentrade was rapidly expanding ; often the scope ofthe clothiers was limited by the quantity of yarnavailable, and so perforce they must seek for labouroutside the pauper class. Possibly a rise was alreadytaking place in the spinsters' wages at the close ofthe century, and it is interesting to note thatduring this period the highest wages were earned,not by the women whose need for them was greatest,that is to say the women who had children dependingexclusively on their wages, but rather by the well-todowomen who could afford to buy the wool for theirspinning, and hold the yarn over till an advantageousopportunity arose for selling it.Spinning did not present itself to such womenas a means of filling up vacant hours which they wouldotherwise have spent in idleness, but as an alternativeto some other profitable occupation, so numerousWere the opportunities offered to women for productiveindustry within the precincts of the home.Therefore to induce women of independent positionto work for him, the Clothier was obliged to offer