Women chainmakers
News report- conditions in the chainshops
Letter to the Editor from W Rowlands
Interview with Mary Macarthur
Letter to the Editor from Mary Macarthur
Report of Mary's article in the "Christian Commonwealth"
In March 1910, the Chain Trade Board finally agreed a minimum rate for the “hammered and dollied” sector of the chain trade. This type of work was carried out mostly by women, in small or domestic workshops, for what was considered to be starvation wages. It had taken nearly three months for the employers' and workers’ representatives on the Board to agree an increase. It was by no means extravagant, 2½d (1p) an hour for a fifty-five hour week. The group representing the workers, which included Mary Macarthur, had agreed to it, because the employers flatly refused more, and threatened to mechanise the trade. However, the process by which the agreement was turned into money in the pockets of the women chainmakers was far from easy. Some of the newspaper articles of the time are reproduced here for further contemporaneous information.
Some employers chose to pay the new rates immediately, but others took refuge in the clause that allowed for a delay before they were legally obliged to pay the rate. The Act allowed for an interval of three months to elapse before the new rates came into force. This came to an end on 17th August 1910. Section 5 of the Trade Boards Act, however, permitted workers to contract out of the new rates for a further six months. Members of the Chain Manufacturers’ Association (C.M.A.), who had taken five of the six employers’ places on the Board, considered the rate to have been set at a punitively high level, forced on them by the appointed members, and so resorted to desperate measures, by utilizing this loophole in the Act.
At the time, there were about thirty firms and 150 middlemen outside the Chain Manufacturers’ Association. The C.M.A., apparently together with these un-associated masters and middlemen, took advantage of the waiting period, by preparing forms of agreement for contracting out of the minimum wage. They tried to trick or force the women chainmakers into signing them. Very few of the women were able to read and write, and found the legal forms confusing. Many signed without understanding what they had done. Those who refused to sign were told either that there was no work for them, or that the employer could not afford to pay the new rates. At the same time, these unscrupulous employers were stockpiling chains at the old price. Their intention was to utilize these stocks, when the new rates became legally binding, make the majority of women unemployed, and make the Trade Boards Act appear to be unworkable.
The employers were confident that their plan would work because, unlike many other trades, the stock would not deteriorate, was easily warehoused, and unlike clothing, did not become unfashionable with time. The chain masters also knew that no more than half of the women belonged to a trade union, and counted on very little opposition.
On 23rd August, therefore, when the women’s union, the National Federation of Women Workers, drafted another agreement on behalf of the women, stipulating that they wanted to be paid the minimum rates immediately, the employers responded by “locking them out”. The action was not a lock-out in the true sense of the word. The women were working in their own homes and could not, therefore be “locked-out”. The employers, however, refused to let the women have the materials they needed, and recalled the iron rods, which had been delivered to the domestic workshops.
The Union retaliated by calling out on strike those women who were working for less than the minimum rate. It was a courageous thing to do. At that point no-one, not even Mary Macarthur, knew where the funds would come from to sustain a strike. In fact it lasted for ten weeks, and its successful conclusion helped to pave the way for the establishment of a minimum wage in many other industries.
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| Updated: | Thu 12 Jul 2007 - 0 |
| Interpretation written by | Barbara Harris |
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