This is the fourth letter that Ada Nield Chew sent to the Crewe Chronicle on the 23rd June 1894.
To-day something special happens. I not only plod to the factory myself, but I take a whole army of Chronicle readers with me. To-day the doors swing wide to admit them as well as me. Imagine yourselves therefore, my readers, within a certain factory in Crewe. Some of you will know it before your visit has ended. Please remember that we are in the ‘finishing’ department, for while many of my remarks and much of my information will apply to life in a factory in all its departments (of female employment) it is in the finishing department where my life is spent, and naturally it is here where I bring my visitors. With the room itself we are not concerned. As I have implied before, it is a comfortable room, light, clean, and commodious. It is the life lived in this room with which we have to do. I have explained to you before that as ‘hands’ we factory girls are of several grades. There are the average ordinary hands who, while able to do work of nearly every kind, chiefly take what is known as ‘best’ work. Do not mistake me. I mean best work, not best paid. There are hands below the average called ‘common’ hands; these take ‘common’ work. That is work not requiring much skill. The price paid for it otherwise yields the finisher quite as much as that paid to best hands for best work.
But these are not quite all the hands, dear readers. There are a few more, and with these I want to make you specially acquainted. These are the ‘favourites’. What kind of girls are they as a rule? As a rule they are not girls at all, but married women. In one or two cases at least married women with husbands in full employment; in one case in particular, reputed to have private means. I am not concerned with that fact, if it be a fact; but in making a faithful representation I am bound to notice it, because you will understand that the knowledge of it exerts an influence — and that not for good — on the life of the girls who have to compete — if competition it can be called where favour is shown, and that all on one side — with this woman in the struggle for daily bread. In one or two cases at least these women are grandmothers. Amongst these favourites are a few girls — or unmarried women, to be quite correct — who are experts; who take absolutely the best kinds of work, that is, the work requiring most skill. Now that you have an idea of us ‘hands’, look at a certain spot in this room where a table or kind of counter is situated. Behind this counter two gentlemen stand, whose business it is to ‘pass’ our work, to give us work to do, to see that we do it, to book it ‘out’ and ‘in’ to us, to bring it back to us from other men, who pass it after it has been pressed, for any alterations, and to look after us generally (these gentlemen often appeal to us for sympathy in their hard task). I shall want you to accompany me to my side of that counter presently, and I shall detain you there longer than at any other spot in the room; for it is there that the factory girl struggles for daily bread; where all that is bad in her nature is brought out and fostered; where lessons are taught and practices prevail which make upright, honest, honourable dealing between factory girl and factory girl, between woman and woman, and comrades, an impossibility. Let me now explain two rules which are sometimes supposed to obtain amongst us. One is that we shall pass our work (which has been finished the previous day or brought with us from home) in turn as we arrive at the doors in the morning. To understand that you must know that the doors are opened to us ten minutes before 8 o’clock (the hour we begin work), and those of us who choose to come early and to stand waiting outside the doors get the first chance pass when we get in. Our first business then, if we do not see a comrade on the way immediately preceding us, on arriving at the door is to enquire who arrived last, and to follow that one in passing.
There are a few enterprising girls, and also married women, who make a point of arriving at the doors not later than 7.40, and sometimes as early as 7.25, and these, of course, pass first every day.
To make you understand the full importance of this rule must explain the other. When this work is passed it is booked in to us, and the other rule is that we shall get more work out in’ rotation as we have passed. This rule of coming early to the door is not so closely observed when we are doing work of steady, even-paying (mind I do not say adequate) kind. I remember one time when an order was being executed, which was acknowledged by all to yield us better ‘pay’ than anything else we get, and which only comes our way occasionally. Only certain amount of it — not enough for us all — came each day for us to do, and you can imagine that while that order lasted we were most of us early risers. I remember some very keen competition amongst us at that time. I myself formed one of a number of about forty round the doors at 7.35. I daresay you would do the same, dear reader, if by so doing you could get a chance to really get what you earned for once in a way— to get as much in two hours as you otherwise would get in four.
Please take in consideration the fact that these rules do not exist for all of us — not for the favourites, for instance, who a rule, are exempt from them — and are entirely at the discretion of the two aforementioned gentlemen to rigorously enforce; to relax; or to ignore altogether, as they may see fit Now that you are getting acquainted with some of the conditions of our life, come with me to this counter and share with me what I find there. Let us first suppose it to be a tolerably busy season.
Our struggles now at this table will not be very fierce. We shall probably have one garment ready to ‘pass’, shall have’ another or more ‘out’ to be doing, and of course we shall be able to take our turn for another. Let us take our work, and occupy any vacant place we may see, and wait our turn to pass. All that we shall have to do now will be to look sharply after our turn, and insist on passing in that turn. Should we be at all lax in this respect we might have to stay here all day, for our turn will be frequently disputed, and if the disputant is one of ourselves (not of the clique) it is a match between us, and the one with the most ‘cheek’ wins.
I have seen girls of a meek, submissive nature stand waiting here to pass for hours at a time — and some even a whole day. Should our disputant be a favourite, however, it is an extremely ‘cheeky’ one amongst us who undertakes to combat — most of us know the utter futility of entering the lists against one of these.
When we have passed we shall have to look closely after our turn again in getting work out, and shall only have to see all the — which pay best — whether of the best specially good ‘jobs’ or common class, given entirely to the favourites, while we, the rank and file, take whatever is left for us — and are duly grateful for the favour shown us.
Our life now (in a busy season) will be spent chiefly in work. Are you prepared, my reader, to come and work hard with us 9 hours in the factory , and then to come home with us and begin again, and sew till you can sew no longer, from sheer fatigue — such fatigue as some of you, I hope have not felt — and then to rise early again with some of us and do a little more before it is time to wend our way back for another day of it. This is no fanciful picture; nor does it refer peculiarly to myself; there are girls here in your midst who know by bitter experience whether that account is a faithful one. And the employers know it too, deny it as they may.
And now let us take the slack season. I think I shall be quite within the mark if I say that it exists more or less for half the year, so that you will see that we are bound to consider it fully. Come with me now to this counter. These rules we have considered will not be of much use now, because it is extremely probable that we shall have nothing to pass, and therefore cannot take turns to get work. As we may have to stay some time at this counter we shall provide ourselves with some knitting, crocheting, or a ‘novelette’ to read, to wile away the tedium of waiting. If we have not been wary, and taken the precaution to secure an early seat, the probability is that we shall not find a front seat vacant, and as you will find it very necessary that we should have a front seat, we shall watch our opportunity, and on its occurring, at once seize it. Perhaps you are mystified at our having a ‘seat’ at this counter. Well; my reader, we may have to wait here half a day, and the probability is that you, as well as the factory girl, will grow tired of standing; and much as I regret having nothing more elegant in the way of a seat to offer visitors, when this opportunity for which we are watching occurs, I shall be obliged to ask you to jump — I am afraid you will have to jump, for it is a pretty high counter — up with me on our side of this counter.
We shall not be the only girls there! Don’t feel ashamed of sitting perched up in a row like — rabbits in the market. That feeling will wear off with a little practice. Well, we are sitting on this table. We shall not have much room to move our limbs as our comrades are wedging us in on each side and in front, and I daresay we shall get a little cramped, but we shall be able to watch what is going on, nevertheless. At any rate we must not dismount, or the place we have just secured with such difficulty may be lost, and we should have to begin over again. You will understand that it is the ordinary and common hands which are gathered round this table; the favourites will not be under the necessity of making themselves seen and heard in order to get served.
I fear after all that we shall not be able to finish our visit to. day, because I want to go fully into what takes place at this table in slack seasons, and there are also several other things about our life in this factory which I want to show you, so that I am afraid I shall either have to keep you waiting on that table till next week, or if you object to that, shall have to beg you to pay me another visit. I have not shown you the most important things yet, nor said half that I wish to say. The doors will be open next week, and the factory girl in attendance, if you will be so good as to come again.