Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/490

468 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL CENSUS I:?ETURNS OF TAILORING AND I?ACHINING IN LEEDS. F. M. TOTAL. 1861 131 1,323 1,454 1881 2,740 2,148 4,888 The employers who kindly gave me information about wages in the trade employ inside the factory about one thousand more women and girls than are entered as employed in Leeds altogether h? 1881. In a return handed in to the Select Committee on Sweat- ing, by Mr. Newhouse, in 1889, it appears that nineteen hundred women and girls were employed in Jewish workships in Leeds in that year, and two thousand would not be an over estimate for the present time. I should be inclined to estimate the number of women and girls employed in the trade at about ten thousand. ? The numbers who take out trousers, vests, and juvenile suits to make-up or ' finish ' at home are not easily calculated. In every well established firm the tendency is to sub-divide the finishing more and more and to have it done in the factory. One large firm, which has doubled its numbers in the last twelve years, has diminished the number of out-door hands; instead of one to four only one out-door hand to twelve in-door hands is employed. So long as a firm is growing, but is not sufficiently large to justify an extension of premises, finishing has to be given out, but with larger premises it becomes advantageous to have as much done inside as possible. The home workers are nearly all married women and widows; young girls all prefer the factory and are also much more anxious to become machinists than to learn felling, button- hole mak?g, &c. There is in Leeds such a demand for women's labour in both departments that hitherto there have been no h?. stances of home workers receiving a lower rate than indoor workers; in fact the work, if sub-divided, can be done in the factory at a lower total cost than would otherwise be possible, although the girls in the factory earn more than at the same age they could earn at home. Leeds has not yet, like East London, become a shak for the deposit of unskilled and good-for-nothing husbands ? H.M. Inspector of Factories for Leeds, Mr. Hine, has kindly given me the number o! factories and workshops in the clothing trade in Leeds: English. Jewish. Factories .............. 50 1 Workshops ............ 47 101 The statistics of workshops are liable to inaccuracy, because the occupiers are constantly moving, and the name often appears on the register some time after the workshop has been given up.