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A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE Since 1893 detailed rules have been issued by the Home Office similar to those in use in the pottery workshops, and these have done much to reduce the dangers to health. 813 In Sedgeley, Upper Gornal and Lower Gornal many women and girls are engaged in the fast-declining hand-wrought nail trade, but every year fewer children are being brought up to the work. The hours are long and the wages poor 6s. or js. being an average weekly wage for an indus- trious woman. Some time ago the women in the Sedgeley district were formed into a union, but it has since died out, experience having proved once again how difficult it is to get overworked, ill-nourished, isolated home-workers to combine for a common object, even if that object is to improve the conditions of their own work, since they are lacking in both the physical and mental vitality necessary for successful union. The only holiday or change these women allow themselves, apart from seasons of slackness, seems to be the yearly visit to the hop-districts, which many of them make in the hopping season, and which provides them with a change of scene and of occupation, if not a rest. The wages of women in the harness trade averaged in 18934 from gj. to ioj. per week, rising to i2s. in busy times, and this is a common weekly wage for industrial women. During the South African war the trade was good and wages better, but the present rate of wages seems to be about what it was in 1893. The motor-car industry has damaged this trade as it has also affected the saddlery trade, owing to the lessened demand for horses and horse equipments. The trade of Wolverhampton may thus be said to have gained at the expense of the women workers of Walsall. 214 The work done by women in the saddlery industry largely consists in making suits for horses, either of kersey or blanketing, at the rate of about 4-r. per suit. Working ten to twelve hours per day a woman can earn an average weekly wage of 13-1-. iod., though she may get as much as i8j. some weeks. The chief drawback to this trade is its irregularity, and it has declined within the last fifteen years for reasons given above. 215 In Leek, where the silk industry has been established since the seventeenth century, women work in the silk factories, earning in 1893 4 an average weekly wage of i is. 6</. 218 Compared with other industrial counties, Staffordshire does not show a large proportion of trade-unionists compared with its total population, despite the fact that one of its principal industries is mining, which is the most highly organized of all the industries. In 1892 it only stood twelfth on the list of English counties, with 4-49 per cent, of unionists to its whole popu- lation, and since 1900 there has been almost without exception a decrease in the membership of every trade union in the county. The North Staf- fordshire Miners' Federation is a striking example of this, having fallen 1J From a widespread investigation in the Birmingham district, the average wages of japanners of eighteen years and over is estimated at izs. 4</., with a maximum wage of l8/. and a minimum of^j. among all workers. Probably the same rate may be taken to hold good for the South Staffordshire district, which closely adjoins the area investigated. E. Cadbury, M. Matheson, and G. Shann, Women's Work and Wages (1906), 315. 114 Women 't Work and Wages (1906), 83 ; Rep. of Labour Com. 1893-4, xxiii, 58. 115 Handbook of the Daily News Sweated Industries Exhibition, 1906, pp. 84, 121. "' Rep. of Labour Com. 1893-4, xxiii, 135. 3 I2