PROSPERITY PRIDE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2718, 13 March 1916, Page 3

PROSPERITY PRIDE

WIVES TOO HIGH TO GO BACK TO WORK. (Special Correspondent, "Daily Mail.") Northampton. Northampton's industrial thril'tincss has had a curious result. It has made her women proud with a cortain false prido which makes tho sweet bells of tliis busy, prosperous town ianglo a littlo out of tune. The Northampton woman rather lingers oji the note ot elegance. Tho prosperity .whioh lias recently conio to Iter has clothed her ill furs and raisod tlio height of'her heels and the standard of her taste in light literature. I am alluding to tho wives and daughters of tho skilled mechanic — tho women who as girls worked in tho factories and themselves became skilled before matrimony and a comfortable homo canio their way and transported Uiom to a pinchbcck paradise. Thoy are not entirely to blame. In Northampton there aro two branches of the Boot and Shoe Operatives' Union. | Olio encourages the women to conio in, but tho other is hostile. "If is. can nossibly help it," says this hostile branch, "wo won't have women in the making and finishing department® of the staple trade!" Ancf so it is that a very large number of Northampton women, capable and quirk at their craft —and hero and there, perhaps, just a trifle "abovo" it—are kicking their licels in idleness. All "Piece Work." It is very ditferem. in tho smallet towns and villages round about, where the married woinon particularly aro carrying on magnificently. Hore ovcrybodv is at it day and night—and even on Sundays. Women between tho ngch ot 45 and 05 aro labouring with unflagging zeal—all on "picco work" in tho wide area where branch factories have been established. In one largo lactory to-day I saw a. groy-htiircd woman of GO polishing off her "finishing;" task with great noatness and celerity. And liero thoy are, all of thorn ot it —wives, daughters, sweethearts, aunts —and, I daresay, grandmothers; though I "haven't happened to run across one yet. t liavo discovered in my enters taining littlo tour of this land of hobnails and loathe r that there aro exactly ono hundred separate '"operations" in tlio making of a hoot. Of this hundred «. woman who has been through the usual training at tho factory can ac. compliEh all but ten; if she is strong, sho can manage the whole lot —even in the heavy Army class. Her labour is not cheap labour: sho is paid exactly tho sanio rato of wage as tho completely skilled man. And she earns it. The result is that the Northamptonshire boot operatives neror had so much money in tlioir lives. They are not squandering it, for they come of _ a "careful" stock —tho stock of tho wiso old gentleman who used, in the days of our grandfathers, to sit at home. sWouded in a wide leather apron, and tap and tap (honce the name "tapper" which still holds), gazing upon tho passing show through horn .'spectacles. Tlio manufacturers are not m-ikinq fortunes. Thoy are splendidly loyal, giving their country first call, and steadily refusing shoals of orders for general and fancv work for tho home and export trade. This is particulaly the case in Northampton, where the factories aro equipped for the lighter class of boot, a hoot the-British Army will not have, hut ono that Franco, Serbia, and Italy nrr) vory glad of. Our War Office insists upon tho heavy hoot; the Allies ore clamouring for the more flexible article for which tho Northampton machinery is particularly suited. Tho Northampton factories are now turnin r ' out hoots for the Italian Army, and when these contracts arc through tlicy will be supplying-ltussia.