WOMEN WORKERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 917, 16 June 1903, Page 4

WOMEN WORKERS.

Women who work for a living in England are not, judged from a colonial standpoint, well paid for their labor. Some figures quoted by a writer in tiio London Daily Express make instructive reading. There are 107,848 dressmakers employed by various firms in London ; the highest wages obtainable —except in the ease of about a doxen heads of departments—are 18s a week. “ The girl who makes the exquisite Court dress, the costly robes worn by society, receives 18s a week as a maximum salary, with a slack season of two to three mouths a year.” Milliners in London have to serve a two years’ apprenticeship, and then receive from 12s to 20s a week, except in the slack season, when the earnings fall oil considerably. Shop assistants average £2O a year in wages. They are provided also with board and lodging, but this is often of a very indifferent character. A trained nurse earns from £26 to £4O a year, with board and lodging, and a washing allowance if in a hospital. 11 In the main, howover, we are told, “ the profession is most precarious, and among the rank and filo great want is often experienced.” Teaching, in spite of the years of preparation and training required, is very poorly remunerated in the case of women. High school and board school teachers in England earn on the average from £7O to £loo.' There are “ plums ” in this profession as in others, but thoy aro comparatively few. In the Civil Service a woman can earn more than £IOO a year, but only after years of service. For clerical work the remuneration is poor in the extreme, and shorthand typists “ can be obtained by the score for tho princoly wage of 10s a week.” Thousands of women of the middle class in England are absolutely dependent for a living upon the scanty wages they may earn at one or othor of these employments. Is it surprising that many of them sink, through ill-health or lack of work, from bare existence to absolute penury ? “ They toil more or less intermittently, through change or slackness of employment, for something under a pound a week, with no future before them, only a saddened old age, with the grim., bare walls of tho workhouse as tho end of their tragic lives ” —it is one of the saddest and most hopeless phases of life in a great city.