The average age of the women regularly employed is low,[89] because as a rule girls leave at marriage. The investigators generally report that the age in workrooms appears to be mainly between eighteen and twenty-three. The report that "Four girls here out of thirty or forty are over eighteen" (Leeds bookbinder's), is typical of many others. This fact alone has an enormous influence on women's wages and makes it necessary to be very careful in drawing conclusions under the headings dealt with in this chapter.
[Footnote 89: A manager of a provincial printing establishment estimated that twelve years was the maximum workshop life of average girls.]
An attempt has been made to discover how far the earnings of women workers in these trades are only supplementary to family income, and how far the family worker is entirely dependent upon them for her livelihood. On the whole (but with important exceptions) they appear to be supplementary. In cases, certain fixed weekly payments are made for board and lodging to the relatives who are heads of the households, but these payments are not enforced in times of unemployment and are reduced when work is slack. Even when being made in full they do not always represent the actual cost of accommodation and living. It is becoming less and less common, it seems, for the wives of idle and improvident husbands to eke out their household income by casual or seasonal work, but the practice is still followed and in London prevails to a relatively considerable extent. In such cases the women do not work for mere pocket-money, nor again, do their wages cover the full cost of their living.
"Miss ---- lives at home and her parents are evidently in comfortable circumstances," runs one report of a book-folder. "I went into the best parlour, where there was a piano--also a high hat in the corner!"
The following gives a somewhat fuller picture of these workers:--"Mrs. ---- is a widow and has no children. She looks about sixty and is probably about fifty. She lives on the top floor in model dwellings (three rooms, for which she pays 5_s._ 9_d._) Her husband died in 1891 of consumption, and she does not know what she would have done had she not been made forewoman (in a book-folding room). She does not see how a pieceworker can support herself. She must live at home. Most of the girls working under her live at home and give their mothers 7_s._ a week, keeping the rest for themselves. She was doing some washing and mangling when I called. A little girl comes to help clean, but otherwise she does everything for herself."