[Footnote 85: "In nearly all the cases that Mrs. ---- (an employing bag maker in the Borough) knows there are bad husbands. Mrs. ---- is in the trade herself to supplement her husband's earnings because she has nine children and he cannot earn enough to keep them in comfort."]
The practically unanimous report of the investigators is that these home workers' home conditions are of the very worst. "A very squalid and evil-smelling slum:" "Very poor and miserable house shared by others," are typical descriptions of the dwellings to which the home work investigations led us.
The investigators tried to obtain information bearing upon the interesting and important question of the influence of the married and the unmarried woman worker on industry, on the home, and on the family income. But the difficulty of following up statements and testing their accuracy has been so great and some of the factors in the problem so elusive under the conditions of the trades investigated, that conclusions are stated with considerable reserve.
The custom in the trades under review undoubtedly is that married women should not work in them; and, as a rule, only widowhood, or a bad or sickly husband, or a slack time, brings a woman back to them after marriage.[86] Sometimes, however, she comes back, because it is too dull at home.[87] This is more generally the case in the provinces than in London, where certain job departments, especially certain kinds of folding, are filled by rather a rough class of women, amongst whom the proportion of married is exceptionally high. Throughout the reports sent in, it is most interesting to note how strongly the sense of feminine respectability opposes their fellow workwomen working after marriage, "unless they have been unfortunate in their husbands."[88]
[Footnote 86: For statistics see Appendix VII.]
[Footnote 87: A woman worker says, "They come back after they have married, because a girl who has been accustomed to make 18_s._ for herself is not comfortable when she marries a man on £2 a week who is accustomed to have that for himself, so she comes back to make extra money."]
[Footnote 88: So also it is interesting to note the lingering shadow of chivalry in this connection. "Mr. ----," said one of the girls, "never will take married women, but then he is always _such_ a gentleman."]