This applies to a certain well-known London firm of bookbinders, and it is curiously corroborated by other investigators who found in other firms traces of the women discharged from this one. The firm's own statement, however, was that they had to turn away "ten hands (young ones), the other day, because of the introduction of folding machines"; but this information was received five months before the woman employed quoted above was seen.[79]
[Footnote 79: An Edinburgh firm states that one folding machine can be managed by two girls and it does the work of eight women hand-folders. The firm does not state if it turned away hands, but it considered that there is too great a strain placed upon girls in watching this machine constantly, so their work is varied.]
That there is some displacement, either directly or by the substitution of younger workpeople, cannot be gainsaid with reference to particular processes.
The class most affected is the sewers. The evidence in support of their displacement places it beyond dispute, and though the increased facility for sewing has created an extra demand for folding, and some sewers have turned to folding in consequence, this class as a whole has suffered by machinery. Folders have been less affected.
The way in which the displacement is brought about is of some interest. We have, to begin with, the general apparent inability of women to manage machines, and we find that the folding machine has tended to reintroduce men to aid in work which for many years has been exclusively women's.[80] Here we have a case of men and machinery doing women's work. On the other hand, the sewing machine does not appear to have had that tendency, the only explanation apparently being that convention determines that in these trades sewing machines and women go together. Sewing machines are domestic implements in men's eyes. It is very curious that it should be so, but we are driven to that as the only possible explanation of well-observed facts. In this instance machines alone displace women.
[Footnote 80: The manager of a firm with an extensive business in popular periodical literature says: "Folding, which was all hand work and women's work, is now largely done by machines managed by men. Wrapping, of which the same was true, is also largely done by machines which are managed by men.... If the machine is large and complicated, men will replace women, if it is small and simple, women will replace men."]