Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

193 WOMEN TOILERS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY. AMONG THE NAIL, CHAIN, AND BRICK MAKERS. Photo: Cassell & Co., Ltd. GIRL AT THE BELLOWS— CHAINMAKING. 'T'HE modern 1 tendency of women with energy and capital to quit the fireside and engage in in- dustry or trade is in significant contrast to the yearning of many women in the Black Country to be relieved from their toil. Life in the nail and chain forges and in the brick- yards is a per- petual struggle for existence. The conditions of work are not unhealthy, but the hours are so long that physical endurance is taxed to the utmost, and pay is so small that every member of nearly every family, capable of work, is obliged to add his or her mite to the slender income of the household. The portion of the Black Country in which these three industries have become almost historic occupations lies within South Staffordshire and Worcestershire, and includes Stourbridge, Dudley, Cradley, Lye, Halesowen, and Broms- grove. Mechanical contrivances have been introduced in our great cities for the manufacture of nails, notably at Leeds, where many dexterous machines are used, cutting, heading, and pointing the nails at one stroke; but on the hill slopes of Belper, in Derbyshire, and in the Black Country the methods are still chiefly manual. In Bromsgrove—by no means a grimy- looking town, for it is rather quaint and clean than squalid and dirty-—-there are 25 more women nailmakers than men workers. 1 hey are put into the industry because there is little other work in the district for them to do, and having passed their probation as beginners, by making rough nails that are scarcely marketable except in exchange for the cheapest boots and shoes, they are permitted to work on nails for the middleman or “ f°gger-” Formerly, when the employer opened his warehouse, he gave out on certain days rods to be worked into nails. Now he seldom proffers the material. The nail- maker must buy his or her bundle of iron, valued at three or four shillings, before any work can be done; and inasmuch as there are women who cannot always raise such a capital, they have now and again to be idle and to realise the meaning of “ clamming ”— an expressive local term for starvation. The men and women sufficiently well off to purchase the necessary rods work in the sheds or in their own cottages, and toiling often from six o’clock in the morning till nine o’clock at night, on an average sixty- hours per week, can earn from eight to. BENDING THE ROD—CHAINMAKINCr.