Gender & Labor Competition in England: Why Men Excluded Women from Jobs in 19th Century, Dispense di Psicologia di Genere

Scarica Gender & Labor Competition in England: Why Men Excluded Women from Jobs in 19th Century e più Dispense in PDF di Psicologia di Genere solo su Docsity! Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rshi20 Social History ISSN: 0307-1022 (Print) 1470-1200 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rshi20 Gender antagonism and class conflict: Exclusionary strategies of male trade unionists in nineteenth‐century Britain Sonya O. Rose To cite this article: Sonya O. Rose (1988) Gender antagonism and class conflict: Exclusionary strategies of male trade unionists in nineteenth‐century Britain , Social History, 13:2, 191-208, DOI: 10.1080/03071028808567710 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03071028808567710 Published online: 30 May 2008. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 2090 View related articles Citing articles: 6 View citing articles Sonya O. Rose Gender antagonism and class conflict : exclusionary strategies of male trade unionists in nineteenth- century Britain* In response to a letter condemning women's competition with men for jobs in England, a woman wrote to the Women's Trade Union Journal in 1879, 'Rivals of Men! Why should they be rivals? Why not co-workers?' Her question is as germane now, in our attempt to understand the ways in which gender relations and gender ideology interacted with industrial capitalism, as it was in those early years of the women's union movement. Why was it that working men, especially skilled workers, advocated an exclusionist strategy rather than joining with women as workers against capital? There are several differing accounts in the historiographie and sociological literature of why male unionists adopted such a strategy rather than choosing to combine with women to fight employers. Perhaps the best-known discussions of this issue are those by Heidi Hartmann1 and Jane Humphries.2 Hartmann has suggested that the explanation is to be sought in the patriarchal relations between men and women. Such relations were, established prior to the development of capitalism. Capitalist labour practices threatened to destroy the family and men's power over women's labour. Organized male workers rejected women as co-workers in order to maintain dominance in the workplace and to command their wives' domestic services in the home. They were able to do this in relation to women workers because of their superior organizational skills, learned in patriarchal households in which men controlled the labour of other household members.3 In Hartmann's analysis, men benefited from women's removal from the workplace by assuring that unwaged women provided for them in their homes. She argues then that men are the beneficiaries of job segregation by sex both as men and as toorkers, and are partially responsible for its creation. * I would like to thank Hal Benenson for his very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1 H. Hartmann, 'Capitalism, patriarchy, and job segregation by sex' in M. Blaxall and B. Reagan (eds), Women and the Workplace (Chicago, Ill., 1976), 137-70. 2 J. Humphries, 'Class struggle and the persistence of the working-class family', Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1 (1977). 3 For an extension of this argument see A. Witz, 'Patriarchy and the labour market: occupational control strategies and the medical division of labour' in D. Knights and H. Willmott, Gender and the Labour Process (1986). 194 Social History VOL. 13 : NO. 2 particular groups of workers enter the labour market as low-waged workers in the first place. In addition, her theory of ethnic antagonism does not explain why restriction or exclusion is the outcome of competition with a group of low-waged workers for jobs. However, Bonacich's work is important because it stresses the importance of economic competition among workers and the potential threat posed by a group of low-waged workers in explaining inter-group conflict.12 Jonathan Turner has proposed a general model of ethnic antagonism which extends the Bonacich theory in a manner which makes it more suitable for an analysis of gender antagonism and the conditions under which it results in exclusion.13 Working with a complex set of interacting variables, the Turner model suggests that as labour markets become competitive, some subgroups may feel threatened by others who are willing to work for lower wages and thus will attempt to exclude them (in Turner's terms, exclusion is an act of discrimination). Turner argues that discrimination requires some motivating force which he identifies as 'people's perceptions that their interests (e.g. economic, political, lifestyle) are threatened by another identifiable subpopulation'.14 In addition, discrimination must be seen to be legitimate; thus beliefs about the lower- waged workers are crucial. In Turner's model, discrimination is the product of perceptions of threat and processes of cultural legitimation. Although Turner does not specify the conditions under which one subgroup would be willing to work for lower wages than another subgroup (other than the existence of a competitive market system), he suggests that the sub-population must be identifiable and recognizes that discrimination and stigmatizing beliefs reinforce the identifiability of a particular ethnic population. In addition, Turner proposes that identifiability is sustained and enhanced by the extent of intra-group interaction and the intensity of stigmatizing beliefs.ls As in Milkman's thesis, Turner proposes that broader ideological currents can mediate the likelihood that conflict will lead to outright discrimination. He suggests that in societies with strongly developed egalitarian values, unless Darticularlv negative stigmatizing beliefs about the 12 Since Bonacich's discussion of split labour markets, there have been major developments in theories of labour market segmentation. Such theories are important in helping to explain the persistence of occupational segrega- tion by sex and, in some versions, to an understanding of how organized male workers contribute to segmentation. See, for example, J. Rubery, 'Structured labour markets, worker organization and low pay' in A. Amsden (ed.), The Economics of Women and Work (Harmonds- worth, 1980) and E. Garnsey, J. Rubery and F. Wilkinson, 'Labour market structure and workforce divisions' in R. Deem and G. Salaman, Work, Culture and Society (Milton Keynes, 1985). However, as numerous critics have pointed out, dual or segmented labour market theories generally have not concerned themselves with why women have been relegated to a particular segment, and have either adopted a human capital approach to understanding the relationship between labour supply and labour demand, or have simply assumed that the forces of the market are sufficient to explain women's secondary labour market status. See V. Beechey, 'Women and production: a critical analysis of some sociological theories of women's work' in A. Kuhn and A. Wolpe (eds), Feminism and Materialism (1978); A. MacEwen Scott, 'Industrialization, gender segregation and stratification theory' in R. Crompton and M. Mann, Gender and Stratification (Cam- bridge, 1986); and R.J. Thomas, 'Citizenship and gender in work organization: some con- siderations for theories of the labor process' in M. Burawoy and T. Skocpol (eds), Marxist Inquiries: Studies of Labor, Class and States, supplement to American Journal of Sociology, Lxxxviii (1982), 86-112. 13 J.H. Turner, 'Toward a unified theory of ethnic antagonism', Sociological Forum, 1, 3 (1986), 403-27. 14 ibid., 417. 15 ibid., 423-4. May ig88 Gender antagonism and class conflict 195 competing group of workers are prevalent, discrimination may not be the outcome of antagonism. Although the Turner model is too abstract to be helpful in understanding the dynamics of exclusion in particular historical instances, it suggests that certain classes of variables be considered in such an analysis. In particular, the model suggests that exclusionary strategies are the consequence of competition, threat, ideology (legitimating beliefs in Turner's model), and the identifiability or distinctiveness of a particular subgroup of workers. Recent research has revealed the conflicts that occurred over the employment of women in nineteenth-century British industries. These conflicts resulted from the struggle between skilled male workers and capitalists as employers attempted to lower labour costs by drawing on a low-waged pool of labour.16 Opposing class interests under capitalist relations of production provided fertile soil for the development of antagonism between different groups of workers. In this paper I will suggest that gender antagonism and exclusionary strategies resulted because of a complex interaction between gender issues and class issues. Women comprised an easily identifiable and distinctive group of workers. They had already been identified as cheap labour prior to industrial transformation. When it was possible to do so, employers attempted to hire women in place of men, or they created new technology and designed it to be worked by women.17 The competition between men and women for jobs resulted in gender antagonism. Organized with the explicit goal of protecting the prerogatives of their status as skilled workers, male unionists employed exclusionary strategies because of the particular threat that women posed to skilled working men. Loss of their livelihood to women may have threatened skilled male workers' ability to live up to the expectations of themselves as men. Their position as the primary or sole source of family income was potentially undermined; their sense of masculine identity was being challenged. It was this threat that provided what Turner would classify as the 'motivating force' for exclusion. This suggests that there were connections between the status of the skilled worker at work and his role in the family which may be important in understanding gender antagonism and exclusionary practices.18 16 The issue of why employers in particular industries attempted to introduce women, while employers in other industries continued to rely solely upon male labour is important to an understanding of occupational segregation. However, it will not be addressed in this paper. Rather, the paper will be concerned with the question of why male unionists resisted the employment of women by using exclusionary strategies in those industries in which employers attempted to introduce female labour on jobs formerly held exclusively by men. 17 The issue of skill and the training that it required is a complex issue which will not specifically be addressed in this paper. For a discussion of the 'social construction of skill' see A. Phillips and B. Taylor, 'Sex and skill: notes towards a feminist economics', Feminist Review, VI (1982). See also a recent article which criticizes the 'social construction' of skill argu- ment: M. Freifeld, 'Technical change and the self-acting mule', Social History, XI, 3 (1986), 319-43. 18 S.O.Rose, 'Gender at work: sex, class and industrial capitalism', History Workshop, xxi (Spring 1986), 113-31. See also S. Alexander, 'Women, class and sexual difference', History Workshop, xvii (Spring 1984), 125-49. For an insightful discussion of the male breadwinner norm and its connection to wages see W. Seccombe, 'Patriarchy stabilized: the construction of the male breadwinner wage norm in nineteenth-century Britain', Social History, xi (Spring 1986), 53-76. 196 Social History VOL. 13 : NO. 2 WOMEN AS LOW-WAGED WORKERS Research on women's work in England in the nineteenth century has demonstrated the variations in the kinds of jobs in which women were employed and in the conditions under which they earned wages.19 The one common characteristic of women's employment was its price. They were paid 'a .woman's wage' which generally was at most 50 to 60 per cent of the man's rate at the same work. In the hosiery industry in i860, for example, men who operated steam-driven circular machines earned between 20s and 35s. In contrast, women working the same machines earned 12—20s.20 It is not clear that there were sharp differences in productivity to account for this. Later in the century, in 1891, it was reported to Sidney Webb, for instance, that women soldered the fine pieces of wire together to make loops in the production of 'self-opening' pins for wages averaging 7-ios weekly, replacing men who had earned from 15s to 20s weekly doing exactly the same work.21 While it might be argued that women were paid low wages because they worked at low-waged jobs, it could be argued just as forcefully from such evidence that women were paid low wages because they were women. The work of Alice Clark,22 Ivy Pinchbeck23 and, more recently, Maxine- Berg,24 indicated that women had already been designated as a low-waged labour force before industrial transformation. Estimates of wages for women and men in medieval England indicate that wages for work normally done by women were significantly below those paid for work normally done by men.25 Among wage labourers in early, large-scale capitalist agriculture, the pay for women and girls was lower than the pay for male workers.26 Even women who did skilled work were ill-paid. For example, the rate of pay for female flower painters in Wedgwood's London workrooms in the early 1770s was 60 per cent of the rate for male flower painters.27 Pinchbeck reported that in the period just prior to the mechanization of cotton spinning, manufacturers based spinners' wages on the assumption that spinners were being supported by their husbands.28 While low wage rates for women may have originated because of the perception of them as supplementary wage earners, this is undoubtedly only one among a complex set of factors which led to the price of their labour. Among them is probably the fact that 19 See S.O. Rose, op. cit., 114-15; S. Alexander, 'Women's work in nineteenth- century London' in J. Mitchell and A. Oakley (eds), The Rights and Wrongs of Women (Harmondsworth, 1976); N.G. Osterud, 'Gender divisions and the organization of work in the Leicester hosiery industry' in A. John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employ- ment in England 1800-1918 (Oxford, 1986); A. John, By the Sweat of their Brow (1980); I. Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution (3rd edn, 1981). 20 W. Felkin, History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacturies (Newton Abbot , repr. 1967). 21 S. Webb, Trade Union Papers, Sect. A, XLVII, 37. At the British Library of Political and Economic Science. 22 A .L . Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1982). 23 Pinchbeck, op. cit. 24 M. Berg, The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820 (1985). 25 C. Middleton, 'The Familiar Fate of the "Famulae": Gender as a Principle of Strati- fication in the Historical Organization of Labour' (unpublished paper, 1985). 26 C. Middleton, 'Women's work and the transition to pre-industrial capitalism' in L. Charles and L. Duffin, Women and Work in Pre-industrial England (1986). 27 Berg, op. cit., 152. 28 Pinchbeck, op. cit., 144. May ig88 Gender antagonism and class conflict 199 their local union. The extensive introduction of female labour resulted in the majority of the male silk throwsters seeking work as general labourers.45 In the carpet weaving industry in Elderslie, Scotland, new light and fast looms were introduced in the 1870s. The men struck, objecting to the quicker speed of the looms and the lower rates they were earning. Women were hired and eventually the strike was broken. After that time, women predominated as carpet weavers in Elderslie.46 Although a good many of these disputes were in the textile trades, gender conflict was not limited to these industries. Employers in some quintessentially all-male trades attempted to hire women to do the jobs that men had been doing. As Cynthia Cockburn has determined, the 'woman question' in printing created open and bitter conflict between men and women compositors in both London and Edinburgh.47 At least one Birmingham metalworking firm attempted to introduce women to do work that had been done by men. In that case, during the period 1879—81, the firm of Smith, and Chamberlain attempted to introduce women into their brassworks to do what was traditionally thought to be men's work.48 There was strong opposition from the male workers, and workers from all of the brassworks in Birmingham struck. In a letter to the Daily Post, the union argued that the men 'did not ask the firm to discharge women who were employed in legitimate occupations. We oppose, and many employers also oppose, the employment of women to turn at the lathe and file at the vice.149 The men were not always the losers in these disputes. For example, a strike in the carpet trade in Kidderminster in 1874 ended with victory for the men. It is described here in some detail because it illustrates the intricacies of some of these conflicts and the zeal with which well-organized male unionists would fend off the threat of female workers. Brinton and Company decided to add tapestries to its products and purchased the 'best form of loom for women that could be found'.50 When they put women to work on the new looms, the male weavers who worked the 'Brussels loom' went on strike and were supported by all of the male carpet weavers in Kidderminster. The strike lasted only one week and resulted in victory for the union; the women lost their jobs and carpet weaving in Kidderminster remained men's work. What is interesting about this dispute is that the employer was not attempting to replace men with women, but merely to add women to his weaving workforce to make a new type of carpet. Why, then, were the men so resistant, especially when it was pointed out by Brinton and in newspaper editorials that women were employed on tapestry looms in Rochdale and Halifax? The unionists discovered that Brinton had not introduced exactly the same looms that were being worked by women in Rochdale and Halifax, but had purchased looms which elsewhere were known as 'men's machines'. There was a difference between the 'women's tapestry looms' and 'men's tapestry looms'. If the same kind of material was used in both types of looms, the man's loom turned out a greater number of yards per hour than a woman's loom. This meant that in the other places in England where women and men both made the tapestry carpets, but on different machines, the cost of women's labour to the manufacturer was lower, but men were more 45 Webb, op. cit., Sect. A, xxxiv, 105-6. 46 ibid., Sect. A, XL, 49. 47 C. Cockburn, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change (1983), 151-9. 48 Webb, op. cit., Sect. A, xix, 56. 49 ibid., 32. 50 Kidderminster Shuttle, 24 October 1874, 5. 2oo Social History VOL. 13 : NO. 2 productive. Brinton, however, wished to pay women a 'woman's wage' to work the more productive 'man's machine' in Kidderminster. In the negotiations, the union argued that they would not object to the employment of women if Brinton would pay men's wages to the women. However, Brinton replied that in order to be competitive with the other firms making tapestries, he had to pay women a woman's wage because 'there were many minor things about a loom which men could do but which could not possibly be done by women'.51 Thus he said he would have to hire some men to work with the women. The union replied that 'If the looms are supposedly within the compass of a woman, let her do it and be paid like a man.' One of the employers who joined the negotiating team urged the union men to 'discuss among themselves whether it was not a fact that male labour must accompany female labour'.52 The union reply to this challenge dealt with what they called the oversupply of male workers and reflected their real concern. The union representative said, 'Why should female labour be made scarce and men's labour be left idle?' The rhetoric used by various observers and participants in the dispute is also instructive. The firm argued that competition forced them to look for a machine which could be worked by women and so they found one which 'was perfectly easy and light to manage, and came within the compass of their power'.53 The trade paper, the Furniture Gazette, supporting the employer, urged the men to admit women to their union stating: We can of course sympathize with the men . . . but are not the women who are seeking work, the fatherless girls and widows with children, and the poor young girls whose parents, from being ill-paid or out of work are unable to support them, also deserving of our sympathy?54 The Birmingham Daily-Mail editorialized, using the language of laissez-faire principles of political economy: It may be accepted as an axiom that an employer has a right to get his work done as cheaply as he can, just as a workman has an equal right to get as much wages as he can. If women will work for less than men, the manufacturer is justified in employing them. . . . If cheap labour means cheap goods, the benefit is shared by the public and no principle is sounder than that which says the injury of a class is of less concern than the benefit of the community.55 For the workers' parts, they were clearly on opposite sides of the issue. A letter to the local newspaper by 'a Lady Weaver' makes it clear that the women were going to fight to get jobs: I have the right to sell my labour at any price I like, and when and where I like; and the liberty I claim for myself I would gladly give for others. Then why should those very big men have their crowded meetings and throw off such big words from such little stomachs?. . . It is quite evident that the powerloom weavers have no concern 51 ibid., 31 October 1874, 7. 52 ibid., 31 October 1874, 7. 53 ibid., 10 October 1874, 6. 54 ibid. 55 ibid., 17 October 1874, 5. May ig88 Gender antagonism and class conflict 201 for any but self, or they would not bloc up the streets and the Marketplace puffing their dirty short pipes whilst women and girls have to do the hardest and heaviest work in the trade such as rug weaving, which requires both bone and muscle to perform it.56 The workmen apparently feared that the introduction of women on 'men's machines' but at women's wages spelled the beginning of the end of their employment at carpet weaving in Kidderminster. One of the unionists said at a strike meeting, 'It was a crying evil to see women getting into the trade. The weavers were not situated like some other men, for they had no other occupation to turn to. They were bound to the loom without any alternative.'57 There were also reports by working men of conditions in the other carpet-making areas where women had been introduced to make tapestries that fuelled their fears: men had been discharged from men's looms to make room for the women workers. The fears of the men concerning the possibility of unemployment or lowered wages as a consequence of the introduction of women into the trade resulted in the following letter to the Kidderminster Shuttle, apparently to threaten the father of one of the loom-working women: mr heverley i dare say you thinks you are doing something Grand by sendding your daughters to rob we men and our wifes and children of our dailey Bread But be carfull of What you are doing Because you and them will very liks get your Brains nock out so dont for get for we shant.S8 The details of this strike illustrate the actions of employers attempting to lower labour costs in order to compete successfully by undercutting their competitors. They introduced women and new machines to do the work formerly done by skilled men. In response to the threat posed by women's lower wages, men engaged in industrial action to prevent the employment of women, excluded them from their unions and, when it was impossible to restrict altogether their entry into a trade, they 'gendered machines', clearly identifying which machines were to be worked by women and which by men.59 These responses, made in order to reduce the threat posed by women as cheap labour, clearly contributed to the development of job segregation by sex.60 During the strike of 1874, the editor of the trade paper of the carpet industry stated, 'Men do not strike against their fellow workmen when the fields of labour become over- filled; why in the name of right and justice do they strike against women?'61 This question had a deceptively simple answer. Working men acted the way they did because it was not fellow workmen who were the threat^ but rather their competitors were women. A different scenario ehacted in the Nottingham lace industry in the 1880s highlights the fact that gender was all-important in disputes such as the one at Kidderminster. In order to escape the unions, employers in Nottingham moved their machinery into the countryside to hire non-unionized rural workers. The city unionists responded by attempting to bring the country workers into their unions.62 When women 56 ibid., 24 October 1874, 5. 57 ibid., 17 October 1874, 5. 58 ibid., 8. 59 Rose, op. cit., in press. 60 See Rose, op. cit. (1986); Hartmann, op. cit., Rose, op. cit., in press. 61 Kidderminster Shuttle, 10 October 1874, 6. 62 Hosiery and Lace Trades Review (June 1890), 813. 2O4 Social History VOL. 13 : NO. 2 through 'honourable' labour and property in skill, which identification with a trade gave them. As Hobsbawm has pointed out, 'Labour was the working man's "property" and to be treated as such, was, of course a commonplace of contemporary radical political debate.'78 It was his labour and/or his trade that he could pass on as inheritance to his sons.79 Vincent's80 analysis of working men's autobiographies shows the importance to a son of his father's ability to teach him his trade, or to provide the funds necessary to apprentice him to another tradesman. These autobiographies reveal the tight connection for the male child between family and future occupation in the years prior to mid- century. As Vincent81 suggests, security for a lad meant the success of the family economy, headed by his father, and it was to his father that the growing male child would look for his only inheritance - a trade. Where the impact of industrialization prevented 'a father from exercising authority over his son's occupational life, the reaction of those involved was extremely bitter'. It is no wonder, then, that attempts by employers to replace men by women or that conditions of underemployment which forced women and children to be primary wage earners in their households met with such resistance. As Vincent put it: The capacity to be involved in the socialization of a child was certainly an important value. The capacity to exercise influence over the child's occupational present and future was a different, though equally prized value. But the really destructive element of the factory system, and in particular the early mines and mills, was . . . it so destroyed his economic power that it prevented him from performing either role at any time. In the 1830s many Owenite-influenced unionists in Britain argued for equal wages for men and women.83 They did not call for the exclusion of women from the workplace. An ideological shift may have occurred in the 1840s, possibly as a response to the turmoil between capital and labour in the decades prior to mid-century. This needs further study, but there is evidence that unionists in a number of trades called for the exclusion of women from their occupations. Organized working-class men supported and promoted restrictive labour legislation for women, which began with the 1842 Mines (Regulation) Act. Chartists articulated the belief that women's proper sphere was in the home.84 Harold Benenson has suggested that men's political associations in the Chartist movement and in union activity strengthened their shared identity as men and promoted their common identification as family providers.85 It was out of such associations that the ideology of domesticity for women and breadwinning for men took root and flourished. The all-male worlds of the workshop and of tramping artisans would have provided 78 E. Hobsbawm, Worlds of Labour (1984), 258. See also Prothero, op. cit., 27. 79 See Alexander, op. cit. ; Vincent, op: cit. 80 Vincent, op. cit. 81 ibid., 74. 82 ibid., 85-6. 83 Taylor, op. cit., 268. 84 ibid., 268-75. 85 H. Benenson, 'Victorian sexual ideology and Marx's theory of the working class', Inter- national Labor and Working Class History, xxv (1984), 1-23. May IQ88 Gender antagonism and class conflict 205 nurturant milieux for the development of a gender ideology which sharply distinguished male and female roles.86 The middle-class rhetoric about home and family, and the woman's special place within that sphere, might have been opportunistically adopted as part of a political arsenal by skilled workers fighting for their livelihood, especially as it would have appealed to those skilled workers concerned with artisanal ideals of respectability. Prothero describes the ideals of respectability held by London artisans such as shipwrights as focusing on the notion of independence through a skill or trade 'which would enable them to maintain themselves and their families by their labour at a decent level, above subsistence and with sufficient leisure to engage in respectable activities'.87 However, the glorification and idealization of home within working-class culture appears to have developed slowly after mid-century.88 Vincent, for example, noted that it was only among 'those autobiographers who were most preoccupied with the ideal of respectability that we see the beginning of a move to place domestic life on a pedestal, to see it as both the source and repository of all positive values and experiences of working-class life'.89 Why this ideal became more diffused after mid-century is as yet poorly understood. Skilled men argued for the exclusion of women, especially married women, from employment on the grounds that they were to be wives and mothers, not the competitors of working men. The male counterpart to this ideology of domesticity for working-class women was the ideal of male breadwinning, which increasingly meant being the sole provider within the family.90 In an analysis of oral histories of working-class women born between 1890 and 1940, Roberts found that her respondents could not remember their mothers working. 'Because it was generally (and rightly) presumed that a woman only worked if there was an inadequate family income, many skilled men did not like their wives to be seen earning money - it reflected badly on their status as the breadwinner.'91 The idea that a man should earn sufficient wages so that his wife would not have to go out to work became a significant aspect of working-class respectability. Several social historians have remarked on how important respectability was to members of the working class in mid- and late Victorian Britain.92 This is subject to a number of interpretations. Crossick, for instance, has suggested that the idea of respectability was an alternative to wealth as a measure of social rank and became a way for skilled artisans to deal with social inequity. Although the signs and symbols of working-class respectability may have resembled the values of the middle and upper classes, notions of respectability were generated by people of the working classes in 86 See D. Thompson, The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1984), 130, who suggests that women may have dropped out of Chartist politics in response to the growing sense that men's and women's places were to be separate and different, as the world of work became increasingly all male. 87 Prothero, op. cit., 328. 88 See G.S. Jones, 'Working-class culture and working-class politics in London, 1870-1900: notes on the remaking of a working class', Journal of Social History, vii (1974), 460-508. 89 Vincent, op. cit., 55. 90 Seccombe, op. cit., 55. 91 E. Roberts, A Woman's Place (Oxford and New York, 1985), 137. 92 See G. Crossick, An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society (1978); Hobsbawm, op. cit.; Roberts, op. cit. ; Jones, op. cit. ; E. Ross, '"Not the sort that would sit on the doorstep": respectability in the pre-World War I London neighbourhoods', International Labor and Working Class History, xxvii (Spring 1985), 39-59. 2o6 Social History VOL. 13 : NO. 2 response to their experiences as proletarians.93 As Peter Bailey has argued, some aspects of respectability were put on for show and effect in the presence of a middle-class audience.94 However, as others have suggested, no matter that 'rough' and 'respectable' elements might both have been aspects of the behaviour of most working-class people, some symbols of respectability increasingly became intrinsic aspects of working-class culture in the last half of the nineteenth century and were displayed for local, working- class consumption.95 G. Stedman Jones argues that in the last half of the nineteenth century, the work- centred culture of skilled workers began to be replaced by one oriented towards the family and home.96 Jones attributed this shift to a complex of events, including the shortening of the working day, growing geographical separation between home and workplace, increased spending power, and an increased division of labour between men and women in which women were no longer expected to earn money, but rather were expected to remain at home to manage the money earned by their husbands. As Jones also notes, the Education Acts of the 1870s made it more difficult for women to go out to work, leaving the household chores to older children. Because they were to be in school, it became increasingly less possible to rely on children to be regular contributors to household income.98 The withdrawal of both children and wives from visible and regular employment would have put an increasing burden on men to be 'good providers'. As symbols of respectability became increasingly focused on the home, and full-time housewives were responsible for keeping up the image of respectable home life, the role of breadwinner (now envisioned as the sole adult provider) became part and parcel of masculine identity. The connection between the ideal of breadwinning and working-class respectability may well have been reinforced by middle-class 'moral entrepreneurs' who promoted the idea that the employment of married women was due to profligate husbands. In addition, working-class leaders espoused the principle that men should be the breadwinners and women should remain out of the labour force. At the Trade Union Congress in 1877 Henry Broadhurst, in supporting restrictive labour legislation for women, argued: It was their duty as men and husbands to use their utmost efforts to bring about a condition of things where their wives should be in their proper sphere at home, seeing after their house and family, instead of being dragged into the competition for livelihood against the great and strong men of the world.99 93 Jones, op. cit.; Hobsbawm, op. cit., 242-4. 94 Peter Bailey, '"Will the real Bill Banks please stand up?" Towards a role analysis of mid-Victorian working-class respectability', Journal of Social History, vii (Spring 1979), 336-53. 95 See especially Ross, op. cit. and Jones, op. cit. 96 Jones, op. cit., 485. 97 ibid., 485-6. 98 As D. Rubinstein has shown, school attendance by children of the very poor was not regular as they frequently had to earn wages to help their families make ends meet. See D. Rubinstein, School Attendance in London, 1870-1904 (New York, 1969), 44, 56, 89. For resistance to the demands of regular school attendance on the part of children of stockingers see S. Rose, '"Proto-industry", women's work and the household economy', Journal of Family' History, in press. 99 Women's Union Journal (October 1877), 72.