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Updated: May 26, 2025
Are they, moreover, to return to the old principles of prohibiting an operative from doing more than a certain amount of work in a certain time a practice quite defensible so far as it arose from the greed of employers who, with their men on piece-work, finding the rate of production increased, promptly put back the rate of payment so that workpeople should never earn more than a certain amount by day or by week?
I was aware, too, that she herself helped out the family earnings by taking in washing. To these items of vague knowledge she added a few particulars. As to income, I learnt that her husband a labourer on a farm some three miles away earned fifteen shillings a week during the winter, and rather more in the summer months, when he was allowed to do "piece-work."
In factories where price on piece-work is subject to arbitration between a Union committee of the workers and the firm, the committee is not always able to obtain a fair price for labor. One of the largest factories made a verbal agreement to observe Union conditions, but it signed no written contract, and has since broken its word.
The question which rises next is, Why do women as industrial workers suffer more than men? In the first place, as the physically weaker sex, they do on the average a smaller quantity of work, and therefore receive lower wages. In certain kinds of work, where women do piece-work along with men, it is found that they get as high wages as men for the same quantity of work.
In some districts the women do not come before half-past eight, and leave a little after four, and they have a long hour out for dinner. It is the piece-work of the corn-harvest that tries the frame, when work begins at sunrise or shortly after, and lasts till the latest twilight, and when it is work, real muscular strain. This cannot but leave its mark.
I've been keeping tab on the MacMorroghs for a good while: they are grafters; the kind of men who take it out of the company and out of their labor in a thousand petty little steals three profits on the commissary, piece-work for subs where they know a man's got to lose out, steals on the working hours, fines and drawbacks and discounts on the pay-rolls, and all that. You know how it's done."
The reason is because reaping is piece-work, and not paid by the day, so that the longer and the harder they work the more money is earned. In this a man's whole family can assist. His wife, his grown-up sons and daughters cut the corn, the younger ones can carry it and aid in various ways.
She had been totally unable to find work for the last five months, but this family, though very poor, had kept her with them without payment through all this time. She had been three months an operative, putting cuffs on waists. Working on a time basis, she earned $3 the first week and $4 the second. She was then put on piece-work, and in fifty-four hours and a half could earn only $3.
As soon as the writer was made gang-boss, one after another of the men came to him and talked somewhat as follows: "Now, Fred we're very glad to see that you've been made gang-boss. You know the game all right, and we're sure that you're not likely to be a piece-work hog.
"Instead of using a disk I designed a little machine using a cylinder provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was to be placed tinfoil, which easily received and recorded the movements of the diaphragm. A sketch was made, and the piece-work price, $18, was marked on the sketch. I was in the habit of marking the price I would pay on each sketch.
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