We have tried to ascertain how much this really means to the women workers. Thirty-three firms stated that work of the same character as that performed by women in the daytime was sometimes given out to men at night. We cannot, however, assume that the work is always given to men on account of legal restrictions, and it does not follow that the abolition of such restrictions would induce all masters to introduce women for nightwork. Several of them, indeed, emphatically deny that they would adopt this practice; and in some instances we have been told that it was not observed in the best firms before the law prohibited it, _e.g._, "Mr. A. remembers the time before the Act of 1867 (he has been in the trade since 1851). He could have worked women at night, but never would because of questions of morality."
These statements are, however, only part of the case, because nightwork is generally overtime, and we must consider how far employers care to practise it.
There seems to be an almost unanimous opinion against overtime, and any mention of factory legislation appears to suggest overtime at once to both employers and employed. Experience has driven it home to them that overtime is a most uneconomical method of work;[71] and as there does not appear to be any demand for women's labour at night except occasionally as overtime, the factory law in this respect is only a protection to the employée engaged by the employer who is still experimenting with this unproductive use of labour.
[Footnote 71: "When the factory (now a large provincial lithographer's, almanac maker's, etc.), was a small one, and it employed only a few hands, they used to work a great deal of overtime. They used all the time they were allowed by the Factory Acts and sometimes tried to get in more. But now they do not find it pays to work overtime."--It is of some importance to note that a responsible spokesman for the men engaged in London houses informed one of our investigators that when men are put on at night to fold "they take it easy, and six men do in two hours what two women do in two hours. They don't bother to walk up and down gathering, but sit at it in a row, and hand sheets on from one to the other."]