The Edwardian Hostesses in Trade During the Edwardian era there were few activities in which wealthy ladies

could become involved. They became increasingly disinterested in church work and some upper class ladies chose to cultivate a hobby. Retail trade, no matter how flourishing was quite unacceptable in society. A few society hostesses boldly disregarded convention and busied themselves in the clothing trade. This was out of humanity, not merely boredom. Amongst these ladies Lady Auckland owned a millinery shop; Lady Rachel Byng opened an artistic needlework shop; Lady DuffGordon established a fashion house called 'Lucilles' and Lady Brooke ran an underwear shop. Lady Brooke of Eaton Lodge Lady Brooke acquired a sewing workroom at Eaton Lodge. She wanted to help alleviate the misery of some delicate village girls. Generally speaking, the life of a seamstress was exhausting and poorly paid, but at Eaton Lodge a fortunate dressmaker would have found good working conditions and an opportunity to develop needlework skills. The scheme proved to be successful and received Royal patronage. Princess May of Teck who was later called Queen Mary, had her trousseau embroidered at Eaton. As a result it became the vogue to order thin white cambric lingerie from Eaton. It was thought a novel idea that lingerie could be hand stitched at Lady Brooke's residence. Later Lady Brooke opened a business in Bond Street, but her shop sign, 'Lady Brooke's Depot For The Easton School of Needlework', aroused contempt and mockery. The combination of trade and underclothes was frowned upon in society circles. For the dressmaker who toiled under her patronage life was very much sweeter than earning a living in other sweat shop establishments. Dressmaking as an Edwardian Female Occupation The choice of occupation for the working class girl was limited to either domestic service, prostitution, shop work, the stage or dressmaking. Dressmaking was honest employment and appealed to many. It promised long hours and hard work in every field. The life of a dressmaker varied according to the place of employment. There were nearly as many different types of dressmaker as there were strata of society. Basically there were five main categories of dressmaker beyond Couturiers like Charles Worth who were a fairly new phenomenon.

Firstly, the high class court dressmakers. Secondly, those who worked in the workrooms of large stores such as Harrods or Peter Robinsons. Thirdly, the many hands who worked in the East End of London where labour was 'sweated' out of them. Fourthly, the 'little dress-makers' who worked privately in various types of accommodation. Finally, the more or less incompetent dressmakers who were employed almost as an act of charity by private households. None of these dressmakers was well paid for her labour, although some were employed in more tolerable conditions than others. Their roles were impossible to envy and almost always in complete contrast to the roles played by the society hostesses. The more impoverished seamstresses worked to eat, and ate to work, and they were very lucky if they could fulfil even the most basic of human needs. The different worlds of West End society hostess and East End seamstress were linked by commerce. In the East End one section was devoted to the tailoring trade. Most work was done at home on the sweating system on average for fourteen hours a day. The Wages Of The Sweat System Dress Trades The Report of the Select Committee 1888-1890 The East End seamstress could expect to take home a pitifully low wage. In the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating System 1888-1890, Miss Beatrice Potter (a most famous female Fabian socialist reformer) and others, gave evidence of the atrocious working conditions and meagre pay. Mrs. Lavinia Casey made shirts at 7 pence a dozen. She normally worked from seven in the morning to eleven p.m. at night. After deducting time devoted to her children she averaged twelve hours work a day. In that time she normally made two dozen shirts. Her total daily wage amounted to one shilling and two pence. From her weekly earnings she had to deduct two shilling and sixpence for the hire of her Singer sewing machine plus one shilling, to one shilling and three pence for sewing machine oil and sewing thread. She could barely keep her family on this income. She was in arrears with her payments to the Singer Company, but her livelihood would be threatened if the sewing machine were taken away. Poor Diets On Edwardian Low Incomes Like Mrs. Casey, Mrs. Isabella Killick, a trouser finisher, only managed to clear one shilling a day after she deducted the cost of trimmings which she paid for herself. For this she worked some fourteen hours a day, from six a.m. to eight p.m. Her main diet on this wage consisted of a daily herring and a cup of tea. Meat was a food she ate only once every six months. More

rarely it was estimated that a button-hole maker could earn as much as four shillings a day. A Miss Rachel Gashion, an experienced buttonholer often took home a weekly wage of twenty six shillings such was her expertise. On such low incomes these women were hardly able to afford to eat, and could only dream of wearing the sumptuous clothes that sometimes must have passed through their hands. Most of their clothes were fifth hand and they were often trapped at home because their boots had been pawned for food. Like other lower class workers, the London seamstress obtained most of her clothes from one of the second hand markets held in London. Edwardian Department Store Dressmakers Working conditions for dressmakers in the larger stores were a little better. After serving a two year apprenticeship to a Court Dressmaker a typical trainee dressmaker received no pay throughout training. When her training was complete she was offered a weekly wage of two shillings and sixpence. Distressed at the low offer, the seventeen year old trainee dressmaker found a job in a department store workroom in London for seven shillings and sixpence per week. Later she became a chief bodice hand before moving on to another department store and finally marrying. The wages were obviously not enough because she and her workmates all still lived at home and small economies were essential. To save pennies all the dressmakers from one area travelled to work on an early workman's train. They arrived in London at 8 a.m. and wandered around Covent Garden until work began at 9 a.m., working then until 7.30 p.m. In the department store they wore white overalls and worked at long cloth covered tables. Those who did machine work were called machinists and their job was mainly to stitch linings. Dressmakers worked on made-to-measure dresses doing nearly all the sewing by hand. Only a few dresses were ready-made and these were for window display. The Edwardian Corner Dressmaker After marriage many women who were fully trained dressmakers would set up as the little dressmaker who could interpret the latest mode at an insignificant price. The answer was to select a dress design from a glossy magazine, then turn to a local dressmaker with a manual Singer sewing machine. The local dressmaker would run up a new gown very cheaply. Her establishment was likely a room in East London in Bethnal Green where she worked alone. Her client would pay a previously agreed price of between five shillings and five shillings and six pence for the creation. The Edwardian Court Dressmaker of Bond Street

In comparison a Court dressmaker providing a Madame dressmaking service would have charged some eighty guineas for a ball gown. Her clients, of course, would have been offered superior viewing facilities at her mirror filled establishment in Bond Street. Behind the lavish fitting room the conditions of work for the dressmakers were still very bad. The 'sweated' trade was as prevalent in the West End as the East End. Because the work had a seasonal nature for months men and women could be unemployed. Then as the season picked up they worked night and day. In the dressmaking and millinery West End trade, English girls were part of the sweated labour. The drawn blinds and workrooms appeared closed for the day so that dressmakers could work on long beyond the hours allowed by the Factory Acts during the society season. Edwardian Embellished Blouses Many dressmakers in such establishments were employed solely to work on blouses. With its profusion of lace and intricate details the blouse was a perfect example of conspicuous waste and conspicuous consumption. Usually the principal fabrics of the blouse were net and lace, cleverly pieced together with faggotting and lace insertions. This was then further trimmed with satin strappings and velvet ribbons. After 1905 cotton net was sometimes embroidered with small designs of leaves, flowers or spots and since the blouse was so fashionable, machine embroidery both commercial and domestic flourished until 1914. Descriptions of blouses in magazines such as Chic Parisian (1905) indicate the degree of ornamentation in vogue at the time for example:- 'Fig. 4029 - Evening blouse of white silk with black silk dots and strips (sic). White maline lace and application of black chantilly lace form the trimming.' Poor Income From Blouse Work The picture of the East End seamstress is perhaps the saddest of all. Working at beautiful blouses elaborately tucked, trimmed, lace embellished and finely gathered into bands, she served to emphasise the two extremes in the life-styles of Edwardian England. For this poor woman, life must often have seemed one long drudge. It may seem surprising to us today that the majority so meekly accepted Edwardian working conditions with little or no protest. The retail price of a blouse garment would have been from eighteen to twenty five shillings, but the maker would get only ten shillings for the whole week despite making more than a dozen intricate blouses. The maker, a skilled young woman could not make two fine tucked and lace

insertion blouses in a day. At ten pence a garment blouse work, was more poorly paid than standard dressmaking despite the skilled sewing expertise needed. Shawls Of Textile Workers Photographs of East End seamstresses display a certain uniformity in their personal attire. Their clothes have a wilted, crumpled, droopy look as shown in the header. Their costume invariably consists of a plain skirt and a limp pouched blouse with sleeves pushed up to the elbows as they press on with their hard work. The workers pictured probably worked from home as a team. Many dressmakers arrived at work wearing a bonnet and shawl and this appears to be a traditional form of dress among lower class textile workers. Beatrice Potter describes their arrival at an East End sweat shop:'Some thirty women and girls are crowding in. The first arrivals hang bonnets and shawls on the scanty supply of nails jotted here and there along the wooden partition. The shawls were sometimes paisley ones, the fashion for these having died amongst the upper classes as the shawls became widely available to the masses. J. B. Priestley also recalls the textile girls in '...their clogs and shawls' arriving for work some two hundred miles North of London.' The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) marked the end of the shawl as a covetable fashion. In the same way that the Pashmina was cast aside in the late 1990s (albeit frequently retrieved when no other cover up would suit), the abandonment of the Paisley shawl by Edwardian upper class circles was due to its popularity among the lower classes. By 1870 a Jacquard woven Paisley shawl could be bought for 1, and the identical printed cotton version for mere shillings. The previously exotic, exclusive and rare Kashmir Shawls style beloved since the Regency, became vulgar and everyday as a result of its popularity. Glamorous Edwardian Hostesses And Poor Dressmakers A hostess's life was not in fact one of freedom, but rather one of formal leisure highlighted by moments of sexual intrigue. It contrasts vividly with the life of the impoverished Edwardian dressmaker who was actually responsible for producing the lavish gowns that projected the image of her wealthy patron. Her every waking hour was devoted to activities that barely kept her fed and clothed. The dressmaker is a significant representative of the Edwardian poor, whose sweated labour was essential to maintain the image presented by high society.

If the First World War would change society life it could just as easily change the rle of the Edwardian dressmaker. History has proved the downtrodden dressmakers of the Edwardian era soon moved on to pastures new. The munitions factories beckoned. Few chose to relinquish their new found freedom when the Great War ended. Fewer still would be prepared to toil away their lives for a minority who thought the golden age could begin anew and be revived in all its former glory. Women Unionizing

In 1914 Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), expressed his regret that women had not joined men in a concerted effort to improve standards in the nation's factories. Gompers's observation, however, was at least partially based in his own bias against women factory workers. If he had looked more closely he would have seen that women were taking important steps toward unionization. Militant women garment workers entered the labor movement in large numbers as organizers, picketers, and negotiators in the 1910s. These brave women willingly met the threats a strike imposed on their livelihood and faced the reality of social ostracism because striking violated the norms of respectability and femininity. Women organizers had to deal with problems that male union organizers did not understand or would not acknowledge. Grudging Acceptance Near the end of the decade the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) had eighty-two thousand members and was one of the five largest AFL affiliates. Women comprised more than half of the membership list. This was a remarkable figure considering men did not really want to include women in unions. Male members were intent on monopolizing the industry's best jobs and viewed women as competitors for those jobs. It was a grudging acceptance, at best, for women throughout the 1910s. The effort to organize in the garment industry, however, proved that women, both middle class and wage earners, could play an active role in the trade union movement. Ultimately, it would be women themselves who would have to take the responsibility of improving their working conditions, a call often repeated by Gompers and other AFL leaders. Women answered by joining unions and demanding a place within their hierarchy. They demanded a better working environment, improved wages and hours, and safer conditions. The cross-class alliance between middle-class activists and working women, although treated with suspicion by male union leaders, played a major role in bringing about success. Companies Resist Unionizing Efforts

Factory employers valued women workers for their willingness to accept low wages and terrible working conditions in silence. Therefore, the companies used every method possible in impeding women's attempts to organize. Employers used police assistance, hired thugs and prostitutes to harass female leaders, and convinced the judiciary to issue injunctions against strikers and impose heavy fines. Meeting the threats required determination and middle-class support, and garment workers had both in abundance. Young Jewish women dominated the industry and had been infused with socialist idealism encountered by themselves or their families in eastern Europe, combined with a cultural heritage that encouraged opposition to oppression. Middle-Class Activism Middle-class women activists tried to interest young women in union participation. They introduced courses on labor topics in settlement houses, instruction in English, social evenings, music, and conferences to bring a social component to the organizing effort. Activists replicated what they saw male organizers doing by attempting to make the union a focal point in women's lives. The female leaders from outside the factories sanctioned the strike, another important step in fusing the two groups, and their active support won community acceptance for the workers' cause, Agnes Nestor, Rose Schneiderman, Pauline Newman, Dorothy Jones, and Fannia Cohn were among the early leaders of the women's unionizing movement. The young women of eastern European descent on the front lines, however, were the real focal point. They demonstrated a surprising willingness to sacrifice what few comforts they had to fight for a better life for themselves and their children. Strikes In 1910 women led strikes in the garment industries in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland. Although the strikes were defeated because of police protection and hired thugs, they set the tone for the rest of the decade. These strikes also proved that women would stand up to the violence that punctuated strikes in the 1910s. Three years later, white-goods workers struck in New York, led by women as young as fifteen. The strike lasted six weeks, and women won better pay and shorter hours, but not the closed shop they desired. This strike was one of four successful women's strikes in 1913. In the early 1910s unions moved to educate women workers and teach them trade union history in the hope that they would use this knowledge in future uprisings. The period also witnessed

some opposition to the assistance of middle-class women. Workers argued that these "outsiders" were becoming too numerous and turning the unions into paper organizations. AFL Ambivalence National AFL leaders remained ambivalent toward women in the movement. Embittered delegates to the 1914 national AFL convention even took steps to remove women from the job market completely. Gompers, growing ever more rigid and conservative with age, viewed working women as casual laborers just occupying themselves while they waited for marriage. He refused to take bold action to help improve their situation and straddled the fence in dealing with the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL). Gompers simply did not trust women and continued to question the participation of middle-class activists in the union movement. He was also suspicious of the numerous socialists within the women's movement. The introduction of the suffrage issue infuriated him because he thought that this politically charged issue would create divisions in the ranks of organized labor. Ultimately, it was Gompers's belief that women belonged in the home and not at work that most shaped his view. Women Wielding Power While dealing with numerous assaults from outside and internal fighting within the unionization effort, some energetic women were able to gain influential positions in their unions. Unable to move up the AFL ranks, militant women wielded power in other ways. They directed social activities, participated in conventions, led membership drives, and held local offices. Many men were forced to reexamine their assumptions about women when they realized the positive impact the women were having. Men could no longer assume that women were not seriously committed to union work and to the movement to improve the lot of all workers in the United States.