Women in the Printing Trades.

by Various.

PREFACE.

My only qualification for writing this preface is the circ.u.mstance that, as a representative of the Royal Economic Society, I attended the meetings of the Committee appointed to direct and conduct the investigations of which the results are summarised in the following pages. From what I saw and heard at those meetings I received the impression that the evidence here recorded was collected with great diligence and sifted with great care. It seems to const.i.tute a solid contribution to a department of political economy which has perhaps not received as much attention as it deserves.

Among the aspects of women's work on which some new light has been thrown, is the question why women in return for the same or a not very different amount of work should often receive very much less wages. It is a question which not only in its bearing on social life is of the highest practical importance, but also from a more abstract point of view is of considerable theoretical interest, so far as it seems to present the paradox of _entrepreneurs_ paying at very different rates for factors of production which are not so different in efficiency.

The question as stated has some resemblance to the well-known demand for an explanation which Charles II. preferred to the Royal Society: there occurs the preliminary question whether the circ.u.mstance to be explained exists. The alleged disproportion between the remuneration of men and women is indeed sometimes only apparent, or at least appears to be greater than it is really. Often, however, it is real and great where it is not apparent.

On the one hand, in many cases in which at first sight women seem to be doing the same work as men for less pay, it is found on careful inquiry, that they are not doing the same work. "The same work nominally is not always the same work actually," as the Editor reminds us (Chapter IV.

par. 1). "Men feeders, for instance, carry formes and do little things about the machine which women do not do." In this and other ways men afford to the employer a greater "net advantageousness," as Mr. Sidney Webb puts it in his valuable study on the "Alleged Differences in the Wages paid to Men and to Women for similar Work" (_Economic Journal_, Vol. I. pp. 635 _et seq._). The examples of this phenomenon adduced by Mr. Webb, and in the evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, are supplemented by these records. To instance one of the less obvious ways in which a difference in net advantageousness makes itself felt, employers say: "It does not pay to train women: they would leave us before we got the same return for our trouble as we get from men." At the same time it is to be noticed in many of these cases that though the work of women is less efficient, it is not so inferior as their pay. For instance, a Manchester employer "estimated that a woman was two-thirds as valuable in a printer's and stationer's warehouse as a man, and she was paid 15_s._ or 20_s._ to his 33_s._," (p. 47, note).

In other cases the difference between the remuneration of men and women for similar work is not obvious because they work in different branches of industry. For example, only five instances of women being employed as lithographic artists are on record (Chapter IV. par. 1). Other branches of the printing trade are as exclusively women's work. Such data afford no direct and exact comparison between the remuneration of the two cla.s.ses in relation to the work done by them respectively. As Mr. Webb concludes, the inferiority of women's wages cannot be gathered "from a comparison of the rates for identical work, for few such cases exist, but rather from a comparison of the standards of remuneration in men's and women's occupations respectively." "Looked at in this light," he continues, "it seems probable that women's work is usually less highly paid than work of equivalent difficulty and productivity done by men."

As Mrs. Fawcett points out in an important supplement to Mr. Webb's article (_Economic Journal_, Vol. II. p. 174), women are crowded into cla.s.ses of industry which are less remunerative than those open to men.

Recognising the fact of different remuneration for the same amount of work, we have next to consider the causes. It is evident that the sort of explanation offered by Adam Smith for difference of wages in different employments will not avail much in the case with which we are dealing. The lower remuneration of women is not brought about by way of compensation for the greater "agreeableness" or other pleasurable incident or perquisite of their tasks. Possibly we might refer to this head, as well as to others, the circ.u.mstance that women having in prospect the hopes of domestic life are likely to take less interest in their trade than men do who cast in their lot for life, if this difference in future prospects is attended with a difference in the effort of attention given to work in the present. But doubtless the explanation is to be found chiefly not in compensation produced by the levelling action of compet.i.tion, but in the absence of compet.i.tion between men and women--in the existence of monopoly whether natural or artificial, to use Mill's distinction (_Political Economy_, Vol. II.

Chapter XIV.), together with custom and what Mill calls "the unintended effect of general social regulations."

A natural monopoly is const.i.tuted by the superior strength of man, the occasional exercise of which, as just noticed, ent.i.tles him to some superiority of pay for work which at first sight may appear almost identical with that of women. The experience recorded in the following pages does not afford any expectation that this kind of superiority tends to vanish. "There is an almost unanimous chorus of opinion that women's work as compositors is so inferior to men's that it does not pay in the long run" (Chapter IV.). Speaking of the physiological differences between men and women in relation to their work, the Editor concludes that "when all false emphasis and exaggeration have been removed a considerable residuum of difference must remain."

Custom and the somewhat capricious sense of decorum counts for more than might have been expected in restricting women to certain industries, and accordingly, on the principle emphasised by Mrs. Fawcett, depressing their wages. "I know my place, and I'm not going to take men's work from them," said a female operative to an employer who wanted her to varnish books (Chapter IV.). "Why, that is men's work, and we shouldn't think of doing it," was the answer given by forewomen and others to the question why they did not turn their hands to simple and easy processes which were being done by men (Chapter V.).

Among artificial monopolies must be placed that which is const.i.tuted by legislation. The Factory Laws, of which a lucid summary is given (Chapter VI. -- 1), impose certain conditions on the work of women which, it may be supposed and has been a.s.serted, place them at a sensible disadvantage in their compet.i.tion with men, who are free from those restrictions. But the evidence now collected goes to prove that the disadvantage occasioned to women in their compet.i.tion with men by the Factory Acts is not appreciable; thus confirming the conclusions obtained by the Committee which the British a.s.sociation appointed to consider this very question (Report, 1903). The evidence of the large majority of employers in the printing trade is in favour of the Acts; the evidence of employees is almost unanimous. Of a hundred and three employers "not half-a-dozen remembered dismissing women in consequence of the new enactment" (Chapter VI. -- 2). Of a hundred and three employers, who expressed an opinion, twenty-six stated that in their opinion legislation had not affected women's labour at all, sixty considered it to have been beneficial, and seventeen looked on all legislation as grandmotherly and ridiculous (p. 82). The opinion of the employers is much influenced by the experience that "after overtime the next day's work suffers." The still stronger feeling of the workers in favour of the Factory Acts is partly based on the same fact: "Long hours," said one, "don't do any good, for they mean that you work less next day: if you work all night, then you are so tired that you have to take a day off; you have gained nothing" (p. 86). Upon the whole the moderate conclusion appears to be that "except in a few small houses the employment of women as compositors has not been affected by the Factory Acts" (p. 75). What little evidence there is to the contrary is exhibited by the Editor with creditable candour (p. 80). It is admitted that a "slight residuum of night work" may have been transferred to male hands.

Trades unionism forms another species of "artificial monopoly," the organisation of men in the printing trades being much stronger than that of women. The difference is partly accounted for by the fact, already noticed in other connections, that woman having an eye to marriage is not equally wedded to her trade. Some frankly admit that "marriage is sure to come along, and then they will work in factories and workshops no longer" (p. 42). Whatever the cause, it appears from the Editor's historical retrospect that women's unions have not flourished in the trades under consideration. All attempts to organise women in the printing trade proper, as distinguished from the bookbinding industry, have failed. Even the Society of Women Employed in Bookbinding, though organised by Mrs. Emma Paterson, seems to have had only a moderate success. Thus the men unionists have had their way in arranging that their standard wage should not be lowered by the influx of cheap labour offered by women.

Some unions indeed admit women on equal terms with men, with less advantage to the former than might have been expected. A regulation of this sort adopted by the London Society of Compositors is followed by the result that "it is practically impossible for any woman to join the society" (p. 28). At Perth a few years ago, when women began to be employed on general bookwork and setting up newspaper copy, the men's union decided that the women must either be paid the same rates as the men or be got rid of altogether (p. 46). One general result of such _prima facie_ equalitarian regulations is probably to promote that crowding of women into less remunerative occupations which was above noticed as a cardinal fact of the situation. It is for this reason apparently that Mrs. Fawcett does not welcome the principle that "women's wages should be the same as men's for the same work." "To encourage women under all circ.u.mstances to claim the same wages as men for the same work would be to exclude from work altogether all those women who were industrially less efficient than men" (see the article by Mrs. Fawcett referred to in the _Economic Journal_, Vol. III. p. 366, and compare her article in that Journal, Vol. II. p. 174, already cited).

Of course it may be argued that, in view of the circ.u.mstance that women workers are often subsidised by men and of other incidents of family life, to permit the unrestricted compet.i.tion of men with women would tend to lower the remuneration and degrade the character of labour as a whole. Without expressing an opinion on this matter, seeking to explain rather than to justify the cardinal fact that the industrial compet.i.tion between men and women is very imperfect, one may suggest that it is favoured by another element of monopoly. The employer in a large business has some of the powers proper to monopoly. As Professor Marshall says (in a somewhat different connection) "a man who employs a thousand others is in himself an absolutely rigid combination to the extent of one thousand units in the labour market." This consideration may render it easier to understand how it is possible for certain employers to give effect to the dispositions which are attributed to them in the following pa.s.sages: "Conservative notions about women's sphere, and chivalrous prejudices about protecting them, influence certain employers in determining what work they _ought_ to do" (p. 52).

"A rigid sense of propriety based on a certain amount of good reason, seems to determine many employers to separate male from female departments" (p. 53).

A notice of this subject would be inadequate without reference to the relation between the use of machinery and the compet.i.tion of women against men. In some cases the cheapness of women's work averts the introduction of machinery. "One investigator whilst being taken over certain large printing works was shown women folding one of the ill.u.s.trated weekly papers. Folding machines were standing idle in the department, and she was told that these were used by the men when folding had to be done at times when the Factory Law prohibited women's labour" (p. 98). A well-known bookbinder said: "If women would take a fair price for work done it would not be necessary to employ machinery."

In the Warrington newspaper offices the cheapness of women's labour makes it unnecessary to introduce linotypes (pp. 46 and 98). On the other hand, in the case of bookbinding, the employment of machinery makes it possible for the less skilled and lower-paid women to do work formerly done by men (p. 48). But the relations are not in general so simple. Rather, as the Editor remarks, "what really happens is an all-round shifting of the distribution of labour-power and skill, and a rearrangement of the subdivision of labour" (p. 48). The cheerful a.s.sumption proper to abstract economics, that labour displaced by the introduction of machinery can turn to some other employment, is seldom, it is to be feared, so perfectly realised as in the case of the bookbinders below mentioned (p. 48, note): "There was much gloom among the men when the rounding and backing machine came in, but though profitable work was taken away from the 'rounders' and 'backers' they had more 'lining up' and other work to do in consequence, so n.o.body was turned off."

So far I have adverted to only one of the problems which are elucidated by this investigation. A sense of proportion might require that I should dwell on other topics of great interest such as home work and the work of married women, the technique of the industries connected with printing which the Editor has described minutely, and the statistics relating to women's wages, in the treatment of which a master hand, that of Mr. A. L. Bowley, may be recognised. But I must not go on like the chairman who with a lengthy opening address detains an audience eager to hear the princ.i.p.al speaker. I will only in conclusion express the hope that the Committee which has obtained such useful results may be enabled to prosecute further investigations with like diligence.

F. Y. EDGEWORTH.

INTRODUCTION.

The investigation upon which this book is based was undertaken by the Women's Industrial Council; the Royal Statistical Society, the Royal Economic Society, and the Hutchinson Trustees consenting to be represented on the Committee responsible for the work. Upon this Committee, the Women's Industrial Council was represented by Miss A.

Black, Miss C. Black, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Stephen N. Fox, and Mr. J.

Ramsay Macdonald; the Royal Statistical Society by Mr. J. A. Baines; the Royal Economic Society by Professor F. Y. Edgeworth, and the Hutchinson Trustees by Mr. A. L. Bowley. Mrs. Hogg also represented the Women's Industrial Council up to her death in 1900.

The Committee takes this opportunity of thanking the Hutchinson Trustees for their liberal financial a.s.sistance, and of expressing its appreciation of the services so carefully and enthusiastically performed by the investigators, especially those of Mrs. Hammond, who is mainly responsible for the work done in London; of Mrs. Oakeshott, who a.s.sisted Mrs. Hammond; of Mrs. Muirhead, who supplied information about Birmingham; of Miss Harrison, who investigated Bristol and the South-West, and Leeds and district; and of Miss Irwin and Mr. Jones, who were in charge of the Scottish enquiries. To the many employers, Trade Union secretaries, and others who were so willing to give a.s.sistance to the investigators, the Committee also desires to express its grat.i.tude.

Whoever has had experience in collecting and sifting such evidence as is dealt with in this investigation knows how difficult it is to arrive at proper values and just conclusions. And women's trades seem to offer special difficulties of this kind. There are no Trade Union conditions, no general trade rules, no uniformity in apprenticeships, so far as the woman worker is concerned, and the variations in conditions are most striking, even between neighbouring employers drawing their supply of labour from practically the same district, though perhaps not from the same social strata. That difference in strata is in some cases a predominating factor in women's employment, and it everywhere confuses economic and industrial considerations. When to this irregularity of conditions is added a reticence as to "one's personal affairs," due partly to women's lack of the sense that their position is of public interest, and also partly to an unwillingness shown by many employers to disclose the facts of cheap labour, it can readily be seen that the Committee had to exercise the greatest care in its work.

When the investigation was begun there was an idea that it should be the commencement of an enquiry into women's labour in every trade of any importance, but whether that will be carried on or not will now depend on the reception of this volume and on what further financial a.s.sistance is forthcoming. The group of trades selected for first treatment shows neither an overwhelming preponderance of women nor a very marked increase in the employment of women. But it ill.u.s.trates in a specially normal way the main problems of women's labour under ordinary modern conditions. Upon one important point this group does not throw much light. The employment of Women in the Printing Trades does not show to any satisfactory extent the family influence of married and unmarried women wage earners. What information the Committee was able to gather is dealt with in its proper place, but careful enquiries will have to be made in the highly-organised factory industries before that wealth of fact can be obtained from which conclusions can be drawn, with details properly filled in, regarding the influence of women's earnings upon family incomes.

In other respects these trades have yielded most interesting information. They ill.u.s.trate the industrial mind and capacity of women in the different aspects of training, rates of pay, compet.i.tion with men, influence of machinery, effect of legislation, and so on. These subjects are dealt with under separate chapters, and though it has been the chief aim of the Committee to present well-sifted and reliable facts, it has stated some conclusions which are most obvious, and which appear to be necessary, if bare figures and dry industrial data are to carry any sociological enlightenment. The volume is therefore offered not as a mere description of industrial organisation, but as a study in sociology which indicates a path ahead as well as points out where we stand at the moment.

Miss Clementina Black is responsible for the description of the Trades, Mr. A. L. Bowley for the Chapter on Wages, and Mr. Stephen Fox for the legal and historical part of that on Legislation. For the rest, the Editor is responsible.

CHAPTER I.

_THE TRADES DESCRIBED._

The trades covered by this enquiry include a great number of processes, some brief account of which is necessary if the succeeding chapters are to be comprehensible. It will, perhaps, be the easiest way to follow the stages by which paper is converted into books and to return afterwards to such accessory matters as envelope making, relief stamping, lithography, etc.

_Paper-making._--Paper-making is carried on mainly in the counties of Kent, Lancashire, Buckingham, Yorkshire, Fife, Lanark, Aberdeen and Midlothian, but mills are found scattered over the country where water is favourable to the manufacture.[1] In London, there is one mill only, and not more than thirteen women are employed in it. Of these the majority are occupied in sorting esparto gra.s.s, and throwing it by means of pitchforks into machines where the abundant dust is shaken out, and from which the gra.s.s is carried on moving bands to the vats where it is boiled into pulp. A few older married women are engaged in cutting rags, removing b.u.t.tons, etc.; but at the present day paper is but rarely made from rags, and the rags so used are generally sorted and cut by machinery. This is an instance in which machinery has undoubtedly superseded the work of women; but, perhaps, few persons will regret that an occupation so uninviting as the cutting up of old rags should be undertaken rather by a machine than by a human being. With the later processes in the manufacture of paper--the boiling, mixing, bleaching, and refining--women have nothing to do; but a few women are employed in "counting" the sheets of paper before they leave the mill.

[Footnote 1: _The Directory of Paper-makers_ for 1903 gives the following number of paper mills as being situated in the following counties:--Bucks, 16; Devon, 10; Durham, 9; Kent, 30; Lancashire, 44; Yorkshire, 27; Edinburgh, 17; Lanark, 9; Stirling, 8; Fife, 7; Aberdeen, 5; Dublin, 6.]

The work of the women, who are time-workers at from 8_s._ to 10_s._ a week, requires no training. The working day begins at 6 a.m., an earlier hour than that of any other factory or shop dealt with in this enquiry.

The machinery is kept in constant action, double shifts of men being employed, and when it becomes necessary to feed the machines with gra.s.s at night men do the work performed in the day by women.

_Letter-press Printing._--The primary business of the "compositor" is to "set-up type," _i.e._, to arrange the separate movable types in required order for printing successive lines of words. These lines are then arranged in frames called _chases_, each of which containing the types is known as a _forme_; the _formes_ are "locked up," that is, made firm by wooden or metal wedges called _quoins_, and are then carried to the press for a proof impression. The printed page pa.s.ses on in the shape of proof to the "corrector," and from him to the author, and is then returned in order that corresponding alterations may be made in the placing of the type. Finally, when the whole corrected impression has been printed off, comes the "distributing"--the removal of the types from their places and re-sorting into the proper divisions in the "case." Were books the only form of printed matter, this description would cover the whole business of the compositor, but there are also handbills and newspapers--to say nothing of lithographic printing, which will be dealt with farther on. The printing of handbills, etc., and the printing of newspapers, require, each in its own way, a high degree of skill and experience, to which women, the vast majority of whom leave the trade comparatively young, seldom attain.

In the provinces, however, a few women are engaged upon the printing of weekly or bi-weekly newspapers; and in London, one establishment has been visited in which women regularly do "jobbing" or "display work"--terms which cover the printing of advertis.e.m.e.nts, posters, handbills, etc.--while at least two other firms employ each one girl upon such work. "None of the other workers," it is reported, "seem to care to learn."

The difference between skilful and unskilful work in this department is far greater than an uninitiated person might suppose; and the attractiveness of a poster, advertis.e.m.e.nt or invitation card depends very largely upon the way in which the type is s.p.a.ced.

In all printing houses employing women compositors, setting up, correcting, and distributing are done by women; in the Women's Printing Society women regularly "impose," that is, divide up the long galleys of type into pages and place the pages so that they may follow in proper order when the sheet is folded, and in another firm a woman was found who could impose; but as a general rule the "imposing" is the work of the man or men employed to lock-up and carry about the heavy formes. No instance has been found in which this latter work, which in some cases is extremely heavy, is done by women.

_Bookbinding._--This trade covers at least two main divisions, and one of these is minutely subdivided into a great variety of processes. The first process is, in all cases, that of folding. All printed matter occupying more than a single page has to be so folded as to bring the pages into consecutive order, and this process is essentially the same whether the printed sheet be that of a book, a pamphlet, a magazine, or a newspaper. From the trade point of view, however, there is a distinction between the folding of matter intended to be bound up in a real book cover (book-folding) and matter which is not to be bound (printers' folding). As a general rule--liable, however, to many exceptions--book-folding is performed in a binder's shop and printers'

folding in a printing house, whence the names. But many printers now have a regular binding department, and periodical or pamphlet work is on the other hand often folded in the workshop of the publisher's binder.

The line of demarcation is therefore no very distinct one. Prospectus work is _par excellence_ printers' folding, and so are such weekly papers as are still folded by hand.

Book-folding is done by women, of whom in theory nearly all, and in practice many, are regularly employed. The process is practically identical in both cases. Printers' folding is carried on in large firms chiefly by a regular staff; but in times of pressure "job hands" or "gra.s.s hands" are called in; and in smaller workplaces job hands do the whole of the work. Great sheets of matter, fresh from the press, are distributed in thousands to the workers to be folded either by hand or by machine. In the latter case, the woman merely feeds the machine, taking care to lay the sheet in exactly the right place. In the former, she becomes practically a machine herself, so monotonous is the occupation. The sheet is folded once, twice, three, or even four times, as the case may be, on a fixed plan, and sometimes has to be cut with a long knife as well as folded. The various sheets of a book having been folded, the process of _gathering_ follows. Each folder has received a fixed number (probably a thousand) copies of the same sheet, and when she has finished folding the gatherer places the sheets in piles of each "signature," _e.g._ the index letter which one observes on the first page of each sheet in a book, in regular order on a long table. She then walks up and down the side of this table collecting one copy of each sheet and so forming a complete book. The collection thus made pa.s.ses from the gatherer to the _collator_, who runs over it, noting by means of the printer's "signature" that all the sheets are in order, and placing her mark on the book, thereby becoming responsible for its accuracy. In the case of ill.u.s.trated books the process of _placing_ comes at this stage. The plates to be inserted are "fanned out"--_i.e._, laid out in fan shape--each receives a narrow strip of paste at the back and is placed next, and stuck to, its proper page. This placing is sometimes done by the collator, sometimes by a separate hand. The whole process of collating is often omitted in the case of pamphlets and small work, and the sheets then pa.s.s straight from the folder to the st.i.tcher or sewer. Of _sewing_ or _st.i.tching_ there are many varieties. The threads of hand-sewn books generally pa.s.s through three bands of tape kept taut by being attached at one end to the table at which the worker sits and at the other to a horizontal bar above. Sometimes the book will have been prepared by the sawing of grooves in the back to receive the sewing. This sawing is done by men. St.i.tching machines vary greatly. The simplest kind merely inserts the unpleasant "staple-binder" of wire that is so large a factor in the rapid decomposition of cheap books. In these machines, one variety of which uses thread and knots it, the pamphlet or other work in hand is placed at a particular place in a kind of trough; the operator presses a treadle and the wire is mechanically pa.s.sed through and pressed flat. Other machines of a more complicated sort will sew with thread upon tapes. In this case one girl is required to superintend and a younger a.s.sistant to cut apart the books which are delivered by the machine fixed at intervals upon a long continuous tape.

Such machines are worked by power and set going by the pressure of a treadle. Pamphlets or newspapers having neither "cover" nor "wrapper"

are now finished--unless, indeed, _inserts_ or _insets_ are to be placed between the pages. These are those unattached advertis.e.m.e.nts which fall out upon the reader's knee on a first opening, and thereby certainly succeed in catching his attention, though not perhaps his approval.

Magazines or paper-covered books are sometimes "wrappered" by women, a simple process consisting of glueing the back of each book and clapping on the cover. Bound books have end-papers added to them by women, who also paste down the projecting tapes to the fly-pages. At this stage the book pa.s.ses into the hands of men to be touched no more by women, except perhaps in a few subsidiary processes. But since much debate has taken place over the allotment to men and women of other parts of the work, it becomes necessary to give a cursory glance at the further stages of a book's progress.

On leaving the women's hands the book--now no longer a collection of loose sheets but an ent.i.ty--is placed in a machine to be "nipped," that is, to have the back pressed; then the edges are cut smooth in a "guillotine"; the back is glued upon muslin and rounded, and a groove is made, by hand or machine, at each side of the back, so that the cover may lie flat; this is called "backing," the covering boards and cloth are cut out and pasted together; the design and lettering are stamped upon them in the "blocking-room"; the books are "pasted down," that is, are fixed into their covers by means of pasting down the end leaves, and are "built up" in a large press. If the designs and lettering of the cover are to be gilded, the gold-leaf is laid on by hand according to the stamped-out pattern, which is then restamped, and any gold-leaf not firmly adhering is rubbed off with an old stocking. The stocking is burned in a crucible, and the precious remainder of the gold collected again. "Gold laying-on" is done by women; and the workers engaged in this task do nothing else. Much dexterity is needed, the gold-leaf being apt to break or blow away at the slightest breath. One investigator describes as "seeming almost marvellous" the skill with which this difficult material is laid in exactly the right place by means of a knife. Women also "open-up," _i.e._, look through the books ready to be sent out to see that there are no flaws. Such is the life-history of the ordinary book as it comes from the publisher, but "publishers' binding" is not the only section of the binding trade, and is indeed regarded by the workers as "decidedly inferior" to "leather-work," which is emphatically distinguished as "bookbinding."

Leather-binding is employed mainly for rebinding. It forms, as may be supposed, a comparatively small part of the whole trade, and is practically confined to three large firms in the West End, a few small places, and separate rooms in some general binding establishments. The chief difference of method lies in the better fixing together of back and cover, the "bound" book being laced into the cover, and in the presence of a "head-band," at top and bottom of the back. Books to be re-bound are picked to pieces by women and cleaned from glue, etc., re-folded, if necessary, collated, and after being rolled flat (by a man) are sewn at a hand press. Repairs to torn pages or plates and the removal of stains are also done by women. This last process demands great care and skill, "foxed" pages requiring to be dipped into a preparation of acid which destroys not only the objectionable stain but also the body of the paper, so that the leaf has to be newly sized and strengthened, and naturally needs very tender handling throughout this whole course of treatment. The best head-bands, too, are made by women by hand, but the head-bands of cheaper books--when they exist at all--are machine-made. Head-band makers form a special and extremely small cla.s.s of workers.