In the employment of women, as in much else, Rowntree’s had always been more progressive than almost any other manufacturer. The Quaker belief that God was in everyone, men and women alike, gave women as much right as men to testify or take part in the ministry at gatherings of the Society of Friends, as the Quakers were properly known, and also to seek employment if they chose. As a result, women had always worked alongside men in the Rowntree’s factory – albeit on lower wages and with fewer privileges than their male counterparts. Rowntree’s was also one of the first factories in Britain where women were allowed to progress beyond menial tasks to supervisory and managerial roles; the first, a ‘Lady Welfare Supervisor’, had been appointed by Joseph Rowntree as far back as 1891. He also allowed production line workers a say in the appointment of their immediate supervisors – charge-hands and overlookers – an example of industrial democracy that few modern industrialists have been willing to contemplate even to this day.
The teacher took Madge to an empty space on a workbench, talked her through the work she was to do and showed her how to do it once, then left her to learn it properly by watching the woman next to her and following her instructions. The cardboard pieces were cut for them, and Madge and the other box-makers’ job was to fix them together, cover them with glue – there was a pot of glue and a brush on each bench – and stick the lining paper to them, pulling it taut and shaping it to fit the curves and angles of the box they were making. She had to fashion the lid in the same way, glue the printed illustration to it, and add any ribbons or decorations that were needed.
As she watched the quick, sure movements of the woman alongside her as she created a beautiful box, lining it, shaping the lid and fixing ribbons and tassels to it, Madge had a sinking feeling. If she did the job for a hundred years, she could not imagine how she was ever going to be able to make something as perfect as that. She was so disheartened that the thought of leaving and finding other work somewhere else crossed her mind for a moment, but the thought of the volcanic reaction that would provoke from her mother was enough to dispel that idea, and she buckled down to the task of learning the job.
For the first few days, as the newest junior in the department, she was kept busy on subsidiary tasks, keeping the box-makers supplied with card, paper and the other materials they needed, and topping up their glue pots with the foul-smelling liquid glue they used. The glue pots sat bubbling away on small Bunsen burners and the fumes would not only get on the girls’ chests, but also left a foul taste in their mouths. The smell and the fumes made Madge feel nauseous at first, so much so that she nearly had to run to the toilet to throw up at one point, but slowly she got used to them as she began to learn the craft of box-making.
Her first few efforts were something of an embarrassment, with the paper lining full of lumps, bumps and creases, the folds in the card not sharp enough or in the wrong place, and with dribbles of glue on the outside, but she rapidly improved and before long her work was drawing admiring glances from her fellow workers and even compliments from the overlookers. Although there were no formal apprenticeships for women in the factory, as there were for the men learning skilled trades like carpentry, bricklaying, painting, decorating and electrical engineering at Rowntree’s, work such as box-making was highly skilled and a genuine trade, and despite her earlier misgivings Madge ultimately proved to be one of the most skilful of all. The skills that she and the other Rowntree’s girls acquired at work increased their self-confidence, and that confidence often extended into their home lives as well. Many felt more able to stand up for themselves and argue their corner with a father or husband, though a woman who was thought by men to be too ‘pushy’ or ‘gobby’ was often deemed a ‘factory girl’ – shorthand for a loud, crude and foul-mouthed woman.
Rowntree’s paid workers a week in hand – the girls were paid on Thursday afternoons for the work they had done the previous week – so Madge had to wait eleven days before she received her first wages. Early on the Thursday afternoon, a woman from the pay office appeared in the Card Box Mill, pushing a trolley along the aisle between the clanking machines and pausing at each workbench to hand out a pay packet. A man walked alongside her, his eyes darting everywhere, as if he was riding shotgun on a wagon train and expecting an attack by outlaws at any moment.
The system of paying wages had been rather less formal in Rowntree’s early days. In the old factory at Tanners Moat, everyone kept their own note of the hours they had worked and at the end of each week the foreman went round with a hat full of coins, asked each of them, ‘How much time has thou got?’ and then paid them accordingly.
Madge had been trying to imagine what it would feel like to hold her first ever pay packet, and the feeling did not disappoint. She signed her name in the ledger to show that she’d received her wages, and then held the small brown paper packet unopened in her hands, savouring the moment. She turned it over and was about to rip it open when Rose called across to her, ‘Tear off the corner and check it first. Once you’ve opened it, you can’t go to the pay office and complain, even if your wages are short. They might just say you’ve pocketed it and are trying it on.’
Madge tore off a corner of the pay packet and fingered the edge of one crisp, new ten-shilling note. She shook the packet, heard the rattle of a coin and tipped the packet to let the coin slide to the top so that she could make sure it was a shilling. She turned the packet over again, ripped it open and took out her wages. The ten-bob note, the first she’d ever had in her hands, was pristine, straight from the bank and without a crease in it, and it almost felt like sacrilege to fold it up and put it in the little blue sailor bag hanging around her neck, where she kept her money for her tea because they were not allowed to have pockets in their overalls.
Madge had been taken on as a junior at the minimum Rowntree’s wage of eleven shillings a week, and she didn’t even see much of that because, like all her sisters and brothers, she had to march straight home on pay day and hand her wage packet to her mum. She would keep ten shillings (fifty pence) for Madge’s keep and then give her back the odd shilling as spending money. From then on, every week Madge spent sixpence (two and a half pence) on the price of admission to a dance at the New Earswick Folk Hall or the Assembly Rooms in the centre of York, and used the other sixpence to buy make-up: ‘I always loved my make-up,’ she says, ‘and I would far rather spend my money on that than the sweets, drinks or stockings that my sisters often bought with their money.’ However, Madge didn’t even have a shilling to spend during her first few weeks at Rowntree’s, because she had to pay for her own uniforms for work – the white overall and turban to cover her hair – and she had to have two of them, so that she had one to wear while the other was in the wash.
As in most other industries of that era, the rules about uniforms for work were more strict for women employees than for men, and the male authors of the Rowntree’s rule book also made patronizing attempts to link the requirements of food hygiene to attractiveness and style, including the comment that: ‘A Clean Cap and Overall Properly Worn Make an Attractive Uniform. A Workmanlike Appearance is the Best of Styles for the Workroom.’ Although admittedly far less men worked on the production lines, rules about covering hair with a cap were not applied to them until 1953, and it is probably no coincidence that from that date onwards, the company itself provided and paid for staff uniforms, whereas previously, women employees had been expected to provide their own, at their own expense.
The women didn’t wear hairnets – the rules requiring them to be worn at work were not introduced until the 1960s – but without exception, all the women production workers, even in areas like the Card Box Mill where no edible items were produced, had to wear turbans, and as Madge had discovered, there was an art