ABSTRACT
The garment industry consists of a group of trades which make a substantial contribution to the national wealth and provide employment for about 5 per cent of the total working population. On the productive side the garment industry still retains the characteristics described half a century ago in Charles Booth’s Survey of London Life and Labour. Through Union organisation English journeyman tailors established fairly good standards of wages and hours, and a system of price per garment, based upon a time-log which took account of the time a skilled craftsman would require for a particular job. Over the whole country about one-third of the female garment-workers received an addition to wages as a result of the Trade Board rates. Any wage increase resulting for the male workers from the Trade Board minimum rates was confined largely to the smaller towns, and sometimes to young workers just out of their time in the larger centres.
