Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer – Saturday 14 February 1948
Textile Specials
If you stand on the Huddersfield road, outside Barnsley, a little before 6 o’clock any night in the week you will see dozens of private coaches bowling merrily towards the mining town, bringing back home young girls—and some from a day’s work in the spin and weaving mills of the Huddersfield district.
When a count was made passengers in these “textile specials”about six months ago there were 600 of them. There are probably more now.
Some 300 women and girls go from Mexborough each morning in an fleet of private motor-coaches, bound for the mills of the Huddersfield district: and 350 go from neighbouring Goldthorpe to Sheffield, Huddersfield, Stanningley and Bradfford.
It is a lot of travelling, but at least there Is no queuing, and the ride is free or at reduced fare. Some of the coaches cost the mills £2O or a week.
Between the wars many mining towns and villages could offer employment only at the pits, and always a great deal of It there. There was little or none for women and young girls, and the area was a probable hunting ground for all sought domestic servants.
This was the reason why, In almost any house in any West Riding suburb the resident domestic always seemed to be sister to the one working next door. The accent was the same. It was South Yorkshire.
During the war and since there has been a significant change. There is other work now for the women and girls of the mining towns. “A good thing, too,’’ commented a South Yorkshire official. “Many of the lasses used be too young altogether to leave home.”
NEW INDUSTRIES
To attract women who spend two hours or more travelling to from work, some firms have opened branches in South Yorkshire Itself. These are sometimes no more ambitious in sizethan a single department, but it usually one which represents a production bottleneck —as, for instance, mending department in the textile trade. There would be more of these branches if premises were available to accommodate them or could be built.
Mexborough’s post-war industries include mending, cutlery, box making and umbrella-frame manufacture. The show piece is an electrical engineering firm employing about 1,000 workers, more than half of them women.
In Goldthorpe’s collection is mending, ladies’ gowns, precision’ sorting for a shoe-making firth* hosiery. It Is said that eventually a hosiery firm will build a factory on a four-acre site which will employ1000 workers.
Employment In places like Mexborough and Goldthorpe bis probably better than at any time In 20 years. Between the wars Barnsley’s percentage of unemployed varied from 15 to 50 per cent, of the insured population. It Is now less than the national average of 1 ½ %.