It seems evident that modern improvements in machinery under normal circumstances favour the employment of women rather than of men. There is some reason to suppose that machinery also favours the employment of children as compared with adults, where the economic forces are allowed free play. In the textile industries of the United States the work of women and children predominates even more largely than in England; in 1880 the number of women and children employed were 112,859 as compared with 59,685 men, while in Massachusetts out of 61,246 work-people only 22,180 were adult males. So far as legislation and public opinion do not interfere, the tendency is strongly in favour of employing children. Mr. Wade says, in Fibre and Fabric, "The tendency of late years is towards the employment of child labour. We see men frequently thrown out of employment owing to the spinning mule being displaced by the ring-frame, or children spinning yarn which men used to spin. In the weave-shops, girls and women are preferable to men, so that we may reasonably expect that in the not very distant future all the cotton manufacturing districts will be classed in the category of she-towns."[243]
§ 2. In modern machinery a larger and larger amount of inventive skill is engaged in adjusting machine-tending to the physical and mental capacity of women and children. The evolution of machinery has not moved constantly in this direction. In cotton-spinning, for example, the earlier machines—Hargreave's jennies and Arkwright's water-frames—were generally worked by women and children, the women who had been engaged in the use of the older instruments—the distaff, spindle, hand-wheel—coming into the mills. But the growing complexity and size of the mule made it too cumbrous for women and children, and spinning for a while became a male occupation in England. In the United States the difficulty of procuring male labour stimulated the invention of the ring spinning-frame, some sixty years ago, which could be worked by woman's labour. The limitations and imperfections of this mode of spinning retarded its adoption in England for upwards of half a century. But recent improvements have led to a rapid increase of the adoption of the ring-frame in Lancashire. In the low medium and low counts it is rapidly displacing the mule, and in countries where fine counts are little spun it will probably be the dominant machine.[244] In Lancashire it does not, however, seem at all likely to be rendered capable of displacing the mule in finer counts. The ring-frame throws spinning once more into the hands of women and of children, who in some Lancashire towns are quickly displacing the labour of the men.
So far as children are concerned, the economic tendency to adjust machine-tending to their limited strength is in some measure defeated by the growth of strong public feeling and legislative protection of younger children. Had full and continued licence been allowed to the purely "economic" tendencies of the factory system in this country and in America, there can be little doubt but that almost the whole of the textile industry and many other large departments of manufacture would be administered by the cheap labour of women and young children. The profits attending this free exploitation of cheap labour would have been so great that invention would have been concentrated, even more than has been the case, upon spreading out the muscular exertion and narrowing the technical skill so as to suit the character of the cheaper labour. It is quite possible that some of the oppressive conditions of our early factory system, the exhausting hours of labour, the cruelty of overseers, the utter neglect of all sanitation, the bad food, might have been found opposed to the true interests of economy and efficiency, and that the more developed factory might have been managed more humanely. But if we may judge by the progress made in the employment of weaker labour where it has had free scope, it seems reasonable to believe that, had no Factory Acts been passed, and had public feeling furnished no opposition, the great mass of the textile factories of this country would have been almost entirely worked by women and children.
We have seen already that the advantages attending efficient labour furnish no guarantee that it will be most profitable to employ the most efficient labour at the highest wages. The evidence of industrial history shows that it will often be most profitable to employ less efficient labour provided that labour can be got "cheap." The increasing employment of women in machine-industry is in nearly all cases directly traceable to the "cheapness" of woman's labour as compared with man's.
§ 3. Thus we are brought to the discussion of the important question which underlies all understanding of the position of woman in modern industry—"Why are women paid less wages than men?"
In almost all kinds of work in which both men and women are engaged, the women earn less than the men. Where men and women are engaged in the same industries but in different branches, the wage level of the woman's work is nearly always lower than that of the men. A general survey of industry shows that the highly-paid industries are almost invariably monopolised by men, the lowly-paid industries by women. This applies not only to unskilled and skilled manual work, but to routine-mental, intellectual, and artistic work,[245] wherever custom or competition are the chief direct determinants of wages. Certain exceptions to this rule, which readily suggest themselves, are explained by the fact that the wages of the labour in question are determined not by custom or competition, but by some other law. Where the product is of the highest intellectual or artistic quality, sex makes no difference in the price; "the rent of ability" of George Eliot or Madame Patti is determined by the law of monopoly values. In certain employments, as, for instance, the stage, sexual attractions give women a positive advantage, which in certain grades of the profession assist them to secure a high level of remuneration. So also in a few cases governments or private employers pay women as highly as men for the same work, though women could be got to work for less. But even in those occupations where women would seem to be most nearly upon an economic equality with men, in literature, art, or the stage, the scale of pay for all work, save that where special skill, personal attraction, or reputation secures a "fancy" price, is lower for women than for men.
§ 4. It is easy to find answers to the question, "Why are women paid less than men?" which evidently contain an element of truth. Three answers leap readily to the lips: "Because women cannot work so hard or so well," "Because women can live upon less than men," "Because it is more difficult for a woman to get wage-work." Each of these answers comprises not one reason but a group of reasons why women get low wages, and the difficulty lies in relating the different reasons in these different groups so as to yield something that shall approach an accurate solution of the problem. Setting these groups in somewhat more exact language, we may classify the causes as—
a. Causes relating to "productivity" or efficiency of labour.
b. Causes relating to "needs" or standard of comfort.
c. Causes relating to character and intensity of competition.