(7) Lastly, the inferior mobility of woman as compared with man has an influence in reducing the average efficiency of her labour. On the one hand, women are more liable to have the locality of their home fixed by the requirements of the male worker in the family; on the other hand, they are physically less competent to undertake work far from their home. Hence they are far more narrowly restricted in their choice of work than men. They must often choose not that work they like best, or can do best, or which is most remunerative, but that which lies near at hand. This restriction implies that large numbers of women undertake low-skilled, low-paid, ineffective, and irregular work at their own homes or in some neighbouring work-room, instead of engaging in the more productive and more remunerative work of the large factories. Every limitation in freedom of choice of work signifies a reduction in the average effectiveness of labour.
§ 6. These elements of inferior physique and manual skill, lower intelligence and mental capacity, lack of education and knowledge of life, irregularity of work, more restricted freedom of choice, must in different degrees contribute to the inferior productivity of woman's industrial labour.
In regarding this influence the experienced student of industrial questions hardly requires to be reminded that these must be regarded not merely as causes of low wages, but also as effects. This constant recognition of the interaction of the phenomena we are regarding as cause and effect is essential to a scientific conception of industrial society. Women are paid low wages because they are relatively inefficient workers, but they also are inefficient workers because they are paid low wages.
While this smaller productivity diminishes the maximum wage attainable by women as compared with men, it is evident that many forces are at work which tend to equalise the productivity of men and women in industry: the evolution of machinery adapted to the weaker physique of women; the breakdown of customs excluding women from many occupations; the growth of restrictions upon male adult labour with regard to the working-day, etc., correspondent with those placed upon women; improved mobility of women's labour by cheaper and more facile transport in large cities; the recognition by a growing number of women that matrimony is not the only livelihood open to them, but that an industrial life is preferable and possible. These forces, unless counteracted by stronger moral and social forces, seem likely to raise the average productivity of women's industrial labour, and to incite her more and more to undertake industrial wage-work.
§ 7. As the maximum wage may be said to vary with productivity, so the minimum wage is said to vary with the "wants" of the worker. Women are said to "want" less than man, and therefore the stress of competition can drive their wages to a lower level. It is possible that a woman can sustain the smaller quantity of physical energy required for her work somewhat more cheaply than a man can sustain the energy required for his work, and that the early increments of material comfort above the bare subsistence line may be attended by a larger increase of productivity in the man than in the woman. If this is so, then the minimum subsistence wage and the wage of true economic efficiency, the smallest wage a wise employer in his own interest will consent to pay, are lower in the case of women than of men. But this difference furnishes no adequate explanation of the difference between the male and the female minimum wage. The wage of the low-skilled male labourer enables him to consume certain things which do not belong strictly to his "subsistence"—to wit, beer and tobacco; the wage of the low-skilled female labourer often falls below what is sufficient with the most rigid economy to provide "subsistence." We are not then concerned with a difference which refers primarily to the quantity of food, etc., required to support life. The wages of the low-skilled labourer in regular employ would, if properly used, suffice to furnish him more than a bare physical subsistence; the wages of the lowest-paid women workers in factories would not suffice to maintain them in the physical condition to perform their work.[251]
It is not then precisely with the "standard of comfort" of male and female workers that we are concerned. The economic relation in which men and women workers stand to other members of their family is a more important factor. The wage of a male worker must be sufficient to support not only himself but the average family dependent upon him, in the standard of comfort below which he will not consent to work. When little work is available for his wife and children, or where his "standard of comfort" requires them not to undertake wage-work, his minimum wage must suffice to keep some four persons. His standard of comfort may be beaten down by stress of circumstances, his family may be driven to take what work they can get, but in any case his wage must be above the "subsistence" of a single man. When the man is the sole wage-earner, or is only assisted slightly by his family, as, for example, in the metal and mining and building industries, average male wages are much higher than in the textile industries, where the women and children share largely in the work.[252]
Women workers, on the other hand, have not in most cases a family to support out of their wages. In the majority of instances their own "sustenance" does not or need not fall entirely upon the wages they earn. They are partly supported by the earnings of a father or a husband or other relative, upon some small unearned income, upon public or private charity. Where married women undertake work in order to increase the family income, or where girls not obliged to work for a living enter factories or take home work to do, there is no ascertainable limit to the minimum wage in an industry. Grown-up women living at home will often work for a few shillings a week to spend in dress and amusements, utterly regardless of the fact that they may be setting the wage below starvation-point for those unfortunate competitors who are wholly dependent on their earnings for a living. Even where girls living at home pay to their parents the full cost of their keep, the economy of family life may enable them to keep down wages to such a point that another girl who has to keep herself alone may be sorely pressed, while a woman with a family to support cannot get a living.
Miss Collet, in her investigation of women workers in East London, remarked of the shirt-finishers, one of the lowest-paid employments—"These shirt-finishers nearly all receive allowances from relatives, friends, and charitable societies, and many of them receive outdoor relief."[253] This is true of most of the low-paid work of women. Even in the textile factories, with the exception of weaving, most of the scales of wages are below what would suffice to keep the recipient in the standard of comfort provided by the family wage.
§ 8. The relation of a worker to other persons in the family is such that, in determining the minimum wage for any member, it is right to take the standard of comfort of the family as the basis, and to consider the mutual relations of the several workers upon this basis. We shall find that not merely is the wage of the woman affected by the industrial condition of the adult male worker, but that the wage of the latter is affected by women's wages, while the wages of child labour exercise an influence upon each. The problem is one of the distribution of work and wages among the several working members of a family, how much of the family work and how much of the family wage shall fall to each. As the children, and in many cases the women, are not free agents in the transaction, it may often happen that they are employed for wages which represent neither the cost of subsistence nor any other definite amount but the prevalent opinion of the dominant male of the family. A "little piecer" in a Lancashire mill may get wages more than sufficient for his keep, while many a farm boy or errand boy could not keep himself in food out of the earnings he brings home. This element of economic unfreedom in the lives of many women and most children must not be left out of sight in a consideration of the comparative statistics of wages for men, women, and children. Men workers often fail to recognise that by encouraging their wives and driving their children to the mills or other industrial work, they are helping to keep down their own wages. Men's wages in all the textile industries of the world are low as compared with those prevalent in industries demanding no higher skill or intelligence, but in which women take no important part. If the male textile workers used their rising intelligence and education to keep their women and children out of the mills, men's wages must and would distinctly rise.[254] The low wages paid to both men and women in many branches of textile work as compared with wages in other industries on approximately the same level of skill, goes for the most part to the consuming public in reduced prices of textile wares. It is true the Lancashire and certain of the Yorkshire textile operatives often enjoy a fairly high family wage, but they give out a more than correspondent aggregate of productive energy.
American statistics yield some striking evidence in illustration of the depressing influence exercised upon male wages by the labour of women and children. "Among factory operatives, all branches taken together, the wives and children who contribute to the support of the family are, on an average, as one and a quarter to each family, while among those employed in the building trades the average of wives and children who work is only one to every four families. Hence in the building trades the wages of the man supply about 97-1/2 per cent. of the total cost of the family's living, while among the factory operatives the wages of the man only supply 66 per cent., or two-thirds, of the cost of the family's living, because the other one-third is furnished by the labour of the wife or children. Nor is this because the cost of living of the factory operative family is greater than that of the labourer in the building trades, for while the average family in the building trades contains 4-1/2 persons, that of the factory operative contains 5-7/8 persons.[255] The total cost of living in the former is about $50 a year more than in the latter, and the wages of the man in the former are nearly $250 a year more than those of the latter."[256] Similar evidence is tendered from other trades, the gist of which is summed up in the Report of the Labour Bureau of Massachusetts in the following words:—"Thus it is seen that in neither of the cases where the man is assisted by his wife or children does he earn as much as other labourers. Also that in the case where he is assisted by both wife and children he earns the least."[257]