Thus custom, ignorance, contentment, social prejudices operate in different ways and in different degrees to prevent women workers from claiming in higher wages that share of the increased capacity of the community for making wealth which men workers have been able to procure.

§ 11. The above-mentioned forces operate chiefly as barriers of free economic competition. But women are equally at a disadvantage when and in so far as they do compete for work, and wages. Weak, unorganised units of labour, they are compelled to make terms with large organised masses of capital. By the organised action of trade unionism the majority of skilled working men have been able to raise their wages far above the bare subsistence minimum, and to hold it at the higher level until a firm standard of higher comfort is formed to be a platform for further endeavour. With a few significant exceptions, skilled women workers have been unable to do the same. Instead of presenting a firm, united front to their employers in their demand for higher wages, or their resistance of a fall, they are taken singly and compelled to submit to any terms which the employers choose to impose, or custom appears to sanction. The consequence is that in most instances skilled women workers are paid very little higher wages than unskilled women workers. The high value due to their skill goes either to the employer in high profits, or, where keen competition operates, to the consumer in low prices; the woman who puts out skill is paid not according to her worth but according to her wants. Yet the possession of technical skill is the basis of trade organisation. Wherever a number of women workers possess a particular skill and experience, and are engaged in fairly stable employment, the requisites of effective trade organisation exist. By combination these women can wield an economic power, measured by the difficulty and cost of dismissing them en masse and replacing them by less skilled and experienced labour, which they can use as a lever to raise their wages and other conditions of employment by a series of steps until they approach the maximum limit imposed by their productivity. That such action is feasible is proved by experience. Concerted action of factory women in several minor trades, both in London and in the provincial towns, has been attended with success. The examples of the cigar-makers at Nottingham, the women at Messrs. Bryant & May's, the rope-makers in a large East London factory, show what can be done by determined combination, even confined to workers in a single factory. But the crucial case is furnished again by the textile industries. In the Lancashire weaving, where men and women are working side by side in the same sheds, and are members of the same trades unions, we find the one notable exception to the low wages of women. Here women's weekly earnings are nearly the same as men's. The weaving is unquestionably skilled work, but so also is a great deal of other textile work not nearly so well paid. It is beyond doubt the power of the joint union of male and female weavers that alone maintains these wages for women. The same is the explanation of the equality of wages paid to men and women in the Sheffield file-making.

"But what if the Union should break down? It is as certain as anything based on experience can be, that in a few weeks, or even days, it would be possible for the employers to reduce the wages of the women-weavers; that rather than lose their work, women would consent to the reduction; that as they accepted lower wages, men would drop off to other industries, and would cease to compete for the same work; and that in a comparatively short time power-loom weaving would be left, like its sister, cotton-spinning, to women workers exclusively, and wages fall to the general level of women's wages."[262] Where these conditions of strong combination in trades unions do not exist we find that women's weekly wages fall considerably below men's in the weaving trades. This is so in most of the woollen industries of Yorkshire, and still more in the minor and more scattered textile work in other counties.[263] In the spinning-mills of Lancashire the women, combined in unions of their own, are able to obtain wages considerably higher than those which prevail elsewhere for similar work, though not so high as that of weavers. The following table, in which spinning and weaving and other departments are "pooled" for purposes of wages, is sufficient to indicate the advantage Lancashire women enjoy from their strong industrial position, as compared on the one hand with average factory work and wages, on the other hand with the less favourably placed worsted and linen industries, and even with the woollen.

Weekly Wages.Average.
Cotton.
s. d.		Woollen.
s. d.		Worsted.
s. d.		Linen.
s. d.
Men25 323 223 419 9
Lads and boys 9 4 8 6 6 6 6 3
Women15 313 311 11 8 11
Girls 6 10 7 5 6 2 4 11[264]

Thus we see that whereas men's wages are nearly the same in the three chief English industries, women's wages vary widely, yielding a very great advantage to the Lancashire cotton-workers.

§ 12. It cannot, however, reasonably be maintained that the whole of this economic advantage owned by weavers and other women workers in Lancashire is due directly to organisation. It is no doubt partly due to the conditions which also make Trade Unionism effective, an abundant demand for female labour in relation to the supply. In the less concentrated woollen industries of the West of England, where a large supply of female labour is available beyond the demand, the difference between men's and women's wages is far greater than it is even in those parts of Yorkshire where women are but slightly organised. This brings us to the most vital point in the problem of the industrial position of women. When there is an over-supply of labour qualified to compete for any work, wages must fall to the minimum of "wants" unless those in possession of the work are so strongly organised as to prevent outsiders from effectively competing. In a highly-skilled trade the workers may often have a practical monopoly of the skill, which gives them both power to organise and power when organised. But in a low-skilled trade, or where employers are able to introduce unlimited numbers of girls into the trade, there exists no such power to organise. Those who most need organisation are least able to organise. This is the crux for low-skilled male labour, and the great mass of women's industries are in the same economic condition, because the kind of skill required is possessed or easily attainable by a much larger number of competitors for work than are sufficient to meet the demand at a decent wage. The deep abiding difficulty in the way of organising women workers lies here. Cut out as they are, by physical weakness, by lack of the means of technical training, in some cases by organised opposition of male workers, or by social prejudices, from competing in a large number of skilled industries, their competition within the permitted range of occupations is keener than among men: not merely in the unskilled but in the skilled industries the available supply of labour is commonly far in excess of the demand, for the skill is generally such as is common to or easily attainable by a large number of the sex. To this must be added the consideration that a larger proportion of women's industries are concerned with the production of luxuries which are peculiarly subject to fluctuation of trade by the elements of season, weather, fashion, and rise or fall of incomes. Finally, a much larger proportion of women's work is done in small factories, in workshops, and in the home, under conditions which are inimicable to the effective organisation of the workers. Until out-work is much diminished, and effective inspection and limitation of hours in small workshops drives a much larger proportion of women workers into large factories, where closer social intercourse can lay the moral foundation of trade organisation in mutual acquaintance, trust, and regard, there is little prospect of women being able to raise their "customary" wage considerably above its present subsistence level, or to obtain any considerable alleviation of the burdensome conditions of excessive hours of labour, insanitary surroundings, unjust fines, etc., from which many women workers suffer.

Women cannot in most of their industries organise effectively under present conditions. In each trade, therefore, the workers employed are surrounded by a permanent mass of potential "black legs" willing to take their labour from urgent need, ignorance, or thoughtlessness, and possessing or able to attain the small skill required. In men's industries, save in the most unskilled, there is not a constant over-supply of labour, in most women's industries there is.

§ 13. Comparing women's wages with men's we are now able to sum up as follows:—The smaller productivity of woman's work makes the possible maximum wage lower; the smaller wants of women make the possible minimum wage lower; the greater weakness of women as competitors, arising chiefly from excess of supply of labour, makes their actual wage approximate to the lower rather than to the higher level.

In regarding productivity as a measure of maximum wage it is necessary to guard carefully against one misapprehension. So far as we are comparing the wage of men and women engaged upon the same work, the smaller wages of the latter may easily be seen to have some relation to the smaller product of their labour. But when productivity is expressed in terms of the selling value of the work no such measurement is open to us. We are thus thrown back on market value and are told that the reason women get so little is that what they make fetches so low a price. But the circularity of this argument will appear on revising the question and asking, "Why do women's products sell so cheap?" the obvious answer being, "Because the cost of labour in them is so little,"—i.e., because women receive low wages. But if we refuse to take selling prices as the measure of productivity, what measure have we? No accurate measure of effort, skill, or efficiency is open if we refuse the scale of the market itself. Yet if we consider the conditions of wages and prices in such "sweated" trades as shirt-making, we cannot but conclude that the consumer gets the advantage of the "sweating"; that is to say, a certain portion of the productivity of the workers passes to the consumer through the agency of low prices. That which might have gone to the shirt-makers in decent wages has gone to the purchaser. This criticism of course posits a measurement of productivity at variance with that afforded by competition, or, more strictly speaking, it discounts the abnormal terms of the competition in the sweated industry. If we say that 1s. 11-1/2d. as the retail price of a shirt is a "sweating" or unfair price, we mean that the skill and effort embodied in this product would, if there were absolute equality of competition and absolute fluidity of labour, be measured at say 3s. It is true that no such measurement is open to us, and all such estimates are guesswork. But the idea which underlies the sentiment against "sweating" is a true one, although it has no exact practical embodiment so long as our only meaning of "value" is value in exchange at present competitive rates. It is therefore not inaccurate to represent productivity as forming the maximum wage, though we may have no exact measure of productivity at hand. The fact that any increase in productivity of labour is liable under certain circumstances of competition to pass away entirely to the consumer, is no reason for denying that an increase of productivity has taken place which might under other circumstances of competition have gone to the producer as higher wages. Though productivity as a measure of maximum wages is more or less of an unknown quantity, it is none the less true that as this "unknown" fluctuates so the possibility of high wages fluctuates.