As to the fact there is no doubt; one comparison taken from the Census of 1900 will be sufficient to illustrate it: the annual average earnings of men in mechanical and manufacturing industries were $490, and of women $272 per annum. The more important question is why this difference exists. A number of reasons suggest themselves at once. In the first place women are less efficient than men and
produce less; hence they are paid less. In some industries, particularly those requiring physical strength, women cannot compete successfully, and those are usually the highest paid employments. Other well-paid industries are regarded by men as essentially their own and social pressure is applied to keep women out. Then, too, woman’s ambition to attain industrial efficiency is not so great, owing to her expectation of marriage and release from industrial life. Women are more often absent from work owing to sickness and domestic claims upon their time; this irregularity of employment tends to reduce their efficiency. But even in employments where the efficiency of men and women are admittedly equal the women receive lower wages in the majority of cases. According to a report of the Bureau of Labor, out of 100 cases where the women did the same work as the men and did it as well, they received lower wages than the men in 80. This leads to the consideration of a second group of causes, which have to do with woman’s standard of living. One reason why she receives less is because she is able and willing to live on less. Physiologically, Dr. Atwater has said, man needs one-fifth more nutriment than woman. Women’s wages are less because of their somewhat lower cost of subsistence. But even aside from this fact, the frequent partial dependence of women upon other members of their family for support makes them willing to accept less and consequently reduces their wages. The average American workingwoman is young, only about twenty-two and a half years old, and after the age of twenty-five is reached the number declines rapidly. That is to say, working girls regard their employment as a temporary affair, remaining only about five years on the average in the store or factory; during this time they often live at home with their parents and are content to receive a wage much smaller than a man would require as head of a household.
The third reason is, however, the most important, because
it explains at the same time the low economic position which woman occupies in the industrial world. The narrowing of the field within which women can readily find employment has the effect of greatly intensifying the competition within that field. There is also a great reserve army of potential women wage-earners, whom a slight increase of wages or force of circumstances—loss of employment by the male members of the family—will bring into the field as competitors. There is, in other words, a constant over-supply of labor in most women’s industries, which does not exist in any men’s industries except the most unskilled. Women exhibit, furthermore, a comparative lack of mobility from one industry to another, as well as from one locality to another. According to Professor Smart, women are so unready to leave home that their pay on one side of narrow Scotland is 50 per cent lower than on the other side. In the same way, the flow of labor from one occupation to another, which tends to equalize the advantages and rates of pay of different employments, is far feebler among women than among men. Finally, there is little organization among women. Their individualistic, almost jealous, attitude to one another prevents their combination and united action, while their submissive acceptance of what is offered leads to apathy. They have only infrequently formed unions and endeavored to substitute collective bargaining for individual action. Women are therefore industrially in much the same situation as unskilled, unorganized male laborers, and the remedy in both cases would seem to be the same—education and organization.
The presence of a large supply of cheap woman labor undoubtedly has a depressing effect upon men’s wages, and consequently upon the standard of life of the whole laboring class. George Gunton[22] is authority for the statement that “in proportion as the wife and children contribute
to the support of the family the wages of the father are reduced.” The family wage tends to remain the same whether it is earned by the father alone, or by the father with the assistance of his wife and children. It is, however, not quite clear in most cases whether the men’s wages are low because the women and children work, or whether the women and children work because the men’s wages are low. It may fairly be concluded, however, that the evil effects of low wages for women are not confined to themselves but are felt by all with whom they come in competition.
What conclusion shall we draw then, in view of all these facts, as to the desirability of employment of women? The fact of their low wages and industrial dependence is not sufficient to lead one to condemn it. These are transitional phenomena and can be remedied. Women have always worked—on the farm, in the home, in making household supplies. When this work was taken over by the factory woman became a wage-worker in the modern sense. “The census records in respect to the labor of women, therefore, read in the light of collateral facts, are a history of industrial readjustment rather than a record of the relative extent of the employment of women, and it is impossible to say, so far as the census figures are concerned, whether a larger proportion of women are actively engaged in labor today than formerly or not. The one fact which is clear is that factory or shop work is displacing home work, and that this readjustment of industrial conditions is leading to the employment of women outside the home in constantly increasing numbers.”[23] The effect of this readjustment has been to increase greatly the production of wealth. The production of household supplies was removed from the family to the factory when it was handed over to machinery and done better and more cheaply. If the work of women thus released were expended for no useful purpose
society would gain only in the increased leisure of the women. But if these then took up other new lines or set men free from old employments so that they could turn to still different ones, then the production of goods could be greatly increased. “Without women’s help,” says Mr. George L. Bolen,[24] “their work in stores and offices would be done by men taken from other employment. The latter’s present work would have to be stopped to that extent, lessening the quantity of goods produced by men. The effect would be the same as if a farmer had to stop plowing two hours before noon to go to the house and cook his dinner.... Women behind the counter, and at the typewriter, release men for work that women cannot do.” From the standpoint of woman herself, industrial independence must be regarded as a great gain. Set free from the necessity of contracting marriage for the sake of a home, and of depending upon mere sex attraction to attain that end, she will develop her capacities more fully and when she does enter upon marriage will do so as a result of mutual attraction. The entrance of women into gainful occupations must be regarded as an essential step in their own progress and the improvement of society.
Quite different must be our attitude towards child labor, which can only be condemned as a waste of labor power and as stunting the development of the children. The Census of 1870 stated for the first time the number of children at work in the United States; there were 739,164 between the ages of 10 and 15 years, of whom 114,628 were employed in manufactures. During the next decade the number increased over 58 per cent to 1,118,356 children at work in all occupations. The disclosure of such an undesirable tendency called forth restrictive legislation in most of the states and the number declined materially by 1890. Since 1890 however there has been a reversal of this tendency back to the conditions of 1880, owing chiefly to the
industrial development of the South, where almost no factory legislation exists as yet. In 1904 there were 1,752,187 children at work between the ages of 10 and 15 years, or almost one-fifth of all the children of those ages. The evils connected with child labor are the long hours—usually 11 or 12 hours a day where no restrictive legislation exists—and the exhausting and often dangerous work. The effect on the health of the children of monotonous and exhausting toil before their muscles are set and their frames knit up is thoroughly bad; they are stunted and deformed and prematurely aged. Many of the occupations, too, in which child laborers are most numerous, are dangerous or injurious, as tin can factories, saw mills, paper box factories, type foundries, and tobacco establishments. Second only to the physical effects of child labor is the mental and moral injury suffered not merely by the child but also by society in depriving these youthful laborers of a thorough education. While it is well that children should be kept busy, there is no compensating reward either in money wage or preparation for adult life in such monotonous, profitless drudgery. The influence of the competition of children upon wages is leveling, and their employment indicates either a willingness on the part of employers and parents to exploit this cheap and defenseless form of labor, or a backward state of civilization. Such an evil can be cured only by determined public opposition, by the passage of laws forbidding all labor by children under a certain age, say 15 (except possibly in agricultural or housework), compelling school attendance, and providing for careful inspection. Most of all is needed an aroused public conscience.