Women's Wages

by William Smart

More clearly does this objection emerge when we consider the third answer. It is said that the inferiority of women's wage is owing to their standard of living being less than that of men. It is true that a woman, as a rule, eats less, drinks less, and smokes less. Tea to her is, unfortunately, both meat and drink, and it would be counted extravagance in a working woman if she took to eating twopence worth of sweets a day as balancing the man's half ounce of tobacco. But I am afraid a woman's standard of life differs from a man's rather in its items than in its cost. I have yet to learn that her standard of dress is less than ours, and I am quite sure she takes more medicines, and spends more on doctors' bills. As in the former case, we change our view according as we look at different classes. Among the "upper" classes, as we call them, the woman's standard of life is very much higher than that of the man. It is only because the poor seamstress, when put to it, will live on a shilling a-day, while a man will become a tramp or go to the workhouse first, that we say the woman requires less.

In a word, it is not that the physical and mental needs of woman are less than the physical and mental needs of man, but that many women, for some reason or other, can be got to accept a wage that will only keep them alive. If so, the answer, translated, simply runs: women's wages are less than men's because, for some reason, women accept less.

It is to be noted, however, as very significant of the popular ideas about wage, that the second and third answers just given account for the standard of women's wages by the wants of the worker. A woman's wage is low because she does not require a high wage, whether it be because her father partly supports her, or because her maintenance does not require so much. Now it may be said in passing that it is quite against our modern ideas to represent wage as regulated by wants. Under a socialistic régime, indeed, the wages of all might be thrown into a common purse, and divided out according to the wants and necessities of each; but under an individualist régime, like the present, what the worker is is nothing, what the worker does is everything. To assess the value of goods by the cost to the human life which makes them is to take ground on which the world is not prepared to follow the economist whatever it may say to the moralist. It is not the cost in killed and wounded that decides the battle. To the purchaser it is indifferent whether the cloth he buys wore out the fingers and heart of a woman, or only took a little tear and wear out of a machine. The one question he asks is: How will the cloth wear? Caveat venditor. If a man-worker, then, is supposed to get a high wage when he produces much, a low wage when he produces little, why should a woman's wage be determined by another principle? We cannot hunt with the individualist hounds and run with the socialist hare.

The next two reasons, accordingly, put the low wages of women on quite different and more scientific ground, namely, that of the work they produce. Of these the fourth says that women's work is not so good as men's. As a statement of fact this is probably true. It is no disparagement to the sex to acknowledge that, if women are necessarily off work several days in the year because of little ailments common to them, if they are insufficiently nourished relatively to their needs, or are naturally more delicate than men, their wage at the week's end will be less than that paid to the average man who scarcely knows what a headache means. Or, if the woman is compelled by law to leave the factory at six, while the man can stay and work overtime; or, if she is driven to the street for an hour at meal-time, while the man can gulp his tea within the walls and get back to his work half-an-hour earlier; we can see that the wage of the man will be higher by the time and the overtime he works. Similarly, if it requires not only skill but strength to work a heavy loom; or, if a man can do two jobs, the one alternative to the other; or, if he can "set" and "point" his tools as well as work his machine, while a woman has to go to the mechanic's shop for these things; in cases like these—and they are, of course, very many—we require no answer to our question. It is simply a case of better wages for better work—better in quantity, or in quality, or, at least, in advantage to the employer. That is to say, if men and women are working side by side at the same trades, and under similar conditions, it requires little explanation to say why the wages of men should be 20s. and the wages of women, say, 15s.

If this were all, the inferiority of women's wage would not be primarily a question of sex at all; it would be very much a question of unskilled labour as compared with skilled labour. Women would get lower wages than men for the same reason as the dock labourer gets lower wages than the artisan, and the artisan than the physician. The world might suffer nothing in pocket by adopting the principle—which, however, I am afraid is yet far from general acceptance—of Equal Wages for Equal Work, whatever the sex of the worker. And here it is that Mr. Sydney Webb deserves thanks for having accented a fact which we all indeed knew, but of which few of us saw the bearing. It is that men and women do not, as a rule, produce similar work alongside of each other, and that any argument which compares the wages of both sexes, without taking account of this fact, quite misses the mark.

To recur to the facts adduced by Mr. Webb: it seems to be impossible, he says, to discover any but a few instances in which men and women do precisely similar work in the same place and at the same epoch. In the tailoring trade, for instance, men do one class of garment, women another. In the cigar trade women make the lower-priced goods. So in all the Birmingham trades. In paper mills men do the heavier, women the lighter work. In cotton spinning, the mule tenders, called, par excellence, "spinners," are men, while women take all the preparatory processes. But there is one exceptional trade where this does not hold. "Weaving," says Mr. Webb, "appears to be nearly always paid at equal rates to men and women, whatever the material or locality." This seems to hold as regards the weaving industry generally, from the hand-loom weavers of Ireland to the carpet weavers of our own country; and it extends also to other countries, as, for instance, to the cotton and silk weaving in France. That is to say, as I understand, that the piece-work rate is the same, although in special cases strength may give the man an advantage in handling heavy looms. But what is most remarkable is that, over the great weaving district of Lancashire, not only are the rates of piece-work the same, but men and women do exactly the same work side by side in the same sheds, practically under the same Factory Act restrictions, and earn equal wages, namely, an average from 17s. 11d. in Carlisle to 21s. 4d. in Burnley. This, however, is distinctly and notably an exception. Women compositors, for instance, in London, receive uniformly lower piece-work rates for exactly similar work; for the same work the union man gets 8½d., the non-union man 7½d., and the woman only 5½d. As an exception, however, we shall have reason to recur to the Lancashire weavers later.

We thus come naturally to the fifth answer given to our question. It points to the fact that the kind of commodities made by women, or in women's trades, have, generally, a less value in the market—they are "cheap" goods. Even as a mere statement of fact this proposition is very loose. What are cheap goods? In the absence of any absolute standard of value, goods can be called cheap only as comparing present prices with prices of similar goods in the past, or in consideration of their cost of production as compared with other goods. If the former is meant, all modern manufactured goods are cheap, and this would not explain the lower wage of one sex. If the latter, it is prejudging the whole question. But to make this statement an explanation, and suggest that cheap prices are the cause of low wages, is surely to turn the causal connection the wrong way about; for the value of goods such as we are speaking of depends, according to the recognised theory, on cost of production, and of this cost of production wages is a large part. It is true that the connection between prices and wages is one on which economic science is somewhat slow to speak. We may not now be so confident as Mill was when he put the proposition "high prices make high wages" among common erroneous notions. And we may not be prepared to say with him that the effect of prices on wages is only indirect, through increased profits adding to capital. But we are not prepared, I think, to go in face of all our old faith, and declare that the prices of goods determine their cost of production!

But as a fallacy is not usually put in a bald form, we must consider the concrete case in which it is assumed. Let us take an industry—say a branch of the textile trade—where labour constitutes a great part of the costs of production. Suppose that for many years low prices have ruled for the particular class of goods made. Any attempt to raise wages here meets with an obvious criticism. It seems most plausible to say: It is the wants of the people which have established this demand. The present price is all the consumers can or will pay, and the low wage is all that these prices can afford.

This is probably quite true. Once the prices are down, it is difficult to see how wages can be higher. But what brought down the prices? Is it ever the case that the world of consumers, practically, go to the workers and ask them to accept low wages on the ground that they can only afford low prices? Experience does not bear this out. So far as I know, the initiative of reducing prices, as a rule, comes from the producers, not from the public. The history of prices of most commodities of large use is something like this. They are at first dear, and only a small circle of consumers can afford them. As the production becomes organised, and capital brings more and more appliances to bear on the manufacture, the goods become cheaper, and a wider circle of demand is found. But below each circle of actual demand there are endless and widening circles of potential demand ready to take any particular commodity if it can be had cheaper. Thus, as, up to a certain point, large production is cheap production, there is always an inducement to the manufacturer and merchant to produce more cheaply. If they can reduce prices, and get down to a lower circle of consumers, it is well known in practical experience that the increase of trade which follows is out of all proportion to the degree of the reduction of price. But when this movement has gone on for some time, and goods have become very cheap, the demand has a way of appearing imperative, especially if these goods have entered into the standard of comfort of great classes. The goods become "necessary;" the low prices meet a "natural" demand; and these prices are just enough to yield an average profit to the employer—for profit must have its average, or capital, as we are often warned, will fly the country.

This is all quite true. The fallacy emerges only when it is suggested that the low prices are the cause of low wages. Here there are two possibilities: (1) All the reduction of cost may have been effected by perfecting machinery, organising production, and bringing producer and consumer together—that is to say, all the cheapening may have come from the side of capital. In this case there is no room for laying low wages at the door of cheapened prices. Or (2) as wages constitute one of the chief costs in all production—in the United States, for instance, they make up on an average a quarter of the manufacturing cost—they may have been reduced along with the capital expenses, and the low prices be partly due to these low wages.