Women's Wages

by William Smart

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-workers; 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 wage. For what we are apt to forget is the constant inducement before the employer to reduce women's wages. There are two ways in which a manufacturer can add to his profits. One is by getting up his prices, the other by reducing his costs. In the present state of competition we know what the chance of getting up prices is, unless there is some element of monopoly in the case, and even then it generally requires a combination or syndicate of makers. But the employer is always looking out for ways of reducing cost. Theoretically, the most obvious way of all is by reducing wages. In men's trades, where reductions of wage are jealously watched, employers think twice, however, before they try that particular reduction of cost. In many factories, again, women's wages are purely customary, and employers would not think of touching them. But in the factories where wages are customary and almost fixed, the wages are also low. If the customary wages in cotton-spinning were 16s. a week instead of 10s., I venture to think that employers, in times of keen competition, would be inclined to try a reduction. I mean that, if the customary level of women's wages is 10s., the reason why it does not go lower is chiefly because it cannot.

And here, I think, we are at the root of the matter. In looking over the field of factory industries, in order to arrive at an average of women's wages, it has struck me that the variations from the average of 10s. a week are comparatively small. This is not an average made up from widely different wage-bills, and from widely varying individual wages, but from pay sheets that show small amounts of variation on one side or other.

This definiteness of average wage seems to me most explicable on the supposition that women's wages are very near the only quite definite level that political economy has ever pointed out, the level of subsistence.

There are two ways, known to theory, of determining wage. In a progressive society, where wealth is rapidly increasing, the tendency will be towards payments by results, that is to say, by value of product. Product being in this case the result of the co-operation of land, labour, and capital, the problem is to find the share in that product which is economically due to labour—that is to say, the share "attributable" to the efficacy of labour. In a poor or backward society, again, where labour and capital are struggling with an unfriendly environment, and the return to industry is still uncertain, the risk and the chances of speculation in the return are left to the only class who can take risks, the capitalists.

England long ago passed from the latter to the former description of society, and of her increased wealth the men-workers have obtained, we may suppose, something like a share corresponding to the increased value of the joint product. But, owing to want of organisation of women-workers, it is yet possible to pay women by the other standard—namely, according to their wants—and to keep them at the same level of wage as they were content to take half-a-century ago.

It seems to me, in fact, that while men's wages, unless in the case of unskilled workers, are determined ultimately by the value of product which is economically "attributable" to their work, women's wages are determined by the older and harsher law. "The wages, at least of single women," said Mill, "must be equal to their support, but need not be more than equal to it; the minimum in their case is the pittance absolutely required for the sustenance of one human being.... The ne plus ultra of low wages, therefore (except during some transitory crisis, or in some decaying employment), can hardly occur in any occupation which the person employed has to live by, except the occupations of women."

But, indeed, it is a lower depth to which women's wages have fallen than the "sustenance of one human being." There may be persons that think 10s. a week is sufficient to keep a grown-up factory girl, living by herself, in healthy and decent life. It certainly is true that in many cases it has to serve till she accepts the release of marriage; but surely the marriage of the English girl, factory or otherwise, is a matter too serious to have the escape from a miserable wage added to its attractions. It is sufficiently obvious that this level of wage was never determined by sustenance, but by the competition of the "single woman" with married women and widows who will take any wage rather than see their children starve, with girls sent into the factory to add their few pence per week to the earnings of the head of the house, and with children.

If this is so, what are the remedies? They are, briefly, organisation and enlightenment of the public conscience.