William Smart

“ There is nothing more depressing to the thoughtful [Pg 31] economist than the waste, positive and negative, which comes of disorganised labour; where the working man and his wage are the sport of speculation, and the period of high wages and overtime is succeeded by periods when the worker is thrown on the streets to learn the bad lesson of spare time without culture, and of leisure without rest. It is of small comfort to the working man that the manufacturer and merchant share the bad time with him, and that stocks are thrown on the market at "ruinous sacrifices." ”

“ The best, the most amiable and just manufacturer, must sell his goods at the same prices as his rivals. If these rivals, by securing low-priced labour, can reduce the prices of their goods, he is almost forced to reduce his wages. Consequently, if the trade unions could prevent low-priced labour being offered they would most materially assist the great majority of employers—for I am sanguine enough to believe that most employers are anxious to pay their workers as high a wage as they can. ”

“ The price of railway stock to-day is determined by supply and demand; the price of a man's labour, whether unattached or working under restriction of the Trade Union, is determined by supply and demand; the earnings of the poor soul who sells her body on the streets are determined by supply and demand. What does this formula tell us unless we know the complex phenomena which determine the supply of railways and the demand for transit, the supply of labourers and the demand for work, the supply of hapless women and the demand for human souls? ”

“ First, organisation is necessary to protect women against employers and against themselves—the one no less than the other. The true enemies of the workers' organisations are, on the one hand, the grasping employer, and, on the other, the "blackleg" worker. By the grasping employer I mean the employer who really wishes to make a gain at the expense of the people whom he employs; it is easy to see why he dislikes the trade union. ”

“ But, second, enlightenment of the public conscience must supplement organisation. It should not be difficult to convince educated people that women's work should be paid on the same principle as that of men—that is to say, according to their product, and not according to their wants; and to make them pay, or insist on the worker being paid, equal wages for equal work. But the point on which enlightenment does seem very much needed is that of the supposed necessity for low wages. ”

“ If women are ever to get a fair day's wage on the ground of a fair day's work, as distinguished from the wage determined by a woman's necessity, it will only be by the old remedy of combination and the protection of the average working woman against the more helpless members of her own sex. ”

“ Under a socialistic régime, indeed, the wages of all might be thrown into a common [Pg 13] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why are men and women employed in equal work at unequal wages? but, Why are men and women employed in different groups of employment? and, comparing these two groups, Why is the wage level of skilled female labour lower even than that of unskilled male labour?
The reasons may be found in observing a course of events constantly under our eyes. There are always certain trades where women are still competing more or less directly with men. In these, women are under certain disabilities of sex which make their work less remunerative or less profitable to their employers. ”

“ 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 [Pg 12] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the changes which have been made on the earth, as we know it, the natural resources of matter and force now under our control, the complex and sensitive organisation which knits the world together, all point to possibilities of wealth beyond the wildest dreams of last century. There is some fatal leak in our industrial system if every child in Great Britain this year is not the heir of a richer heritage, at least of richer possibilities, than the child of last year. If our fathers a generation ago earned 20s. ”

“ I do not know how there could be any such necessity unless it was the case that labour and capital, like land in some countries, had entered on the stage of decreasing returns, and had, moreover, gone so far on that down grade that the additional returns grew more slowly than population—and no one has even suggested such an idea. I have already tried to point out the fallacy that low prices explain low wages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And where invention is constantly widening and strengthening our power over natural resources and increasing the productiveness of labour, the presumption is against the idea that over-population is even a strong factor in modern wages.
There is, indeed, no formula in political economy on which the modern economist looks with more suspicion than that of Supply and Demand. ”

“ It would not be counted an excuse or reason for a publisher asking a lady novelist to accept a lower price for her books, or for a patient offering a lower fee to a lady doctor. If the sex of the author, artist, musician, doctor, intellectual or artistic worker generally, has nothing to do with her remuneration, why should sex determine the wage of the factory girl? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Without going further into statistics, I think we may assume the fact of a great disparity between men's and women's wages, and go on to ask the reason of it.
If we put the question in general terms, Why is a woman's wage less than that of a man? there are some answers that spring to the lips of everyone. First, it is said that it is a mere question of supply and demand. Second, that women are not usually the sole bread-winners in the family to which they belong. Third, that their standard of living is lower than that of men. ”

“ A certain industry, we shall suppose, has been worked exclusively by men. By a "happy" invention machinery is introduced which can be tended perfectly well by women. For a little time the dead weight of custom will probably retain men to tend these machines, and the wage will certainly not fall below the average wage of men generally, which we shall, for simplicity's sake, put down at 20s. But, either gradually or as result perhaps of a dispute or strike on the part of the men, women are introduced to tend the machines. ”

“ But the best employers are helpless to remedy the evils of a class of workers who are hopelessly at war among themselves, and ready to take each a lower wage than the other. Where a girl, coming out of a comfortable home, is willing to take ten shillings a week because to her it is "pocket money;" where the mother of five will take eight shillings because her husband is out of work and she is the sole bread-winner ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is only in this century that comparative peace among nations has allowed the majority of men to give all their time and thought to the economical life, and even yet the locusts of standing armies eat up great part of our harvest field. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why is a woman's wage less than that of a man? But the last answer, unsatisfactory as it is in itself, seems to me to have a value in something further that it suggests. It seems to draw attention to a notable fact, and to point the way to a new formulation of the whole question. ”

“ Every woman in England may now be clad in cotton fabrics which, a century ago, were beyond the purchasing power of a queen. Beware how women are encouraged to ask and to stand for higher wages, or calico will again be put beyond the reach of any but queens. ”

“ 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 [Pg 18] 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. ”

“ Women workers he divides into four classes—manual labourers, routine mental workers, artistic workers, and intellectual workers. The two latter classes may be dismissed in a word. Sex has little to do in determining the wages of their work. A novelist, a poet, a writer of any sort, is under no disadvantage that she is a woman, while in many departments of artistic work women have an obvious advantage. But in the third class, that of routine mental workers, Mr. Webb finds that women's earnings are invariably less than men's. ”

“ In the cotton thread trade, spooling—that is, winding the thread on the small bobbin familiar to every work-basket—was for many years done by women sitting at single machines not unlike sewing machines, filling one spool at a time. The customary wage was sixpence per gross of 200-yard spools; a good worker could spool at least four gross per day, and make twelve shillings a week. ”

“ 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 [Pg 19] have been reduced along with the capital expenses, and the low prices be partly due to these low wages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”