HKB
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.
Sec. 14. If the above analysis is correct it is not difference of sex which is the chief factor in determining the industrial position of woman. Machinery knows neither sex nor age, but chooses the labour embodied in man, woman, or child, which is cheapest in relation to the degree of its efficiency. Thus the causes which depress woman's industry are chiefly the same which depress the industry of low-skilled men and children. In each case the limits of productivity and "wants" are lower than for skilled men workers, while the terms of their competition keep their wages to the lower level and check the full incentive to efficiency. Setting aside the case of children, who are protected in some degree from the full effects of competition upon the conditions of their employment, the industrial case of women is closely analogous to that of low-skilled men. The physical weakness of the one corresponds with the technical weakness of the other so far as efficiency is concerned; in both cases the low standard of wants gives a low minimum wage, while the excessive supply of labour, rendering concerted action almost impossible, keeps wages close to the minimum.
Sec. 15. The displacement of male adult labour which is going on by female, and, when permitted, by child labour, does not necessarily imply that women and children are doing more work and men less than they used to do. Before the industrial revolution women were quite as busily and numerously engaged in industry as now, and the children employed in textile and other work were often worked in their own homes with more cruel disregard to health and happiness than is now the case. Even now the longest hours, the worst sanitary conditions, the lowest pay, are in the domestic industries of towns which still survive under modern industry. But though the regular factory women and the half-timers are generally better off in all the terms of their industry than the uninspected women and children who still slave in such domestic industries as the trimmings and match-box trades, the growing tendency of modern industry to engage women and children away from their homes is fraught with certain indirect important consequences. When industry was chiefly confined to domestic handicrafts, the claims of home life constantly pressed in and tempered the industrial life. The growth of factory work among women has brought with it inevitably a weakening of home interests and a neglect of home duties. The home has suffered what the factory has gained. Even the shortening of the factory day, accompanied as it has been by an intensification of labour during the shorter hours, does not leave the women competent and free for the proper ordering of home life. Home work is consciously slighted as secondary in importance and inferior, because it brings no wages, and if not neglected is performed in a perfunctory manner, which robs it of its grace and value. This narrowing of the home into a place of hurried meals and sleep is on the whole the worst injury modern industry has inflicted on our lives, and it is difficult to see how it can be compensated by any increase of material products. Factory life for women, save in extremely rare cases, saps the physical and moral health of the family. The exigencies of factory life are inconsistent with the position of a good mother, a good wife, or the maker of a home. Save in extreme circumstances, no increase of the family wage can balance these losses, whose values stand upon a higher qualitative level.