In the first place, as the physically weaker sex, they do on the average a smaller quantity of work, and therefore receive lower wages.  In certain kinds of work, where women do piece-work along with men, it is found that they get as high wages as men for the same quantity of work.  The recent report upon Textile Industries establishes this fact so far as those trades are concerned.  But this is not always, perhaps not in the majority of instances, the case.  Women-workers do not, in many cases, receive the same wages which would be paid to men for doing the same work.  Why is this?  It is sometimes described as an unfair advantage taken of women because they are women.  There is a male prejudice, it is urged, against women-workers, which prevents employers from paying them the wages they could and would pay to men.

Now this contention, so far as it refers to a sentimental bias, is not tenable.  A body of women-workers, equally skilled with male workers, and as strongly organized, would be able to extract the same rate of wages in any trade.  Everything depends upon the words “as strongly organized.”  It is the general industrial weakness of the condition of most women-workers, and not a sex prejudice, which prevents them from receiving the wages which men might get, if the work the women do were left for male competition alone.  An employer, as a rule, pays the lowest wages he can get the work done at.  The real question we have to meet is this.  Why can he get women who will consent to work at a lower rate than he could get men to work at?  What peculiar conditions are there affecting women which will oblige them to accept work on lower terms than men?

Well, in the first place, the wage of a man can never fall much lower than will suffice to maintain at the minimum standard of comfort both himself and the average family he has to support.  The minimum wage of the man, it is true, need not cover the full support of his family, because the wife or children will on the average contribute something to their maintenance.  But the wage of the man must cover his own support, and part of the support of his family.  This marks a rigid minimum wage for male labour; if competition tends to drive wages lower, the supply of labour is limited to unmarried males.

The case of woman is different.  If she is a free woman her minimum wage will be what is required to support herself alone, and since a woman appears able to keep alive and in working condition on a lower scale of expenditure than man, the possible minimum wage for independent women-workers will be less than a single man would consent to work for, and considerably less than what a married man would require.  But there are other economic causes more important than this which drag down women’s wages.