That this holds of reductions in hours of work has become a truism among trade unionists, who recognize that any reduction of hours of work eventually, though not perhaps immediately, results in a readjustment of wages, whether week-workers or piece-workers or both be involved, till the original money wage at any rate is reached, supposing, of course, that no other influence enters in as an element to lessen rates of pay.

The question of equal pay for equal work involves indeed much more complicated issues, as regards both the individual worker and the whole body of women workers in the trade or branch of the trade affected.  But even here, the underlying purpose is the same, the assuring, to the total number of workers whose labor has gone into the production, of a certain amount of finished marketable work, of an increased, or at the least, not a lessened share of the product of their toil.  It is not to be questioned that if women are permitted to work at the same operations as men for a lesser remuneration, the man’s wage must go down.  In addition, he may, even at the lowered rate, lose his job, as the employer may cherish the not altogether groundless hope that he may cut down the women’s wage yet further and employ yet more women, and yet fewer men.

In the same way the provision of better sanitary conditions, the fencing off of dangerous machinery, the prohibition usually of dangerous processes or of the use of dangerous materials, such as lead or white phosphorus, all involve an addition small or large, to the cost of manufacture.  If, however, there be in all these instances an increase in the cost of manufacture there are also results to the well-being of the workers, which, if they could be measured in money, would be out of all proportion to the money cost to the employer or to the purchasing community.  But again, it is the maintenance of the workers’ ideal standard of living which causes the trade union to demand that their share of the product of their toil shall not be lessened by needless or avoidable risks to life or limb or health.

I have taken these demands in the order, in which, generally speaking, the organizer can induce the young girl worker to consider them in her own case.  Better pay makes by far the easiest appeal, whether it be to the very young girl with her eager desire for a good time or to her older sister upon whom, quite surely, years have laid some of life’s increasing burdens.

Next in order of attractiveness came shorter hours, especially if the wage-earners can be assured that wages will stay where they are.

But nothing short of both years and trade experience, apparently, will impress upon the worker all that is implied in those words that we write so easily and pronounce so glibly—­sanitary conditions.