This is a growing conviction; nor can we wonder that realization of its justice and its possibilities has been a matter of very recent consideration.  An often repeated formula becomes at last ingrained in the mental constitution, and any question as to its truth is a sharp shock to the whole structure.  We have been so certain of the surpassing advantages of our own country, so certain that liberty and a chance were the portion of all, that to confront the real conditions in our great cities is to most as unreal as a nightmare.

We have conceded at last, forced to it by the concessions of all students of our economic problems, that the laborer does not yet receive his fair share of the world’s wealth; and the economic thought of the whole world is now devoted to the devising of means by which he may receive his due.  There is no longer much question as to facts; they are only too palpable.  Distribution must be reorganized, and haste must be made to discover how.

It is the wages problem, then, with which we are to deal,—­the wages of men and women; and we must look at it in its largest, most universal aspects.  We must dismiss at once any prejudice born of the ignorance, incompetency, or untrustworthiness of many workers.  Character is a plant of slow growth; and given the same conditions of birth, education, and general environment it is quite possible we should have made no better showing.  We have to-day three questions to be answered:—­

     1.  Why do men not receive a just wage?
     2.  Why are women in like case?
     3.  Why do men receive a greater wage than women?

First, Why do not men receive a greater wage than they do? can be answered only suggestively, since volumes may be and have been written on all the points involved.  For skilled and unskilled labor alike, the differences in industrial efficiency go far toward regulating the wage, and have been grouped under six heads by General Frances A. Walker, whose volume on the Wages Question is a thoughtful and careful study of the problem from the beginning.  These heads are—­1.  “Peculiarities of stock and breeding. 2.  The meagreness or liberality of diet. 3.  Habits voluntarily or involuntarily formed respecting cleanliness of the person, and purity of the air and water. 4.  The general intelligence of the laborer. 5.  Technical education and industrial environment. 6.  Cheerfulness and hopefulness in labor, growing out of self-respect and social ambition and the laborer’s interest in his work.”

With this in mind, we must accept the fact that the value of the laborer’s services to the employer is the net result of two elements,—­one positive, one negative; namely, work and waste.  Under this head of waste come breakage, undue wear and tear of implements, destruction or injury of materials, the cost of supervision of idle or blundering men, and often the hindrance of many by the fault of one.  Modern processes involve so much of this order of waste that often there is doubt if work is worth having or not, and the unskilled laborer is either rejected or receives only a boy’s wage.