on the wages of the working-woman. The reduction of wages thus turns
into an endless screw, that, due to the constant revolutions in the
technique of the labor-process, is set rotating all the more swiftly,
seeing that the said technical revolutions, through the savings of
labor-power, set also female labor free,--all of which again increases
the supply of hands. New industries somewhat counteract the constant
supply of relatively superfluous labor-power, but are not strong enough
to establish lasting improvement. Every rise of wages above a certain
measure causes the employer to look to further improvements in his
plant, calculated to substitute will-less, automatic mechanical devices
for human hands and human brain. At the start of capitalist production,
hardly any but male labor confronted male labor in the labor-market; now
sex is played against sex, and, further along the line, age against age.
Woman displaces man, and, in her turn, woman is displaced by younger
folks and child-labor. Such is the "Moral Order" in modern industry.

The endeavor, on the part of employers, to extend the hours of work,
with the end in view of pumping more surplus values out of their
employes, is made easier to them, thanks to the slighter power of
resistance possessed by women. Hence the phenomenon that, in the textile
industries, for instance, in which women frequently constitute far more
than one-half of the total labor employed, the hours of work are
everywhere longest. Accustomed from home to the idea that her work is
"never done," woman allows the increased demands to be placed upon her
without resistance. In other branches, as in the millinery trade, the
manufacture of flowers, etc., wages and hours of work deteriorate
through the taking home of extra tasks, at which the women sit till
midnight, and even later, without realizing that they thereby only
compete against themselves, and, as a result, earn in a sixteen-hour
workday what they would have made in a regular ten-hour day.[124] In
what measure female labor has increased in the leading industrial
countries may appear from the below sets of tables. We shall start with
the leading industrial country of Europe,--England. The last census
furnishes this picture:

Total Persons
Year. Employed. Males. Females.
1871 11,593,466 8,270,186 3,323,280
1881 11,187,564 7,783,646 3,403,918
1891 12,898,