e of the lowest-paid
employments--"These shirt-finishers nearly all receive allowances from
relatives, friends, and charitable societies, and many of them receive
outdoor relief."[253] This is true of most of the low-paid work of
women. Even in the textile factories, with the exception of weaving,
most of the scales of wages are below what would suffice to keep the
recipient in the standard of comfort provided by the family wage.

Sec. 8. The relation of a worker to other persons in the family is such
that, in determining the minimum wage for any member, it is right to
take the standard of comfort of the family as the basis, and to
consider the mutual relations of the several workers upon this basis.
We shall find that not merely is the wage of the woman affected by the
industrial condition of the adult male worker, but that the wage of
the latter is affected by women's wages, while the wages of child
labour exercise an influence upon each. The problem is one of the
distribution of work and wages among the several working members of a
family, how much of the family work and how much of the family wage
shall fall to each. As the children, and in many cases the women, are
not free agents in the transaction, it may often happen that they are
employed for wages which represent neither the cost of subsistence nor
any other definite amount but the prevalent opinion of the dominant
male of the family. A "little piecer" in a Lancashire mill may get
wages more than sufficient for his keep, while many a farm boy or
errand boy could not keep himself in food out of the earnings he
brings home. This element of economic unfreedom in the lives of many
women and most children must not be left out of sight in a
consideration of the comparative statistics of wages for men, women,
and children. Men workers often fail to recognise that by encouraging
their wives and driving their children to the mills or other
industrial work, they are helping to keep down their own wages. Men's
wages in all the textile industries of the world are low as compared
with those prevalent in industries demanding no higher skill or
intelligence, but in which women take no important part. If the male
textile workers used their rising intelligence and education to keep
their women and children out of the mills, men's wages must and would
distinctly rise.[254] The low wages paid to both men and women in many
branches of textile work as compared with wages in other