to make terms with large organised
masses of capital. By the organised action of trade unionism the
majority of skilled working men have been able to raise their wages
far above the bare subsistence minimum, and to hold it at the higher
level until a firm standard of higher comfort is formed to be a
platform for further endeavour. With a few significant exceptions,
skilled women workers have been unable to do the same. Instead of
presenting a firm, united front to their employers in their demand for
higher wages, or their resistance of a fall, they are taken singly and
compelled to submit to any terms which the employers choose to impose,
or custom appears to sanction. The consequence is that in most
instances skilled women workers are paid very little higher wages than
unskilled women workers. The high value due to their skill goes
either to the employer in high profits, or, where keen competition
operates, to the consumer in low prices; the woman who puts out skill
is paid not according to her worth but according to her wants. Yet the
possession of technical skill is the basis of trade organisation.
Wherever a number of women workers possess a particular skill and
experience, and are engaged in fairly stable employment, the
requisites of effective trade organisation exist. By combination these
women can wield an economic power, measured by the difficulty and cost
of dismissing them _en masse_ and replacing them by less skilled and
experienced labour, which they can use as a lever to raise their wages
and other conditions of employment by a series of steps until they
approach the maximum limit imposed by their productivity. That such
action is feasible is proved by experience. Concerted action of
factory women in several minor trades, both in London and in the
provincial towns, has been attended with success. The examples of the
cigar-makers at Nottingham, the women at Messrs. Bryant & May's, the
rope-makers in a large East London factory, show what can be done by
determined combination, even confined to workers in a single factory.
But the crucial case is furnished again by the textile industries. In
the Lancashire weaving, where men and women are working side by side
in the same sheds, and are members of the same trades unions, we find
the one notable exception to the low wages of women. Here women's
weekly earnings are nearly the same as men's. The weaving is
unquestionably skilled work, but so also is a great deal o