But
if we refuse to take selling prices as the measure of productivity,
what measure have we? No accurate measure of effort, skill, or
efficiency is open if we refuse the scale of the market itself. Yet if
we consider the conditions of wages and prices in such "sweated"
trades as shirt-making, we cannot but conclude that the consumer gets
the advantage of the "sweating"; that is to say, a certain portion of
the productivity of the workers passes to the consumer through the
agency of low prices. That which might have gone to the shirt-makers
in decent wages has gone to the purchaser. This criticism of course
posits a measurement of productivity at variance with that afforded by
competition, or, more strictly speaking, it discounts the abnormal
terms of the competition in the sweated industry. If we say that 1s.
11-1/2d. as the retail price of a shirt is a "sweating" or unfair
price, we mean that the skill and effort embodied in this product
would, if there were absolute equality of competition and absolute
fluidity of labour, be measured at say 3s. It is true that no such
measurement is open to us, and all such estimates are guesswork. But
the idea which underlies the sentiment against "sweating" is a true
one, although it has no exact practical embodiment so long as our only
meaning of "value" is value in exchange at present competitive rates.
It is therefore not inaccurate to represent productivity as forming
the maximum wage, though we may have no exact measure of productivity
at hand. The fact that any increase in productivity of labour is
liable under certain circumstances of competition to pass away
entirely to the consumer, is no reason for denying that an increase of
productivity has taken place which might under other circumstances of
competition have gone to the producer as higher wages. Though
productivity as a measure of maximum wages is more or less of an
unknown quantity, it is none the less true that as this "unknown"
fluctuates so the possibility of high wages fluctuates.

Sec. 14. If the above analysis is correct it is not difference of sex
which is the chief factor in determining the industrial position of
woman. Machinery knows neither sex nor age, but chooses the labour
embodied in man, woman, or child, which is cheapest in relation to the
degree of its efficiency. Thus the causes which depress woman's
industry are chiefly the same which depress the industry of
low-skilled men and children. In each c