thing depends upon the words "_as strongly
organized_." It is the general industrial weakness of the condition of
most women-workers, and not a sex prejudice, which prevents them from
receiving the wages which men might get, if the work the women do were
left for male competition alone. An employer, as a rule, pays the lowest
wages he can get the work done at. The real question we have to meet is
this. Why can he get women who will consent to work at a lower rate than
he could get men to work at? What peculiar conditions are there
affecting women which will oblige them to accept work on lower terms
than men?

Well, in the first place, the wage of a man can never fall much lower
than will suffice to maintain at the minimum standard of comfort both
himself and the average family he has to support. The minimum wage of
the man, it is true, need not cover the full support of his family,
because the wife or children will on the average contribute something to
their maintenance. But the wage of the man must cover his own support,
and part of the support of his family. This marks a rigid minimum wage
for male labour; if competition tends to drive wages lower, the supply
of labour is limited to unmarried males.

The case of woman is different. If she is a free woman her minimum wage
will be what is required to support herself alone, and since a woman
appears able to keep alive and in working condition on a lower scale of
expenditure than man, the possible minimum wage for independent women-
workers will be less than a single man would consent to work for, and
considerably less than what a married man would require. But there are
other economic causes more important than this which drag down women's
wages.

Single women, working to support themselves, are subject to the constant
competition of other women who are not dependent for their full
livelihood on the wages they get, and who, if necessary, are often
willing to take wages which would not keep them alive if they had no
other source of income. The minimum wages which can be obtained for
certain kinds of work may by this competition of "bounty-fed" labour be
driven considerably below starvation point. This is no mere hypothesis.
It will be obvious that the class of fur-sewers who, as we saw, earned
while in full work from 4s. to 7s. in the winter months, and the lower
grades of brush-makers and match-makers, to say nothing of the casual
"out-workers," who often take for a