t this holds of reductions in hours of work has become a truism
among trade unionists, who recognize that any reduction of hours
of work eventually, though not perhaps immediately, results in a
readjustment of wages, whether week-workers or piece-workers or both
be involved, till the original money wage at any rate is reached,
supposing, of course, that no other influence enters in as an element
to lessen rates of pay.

The question of equal pay for equal work involves indeed much more
complicated issues, as regards both the individual worker and the
whole body of women workers in the trade or branch of the trade
affected. But even here, the underlying purpose is the same, the
assuring, to the total number of workers whose labor has gone into the
production, of a certain amount of finished marketable work, of an
increased, or at the least, not a lessened share of the product of
their toil. It is not to be questioned that if women are permitted
to work at the same operations as men for a lesser remuneration, the
man's wage must go down. In addition, he may, even at the lowered
rate, lose his job, as the employer may cherish the not altogether
groundless hope that he may cut down the women's wage yet further and
employ yet more women, and yet fewer men.

In the same way the provision of better sanitary conditions, the
fencing off of dangerous machinery, the prohibition usually of
dangerous processes or of the use of dangerous materials, such as lead
or white phosphorus, all involve an addition small or large, to the
cost of manufacture. If, however, there be in all these instances an
increase in the cost of manufacture there are also results to the
well-being of the workers, which, if they could be measured in money,
would be out of all proportion to the money cost to the employer or
to the purchasing community. But again, it is the maintenance of the
workers' ideal standard of living which causes the trade union to
demand that their share of the product of their toil shall not be
lessened by needless or avoidable risks to life or limb or health.

I have taken these demands in the order, in which, generally speaking,
the organizer can induce the young girl worker to consider them in her
own case. Better pay makes by far the easiest appeal, whether it be to
the very young girl with her eager desire for a good time or to her
older sister upon whom, quite surely, years have laid some of life's
increasing burdens.

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