hich practically exclude them from the
competitions of the world's industry."

"Man is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported,"
was written by Adam Smith long ago; and this stands in the way of really
free and unhampered competition. Mr. Frederick Harrison, one of the
clearest thinkers of the day, has well defined the difference between
the seller and the producer of a commodity. He says:--

"In most cases the seller of a commodity can send it or carry it
from place to place, and market to market, with perfect ease. He
need not be on the spot; he generally can send a sample; he usually
treats by correspondence. A merchant sits in his counting-room, and
by a few letters and forms transports and distributes the
subsistence of a whole city from continent to continent. In other
cases, as the shopkeeper, the ebb and flow of passing multitudes
supplies the want of locomotion for him. This is a true market.
Here competition acts rapidly, fully, simply, fairly. It is totally
otherwise with a day laborer who has no commodity to sell. He must
himself be present at every market, which means costly, personal
locomotion. He cannot correspond with his employer; he cannot send
a sample of his strength, nor do employers knock at his cottage
door."

It is plain, then, that many causes are at work to depress the wages
even of skilled workers, far more than can be enumerated here. If this
is true for men, how much more strongly can limitations be stated for
women, as we ask, "Why do not women receive a better wage?" Many of the
reasons are historical, and must be considered in their origin and
growth. Taking her as worker to-day, precisely the same general causes
are in operation that govern the wages of men, with the added disability
of sex, always in the way of equal mobility of labor.

Wherever for any reason there is immobility of labor, there is always
lowering of the wage rate. The trades and general industries for which
women are suited are highly localized. They focus in the cities and
large towns, and women must seek them there. Great manufactories drain
the surrounding country; yet even with these opportunities an analysis
of the industrial statistics of the United States by General Walker
showed that the women workers of the country made up but seven per cent
of the entire population. Eagerly as they seek work, it is far more
diffi