no time have all the men
in a country been able to support all the women, regardless of
whether that situation would be desirable. Always must the aid of
womenfolk be called in as a matter of course. We have a national ideal
of a living wage to the male head of the family which will allow him
to support his family without forcing his wife and children into
industry. Any man who earns less than that amount during the year must
depend on the earnings of wife and children or else fall below the
minimum necessary to subsistence, with all which that implies. In
1910, four-fifths of the heads of families in the United States earned
under eight hundred dollars a year. At that same time, almost
nine-tenths of the women workers living at home in New York City
working in factories, mills, and such establishments, paid their
entire earnings to the family. Of 13,686 women investigated in
Wisconsin in 1914, only 2 per cent gave nothing to the family support.
Of girls in retail stores living at home in New York City, 84 per cent
paid their entire earnings to the family. Work, then, for the majority
of women, is more apt to be cold economic necessity--not only for
herself, but for her family.

Besides the fact that great numbers of women must work and many want
to work, there are the reasons for women's work arising in modern
industry itself. First, a hundred years ago, there was the need for
hands in the new manufactures, and because of the even more pressing
agricultural demands, men could not be spared. The greater the
subdivisions of labor up to a certain point, the simpler the process,
and the more women can be used, unskilled as they are ever apt to be.
Also they will work at more monotonous, more disagreeable work than
men, and for less wages. Again, women's entrance into new industries
has often been as strike breakers, and once in, there was no way to
get them out. Industrial depressions throw men out of work, and also
women, and in the financial pressure following, women turn to any sort
of work at any sort of pay, and perhaps open a new wedge for women's
work in a heretofore untried field, desirable or undesirable.

The freedom from having to perform every and all domestic functions
within the four walls of home is purchased at the expense of millions
of toilers outside the home, the majority of whom do not to-day
receive enough wages, where they are the menfolk, to support their own
families; nor where they are single wo