ere can be no doubt
that the legislation for the protection of the laborers of this industry,
in which the exploitation of women and children had been carried to the
extreme previous to 1847, has caused the raising of the general standard
of living. Without the intervention of law, exploitation would have been
pursued further in this industry. So the English women have before them an
example of the salutary effect of legislation for the protection of the
laborers in the textile industries. Nevertheless, there is in England a
faction among the woman's rights advocates which vigorously resists every
movement for the protection of women laborers; it has organized itself
into the "League for Freedom of Labor Defense." It acts on the principle
that every law for the protection of women laborers signifies an
unjustifiable tutelage; that the workingwomen should defend themselves
through the organization of trade-unions; that the laws for the protection
of women laborers decrease women's opportunities for work and drive them
from their positions, which are filled by men (who can work at night).

These fears are based purely on theory. In practice they are realized only
in entirely isolated cases. The truth is that legislation for the
protection of women laborers (prohibition of night work and the fixing of
a maximum number of work hours a day) is entirely favorable to an
overwhelming majority of workingwomen. It protects them against a degree
of exploitation that they could not resist unaided because _the majority
of them are not organized_, and have no power to organize themselves; they
will secure this power only through laws protecting women laborers. A
comparative international study of laws for the protection of women
laborers, published by the Belgian department of labor,[49] shows that the
number of women laborers has nowhere decreased, and that wages have not
declined as a result.

Concerning this point Mrs. Sidney Webb says: "In most cases women _cannot_
be replaced by men, either because the men are not sufficiently dextrous
or because their labor is too expensive. What employer will pay a man 20
to 30 shillings a week when a woman can accomplish just as much for 5 to
12 shillings a week?" We shall return to this subject in discussing
France.

Those women that are members of trade-unions persistently demand the right
to vote; many of them intimate that through this right they expect to
secure an increase in wages. N