ers in factories would not suffice to maintain
them in the physical condition to perform their work.[251]

It is not then precisely with the "standard of comfort" of male and
female workers that we are concerned. The economic relation in which
men and women workers stand to other members of their family is a more
important factor. The wage of a male worker must be sufficient to
support not only himself but the average family dependent upon him, in
the standard of comfort below which he will not consent to work. When
little work is available for his wife and children, or where his
"standard of comfort" requires them not to undertake wage-work, his
minimum wage must suffice to keep some four persons. His standard of
comfort may be beaten down by stress of circumstances, his family may
be driven to take what work they can get, but in any case his wage
must be above the "subsistence" of a single man. When the man is the
sole wage-earner, or is only assisted slightly by his family, as, for
example, in the metal and mining and building industries, average male
wages are much higher than in the textile industries, where the women
and children share largely in the work.[252]

Women workers, on the other hand, have not in most cases a family to
support out of their wages. In the majority of instances their own
"sustenance" does not or need not fall entirely upon the wages they
earn. They are partly supported by the earnings of a father or a
husband or other relative, upon some small unearned income, upon
public or private charity. Where married women undertake work in order
to increase the family income, or where girls not obliged to work for
a living enter factories or take home work to do, there is no
ascertainable limit to the minimum wage in an industry. Grown-up women
living at home will often work for a few shillings a week to spend in
dress and amusements, utterly regardless of the fact that they may be
setting the wage below starvation-point for those unfortunate
competitors who are wholly dependent on their earnings for a living.
Even where girls living at home pay to their parents the full cost of
their keep, the economy of family life may enable them to keep down
wages to such a point that another girl who has to keep herself alone
may be sorely pressed, while a woman with a family to support cannot
get a living.

Miss Collet, in her investigation of women workers in East London,
remarked of the shirt-finishers, on