industries on
approximately the same level of skill, goes for the most part to the
consuming public in reduced prices of textile wares. It is true the
Lancashire and certain of the Yorkshire textile operatives often enjoy
a fairly high family wage, but they give out a more than correspondent
aggregate of productive energy.

American statistics yield some striking evidence in illustration of
the depressing influence exercised upon male wages by the labour of
women and children. "Among factory operatives, all branches taken
together, the wives and children who contribute to the support of the
family are, on an average, as one and a quarter to each family, while
among those employed in the building trades the average of wives and
children who work is only one to every four families. Hence in the
building trades the wages of the man supply about 97-1/2 per cent. of
the total cost of the family's living, while among the factory
operatives the wages of the man only supply 66 per cent., or
two-thirds, of the cost of the family's living, because the other
one-third is furnished by the labour of the wife or children. Nor is
this because the cost of living of the factory operative family is
greater than that of the labourer in the building trades, for while
the average family in the building trades contains 4-1/2 persons, that
of the factory operative contains 5-7/8 persons.[255] The total cost
of living in the former is about $50 a year more than in the latter,
and the wages of the man in the former are nearly $250 a year more
than those of the latter."[256] Similar evidence is tendered from
other trades, the gist of which is summed up in the Report of the
Labour Bureau of Massachusetts in the following words:--"Thus it is
seen that in neither of the cases where the man is assisted by his
wife or children does he earn as much as other labourers. Also that in
the case where he is assisted by both wife and children he earns the
least."[257]

Sec. 9. But though the minimum wage of women and children is, strictly
speaking, not to be measured by any ascertainable standard of
subsistence, so far as the factory work of adult women is concerned
10s. may be said to be a standard wage. Factory wages, excepting for
cotton-weavers, seldom vary widely from this sum. Differences of
difficulty, disagreeability, or skill have little power to raise wages
much above 10s., or to depress them much below. Moreover, fluctuations
of trade and price