s have very little effect upon this wage. Though
women are largely employed in industries where improvements in
machinery and methods have immensely increased the productivity of
labour, their wages are very little higher than they were half a
century ago. Since this rate prevails in many industries where an
adequate supply of women's labour cannot be drawn from married or
"assisted" women, and where the wage must be sufficient to tempt women
who have to keep themselves, 10s. may be said to be the "bare
subsistence" wage for women. The wide prevalence of this wage and its
independence of conditions of locality, time, nature of work, have
made it generally recognised as a "customary wage," and for any casual
work, or any new employment requiring ordinary feminine skill or
exertion, 10s. is regarded as sufficient remuneration for a woman. The
basis of this custom is the knowledge that women can always be induced
to work for a bare subsistence measured at 10s. or thereabouts, or for
extra comforts procurable by this sum regarded as a subsidiary
income.[258]

It appears that the wages of bare subsistence and the wages of extra
comforts have a certain tendency to equality in some of the low-paid
factory trades of London, though accompanied by a difference in the
quality and intensity of the labour involved.

The following diagram exhibits the uniformity of factory wages in East
End women's industries:--

[Illustration]

Upon this table Miss Collet bases the following opinion:--"The most
striking feature is the uniformity of maximum wages and the difference
in the skill required, and I believe it to be the fact that the match
girls and the jam girls, who are at the bottom of the social scale, do
not have to work so hard for their money as, for example, the
capmakers and bookbinders, who, in the majority of cases, belong to a
much higher social grade. And whereas the bookfolder or booksewer who
earns 11s. a week exercises greater skill, and gives a closer
attention to her work, than the jam or match girl who earns the same
amount, that sum which would be almost riches to the dock-labourer's
daughter represents grinding poverty to the daughter of the clerk or
bookbinder, with a much higher standard of decency, if she is by any
chance obliged to depend on herself. How is it that this uniformity
prevails, and that efficiency brings with it nothing but the privilege
of working harder for the same money?"[259]

Miss Coll