ase the limits of productivity
and "wants" are lower than for skilled men workers, while the terms of
their competition keep their wages to the lower level and check the
full incentive to efficiency. Setting aside the case of children, who
are protected in some degree from the full effects of competition upon
the conditions of their employment, the industrial case of women is
closely analogous to that of low-skilled men. The physical weakness of
the one corresponds with the technical weakness of the other so far as
efficiency is concerned; in both cases the low standard of wants gives
a low minimum wage, while the excessive supply of labour, rendering
concerted action almost impossible, keeps wages close to the minimum.

Sec. 15. The displacement of male adult labour which is going on by
female, and, when permitted, by child labour, does not necessarily
imply that women and children are doing more work and men less than
they used to do. Before the industrial revolution women were quite as
busily and numerously engaged in industry as now, and the children
employed in textile and other work were often worked in their own
homes with more cruel disregard to health and happiness than is now
the case. Even now the longest hours, the worst sanitary conditions,
the lowest pay, are in the domestic industries of towns which still
survive under modern industry. But though the regular factory women
and the half-timers are generally better off in all the terms of their
industry than the uninspected women and children who still slave in
such domestic industries as the trimmings and match-box trades, the
growing tendency of modern industry to engage women and children away
from their homes is fraught with certain indirect important
consequences. When industry was chiefly confined to domestic
handicrafts, the claims of home life constantly pressed in and
tempered the industrial life. The growth of factory work among women
has brought with it inevitably a weakening of home interests and a
neglect of home duties. The home has suffered what the factory has
gained. Even the shortening of the factory day, accompanied as it has
been by an intensification of labour during the shorter hours, does
not leave the women competent and free for the proper ordering of home
life. Home work is consciously slighted as secondary in importance and
inferior, because it brings no wages, and if not neglected is
performed in a perfunctory manner, which robs i