es in part from
the newness of the occasion, since in the story of labor as a whole,
soon to be considered by us in detail, it is only the last fifty years
that have seen women taking an active part. We have already seen that
mobility of labor is one of the first essentials, and that women are far
more limited in this respect than men.

This brings us to the final question,--Why do men receive a larger wage
than women? The conditions already outlined are in part responsible, but
with them is bound up another even more formidable.

Custom, the law of many centuries, has so ingrained its thought in the
constitution of men that it is naturally and inevitably taken for
granted that every woman who seeks work is the appendage of some man,
and therefore, partially at least, supported. Other facts bias the
employer against the payment of the same wage. The girl's education is
usually less practical than the boy's; and as most, at least among the
less intelligent class, regard a trade as a makeshift to be used as a
crutch till a husband appears, the work involved is often done
carelessly and with little or no interest. With unintelligent labor
wastage is greater, and wages proportionately lower; and here we have
one chief reason for the difference. Others will disclose themselves as
we go on.

Unskilled labor then, it is plain, must be in evil case, and it is
unskilled laborers that are in the majority. For men this means pick and
spade at such rates as may be fixed; for women the needle, and its
myriad forms of cheap production; and within these ranks is no sense of
real economic interest, but the fiercest and blindest competition among
themselves. Mere existence is to a large extent all that is possible,
and it is fought for with a fury in strange contrast to the apparent
worth of the thing itself.

It is this battle with which we have to do; and we must go back to the
dawn of the struggle, and discover what has been its course from the
beginning, before any future outlook can be determined. The theoretical
political economist settles the matter at once. Whatever stress of want
or wrong may arise is met by the formula, "law of supply and demand." If
labor is in excess, it has simply to mobilize and seek fresh channels.
That hard immovable facts are in the way, that moral difficulties face
one at every turn, and that the ethical side of the problem is a matter
of comparatively recent consideration, makes no difference. Let