here, it is made to seem unduly plausible by the recurrence of trade
cycles, which cause wages at any time to move in the same direction
all along the line. But, if the foregoing analysis has been
appreciated, the essential falsity of this notion should be evident.
It is an illusion, which should receive no endorsement, either tacit
or express, in any work on economics. The general wage level of a
country cannot be regarded (except temporarily, and within narrow
limits) as a function of the efficiency of labor organization; it
depends on the far deeper economic facts set out in Sec.3 above.

Let us now try to summarize the conclusions of this section. There
_is_ a tendency towards a uniformity of real wages for workers of the
same grade and of the same efficiency. This tendency is not due to
competition alone. It is helped by many acts of a collective kind,
arising from a sense of "what should be"; it is obstructed by other
acts of a like kind, where the sense of "what should be" is based on
imperfect understanding. The more people act in accordance with "what
should be," and the better their understanding, the more will this
tendency approximate to an accurate economic law.

Sec.8. _Women's Wages_. The wages of women represent a problem of great
public interest, upon which the principles laid down in this chapter
have a most important bearing, and which in its turn serves to
illustrate these principles further. It has been suggested that male
and female labor can be regarded as a strong case of Joint Supply, and
the suggestion is not merely facetious. The essential point, that the
proportions of available male and female labor are fairly constant
(not that they may not alter with time and circumstances, but that
they are essentially independent of the conditions of demand) holds
true not only of a country as a whole, but hardly less of a particular
district. If men and women are to be regarded as separate grades, they
are grades between which immobility is complete. Now men and women
differ in many ways which affect both the demand for and the supply of
their services. On the one hand, far fewer women wish to enter
business employments of any kind, as women have plenty of work that
must be done at home. On the other hand, though women can do many
kinds of work as well as or better than men, it so happens that for
much the greater number of services, which are in large demand in the
business world, men are the more