Page:Lily Gair Wilkinson - Revolutionary Socialism and the Woman's Movement.djvu/16

 Rh knitting, baking, the making of clothes, soap, candles, and many other domestic necessaries. All these tasks are now executed by capitalist industry, and an ever-increasing number of women are forced by modern social conditions out of the home into the factories and workshops, there to take once up more a part in production—not now as wives and daughters producing for the family, but as wage-earners producing for the benefit of capitalist masters.

This entrance into the social productive sphere certainly gives to the working women of to-day a semblance of independence unknown before in woman's history. And it gives, moreover, a promise of true independence to come. But while capitalist masters must be served this seeming independence is but a means of enforcing the most cruel slavery ever known.

If a life of wage-slavery is bad for a man it is very much worse for a woman. Under capitalism women have entered nearly every line of production (many involving great danger or inevitable disease), but employment is always given to them as an inferior sort of goods. An exact comparison between the wages of men and women has never been made, but as far as the records go women's wages compare very unfavourably with those of men. It has been shown that the average wage of women manual workers (including the textile workers, whose wages are relatively high) is very little over 7/ per week. That is to say, women do not receive a "living wage." In very many trades (e.g., French polishing and the various branches of the printing industry) men's wages are two or three times as high as women’s wages. In the tailoring and other clothing trades employers seem to find a special opportunity for exploiting female labour. Women employed in these trades receive only 7/ to 16/ weekly for work for which men get 30/ to 40/. In one case a girl is reported as receiving 7/ per week and making seven pairs of trousers in that time, and then being threatened with dismissal for not having produced enough. A man's wage for the same work would be about 25/. Tables may be referred to in the reports on many other industries showing the inferior wages earned by women. Among shop-assistants women earn from £10 to £25 a year; men from £20 to £40. Taking an average, the difference is shown to be 33 per cent. in favour of the male shop-assistants. Where machinery is used women are not paid nearly so much as men for working the machines. A case is quoted by the authors of "Women's Work and Wages" of a large cycle works where 80 men were employed in 1902; in 1905 only