Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/661

 DIFFERENCES OF WAGES PAID TO MEN AND WOMEN 639 On the other hand, I have been informed that in Glasgow, although the men and women employed in the ready-made clothing trade usually perform different kinds of work, yet men occasion- ally do the women's work, and (not unnaturally) they then receive no higher rates than the women.  In Leeds too, it is said to be a matter of indifference to one clothing contractor whether the work is done by men or by women, the piece-work rates being the same. 2 Again, in. paper mills, where women and men are employed together in tying up reams of paper, the men tie up the heavier reams and are paid so much per 1,000 lbs.; the women tie up the lighter reams at so much per score of reams. Therefore, although the women earn less than the men, it is impossible to compare their work. Similarly, in all the Birmingham trades, although many thou- sands of women are employed, I am told that in no instance do they do the same work as men. I am inclined to believe that a similar state of things prevails ' ig ' ' n c ar-making. Here the men receave, an London, 4s. 2d. to 5s. 2d. per 1,000, and earn 35s. per week, whilst the women receive only ls. to 3s. 2d. per 1,000, and earn 12s. to 18s. per week. But the women exclusively make an inferior kind of cigar requiring less skill in the manufacture. In no cases, as I am informed, do men and women perform exactly the same work, although the difference between the grades appears to an outsider to be quite unconnected with any special fitness or ability. So close, however, is the similarity in the tasks that it is possible that there is sometimes no essential difference between them. Miss Collet, for instance, found men and women doing the same kind of work in one small cigar factory in Leeds, but she goes on to add that 'the men are said to have a lighter touch than women, and to produce cigars of more equal quality than women as a rule.' s On the other hand Miss Clementina a I believe this is occasionally the case in London sweaters' dens; but this means that a few men are, by exception, doing women's work. s It may be convenient to recall that Miss Clara Collet, in her article on ' Women's Work in Leeds' in the Econom/c Journal for September, 1891, stated that ' in the Jewish workshops the men machinists are paid a higher daily wage than the women, and the indifference with which the Jewish masters take on men or women at the different rates seems to show that women in the clothing trade are really being treated on equal terms with men, and that a substitution of men for women, although most improbable, is not inconceivable.' 3, Women's Work in Leeds,' Econom/c doetrnal, Sept., 1891, p. 478. Nowhere in Leeds but in this cigar factory and in a Jewish (clothing) workshop did Miss Collet find men and women doing the same kind of work.