Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/671

 DIFFERENCES OF WAGES PAID TO MEN AND WOMEN 649 qual rates for the task performed. A similar state of th/ngs prevails in the East of Scotland, especially in turnip-hoeing. I find it difcult to draw any general conclusion from the fore- going facts. But they suggest to me that the frequent inferiority of women's earnings/n manual work is due, in the main, to a general but not/nvariable inferiority of productive power, usually in quantity, sometimes in quality, and nearly always in nett advantageoushess to the employer. Founded on this general infer/ority, and perhaps on the lower standard of life of women, the custom of paying lower wages to women exercises great influence even where these conditions do not exist. This custom is intensified by the influence of ' make weights,' the assistance received by so many women workers from parents, husbands, or ]overs. Custom is presumably less powerful in regulat/n wages in the United States than in England, and/n the United States the pro portion which the average earnings of women in manufacturing industry bear to those of men, is, as we have seen, considerably higher than in this country.  Where competition rates of wages prevail, and especially where the women are protected by strong Trade Unions, they .often earn wages equal to those of men for equal work. 2 II.--RouTINE 'MENTAL WORK. Turning, now, to occupations usually considered of higher status than manual labour, we find more/nstances of women per- forming work of the same kind as men, but it is less easy to be sure that it is equal to men's work in quantity and quality. W'omen's earnings in these occupations are invariably less than men's. Women typewriters employed by the Government receive, to begin with, only 14s. per week, the reason given being that this is the market rate for women typewriters, though not for men. In the United States, on the other hand, where competition has perhaps freer play, women typewriters receive wages equal to men typewriters. Women clerks in the Post Office perform exactly the same duties as some of the men clerks. In the Savings Bank De- 1)artment they do, unit for unit, precisely the same amount of work.  Compare the facts cited elsewhere as to women type-writers in the United States generally; and women teachers in Wyoming.  The attraction to the employer of women's labour is often less in its actual cheapness than in its ' docility.' and want of combination. ' Women strike less' says one. A similar fact is recorded as to the employment of the negro in manu/acturing industries in the ' New South' (United States).