Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/680

 658 THE ECONOM1C JOURNAL For every piece of work abandoned to women several entirely new branches have sprung into existence for men, until the simple savage choice between hunting and fishing is now repre- sented by the tens of thousands of separate occupations enumerated by the Registrar-General. When, in the New England cotton mills, successive waves of foreign immigration replaced the native Americans by English, and the English by French-Canadians, the higher grade labour was, in each case, not so much squeezecl out by the lower as attracted out by the endless openings offered by the nation's rapid growth. It is equally difficult to resist, as regards our own country, the fact brought out by Mr. Giffen, that a much larger proportion of our greatly increased number of male operatives is now engaged in skilled handicrafts at good wages than was formerly the case. The the to increase the for of of life it occasions, ,s of re- being on one side, is out on the other. men and women in is, indeed, not so much a direct underselling in wages as a to secure the better paid of VVhere women are, 1oy exception, as efficient as the men workers, the usual low standard of women's wages (set, them men have Where, one eml; in expmte to their the level in what women earn because there is to cause or of of the any such by their general inefficiency) often the men, just as WOnlen Iilen it lS by wo-me!l'$ and cases are, for the women remain the men their wages kept set less by their cmnparison of rare, men to leave The advantages which secure to men nearly all the well-paid branches of labour are nmnerous. Even if the ' ' ' 11y qui tion is one 111 IS riomina not re red, as is 'the ease with compositors, it is to be strong, either to lift the 'formes,' or to work long where the women workers have learnt their trade an advantage seldom permitted to the m--their of experience makes thein of less use than men in an emergency: less resourceful, for istancc, on a ?gtzed by