Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/29

 positions in their departments. The average wage of the man-worker is about twenty-four shillings per week; that of the woman-worker, seven shillings per week.

The reasons for this offered by the average orthodox political economist will receive attention later. But no Socialist State worthy of the name could justify a relaxation of its principle of equality on account of sex.

The inadequacy of a woman’s earnings is frequently the cause of two other unfortunate conditions of her life. The struggle for existence is sometimes so hard, so lonely, so bitter, that she is constrained to sell herself into a still more terrible bondage. For the sake of bread and shelter she marries, and becomes the unpaid cook and housekeeper of a husband and the mother of his children. Or, hopeless of attracting to herself a man who is willing to keep her honourably in the married state, she sells herself without the consent and blessing of society, choosing a life of luxurious or comfortable vice before the soul-starving, heart-breaking drudgery of a work-girl’s life.

But even worse in some ways than the