Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/95

 work. And frequently the wage paid is far less than they require to supply themselves with the barest necessaries of life.

It is assumed that women and girls are merely working for pocket-money, that the girls live at home with relations who are only too pleased to help them out. It is asserted that, owing to physical weakness, girls are not able to do as much work as men in a given time; nor of the same quality. Neither of these assumptions is sound. Most working-girls have to keep themselves, and sometimes another. Nor is the latter statement that the work of women is weaker than that of men established in fact. On the whole their work is better done, for they are much more conscientious.

At any rate they have a right to a living wage, and are beginning to demand it, and that it shall be the same as that paid to their male companions in the same work.

Socialism will not differentiate between its men and women in the matter of pay. It is to the final and complete abolition of the entire wage-system that the Socialist looks; but in the intermediate stages of Collectivist development equal pay for equal