Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/135

 special needs and circumstances may easily be overlooked. Take, for example, the question of married women's labour in factories. All who know anything of modern industry are ready to admit that factory work is not suitable for young mothers, actual or expectant. But should a law be passed forbidding factory work to married women without providing an easy way of compelling their husbands to maintain them adequately, it is only too possible that their burden may be increased, not lightened, and that they may leave the factory work, often after all comparatively well paid, to undertake at lower wages casual domestic employment which involves such heavy tasks as carrying coals or scrubbing floors, or that they may be forced to turn to the far more demoralising sweated home-work. It is probable also that before many years are past the country may be discussing in earnest the institution of a minimum wage. Now to regulate men's wages alone would be impossible. But are men to say what is the minimum wage for a woman? Should they undertake to do so, a two-fold danger awaits us. The employer, in his desire for cheap and docile labour, may insist on a woman's minimum too low to yield a true living wage, while Parliament and the constituencies would acquiesce, since women can bring no immediate political influence to bear. On the other hand, many think it possible that men trade-unionists might in certain trades cause the minimum to be fixed so high that very few women would be employed at the legal wage; they might, in fact, use the minimum as a means of shutting the trade to