Excerpt from The Economic Position of Women Working women are not only untrained and inefficient, but industrially ignorant and lacking in standards. Hence they put up with whatever conditions the employer imposes. They do not make a fuss, and therefore they get treatment to which no man would submit. Moreover such a large proportion of them are mere pin - money girls that there is no minimum standard of wages, such as is furnished for men by the necessary cost of maintaining a family. Women's wages are perhaps in a majority of cases simply supplementary earnings, and the wages of all women, self-dependent or not, tend to be fixed on the assumption that they will live parasitically on their relatives. As a result of this lack Of standards, the whole subject Of the pay and conditions of women's work is a veritable Chaos. Standardization has been well worked out in many men's trades, and technical progress has followed. In women's occupations it is often easier for an unprogressive employer to throw the burden of his backwardness on docile women employes by paying low wages than it is to keep up With the march of im provement in machinery and methods. SO much for the human element in this problem. On the industrial side we find, as is more than once pointed out in these papers, that industry as now organized takes no cognizance of the special needs Of the worker. Competitive cheapness must be Obtained at all costs. If the worker does not insist on his rights, he gets small part Of the benefits of progress. Hence changes in machinery and organization bring little advantage to women workers; such changes, in fact, are frequently carried through with distinct loss to them, however great the gain to society in general. But more than this, our present industry is made for men, and it wants only standard workers, working standard hours at standard speed. The work ers must conform to this inelastic system or go without a job. Most women are physically incapable, without permanent injury to themselves and the race, of enduring for ten hours a day the strain to which modern industry subjects them; yet they are trying to conform to its mechanical routine instead Of insisting that it be changed to meet their needs. SO long as this change is not made, so long will women's industrial work continue a social menace. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.