On the other hand, we are brought abruptly to the question of the standard of skill prevail ing in industries which are large employers of women. In industry, skill is but another name for value contributed to manufacture or com mercial progress by the individual. This is a question which cannot be even intelligently dis cussed from the standpoint of the worker alone. It is a problem which must be ap proached also from the side of industrial ad ministration.
In any case it is certain that the factor of efficiency crops up continually in the attempt to secure a living wage, though some of the mini were women 16 years of age and over. However, these women received not 664 per cent of the total amount of money paid in wages in 1905, but approximately 61.4 per cent. Of the total number of wage-earners engaged in the manu facture of women's clothing, adult women con stituted in 1905 about 62.4 per cent, but they received 48.2 .per cent of the amount paid in wages. In men's clothing, where they consti tuted 59.7 per cent of the total number of wage earners they received 43.5 per cent of the yearly wage expenditure. The accompanying arrange ment of black and white parallel bars shows that this discrepancy, between the proportion of adult women and the proportion of the total wages they receive, prevails throughout the industries which are such conspicuous employers of women.
Whatever the cause of these discrepancies they should not be charged to the influence of children's wages, because they have been ex cluded from the comparison.
Sharp emphasis should be placed upon the fact that these discrepancies do not in them selves signify any inequitable division of the money paid in wages. One hundred dollars might be paid to five men for a given piece of work. The quality or grade of work done by two of the five might fairly call for a payment of $50 of the $100 to these two. In other words, it might be an entirely equitable arrangement for two-fifths of the workers to receive one half of the wage money. A charge of unfair ness in division of wage investment between men and women could be lodged only in case such division was not governed by the relative quality or grade of service rendered.
The significance of the paralleled bars lies in the alternative which they present, viz.: That
women are either not rendering as high a qual ity of service or performing as high a grade of work as men in the same industries, or they are not possessed of equal bargaining power and are not, therefore, commanding equal pay for equal work This alternative becomes a subject for serious thought in view of the fact that these industries not only employ the majority of women in manufacture, but they are the indus tries with whose fundamental processes women are by training and tradition acquainted. They are the industries which, with one exception, were once the chief domain of women, or were shared equally with men, and in which their skill was sufficient to be regarded as an asset by the pioneers in building up manufacturing industries in this country.
The encroachments which successive me chanical inventions have made upon the domain of skilled labor should not bear more heavily upon skilled women than upon skilled men. On the contrary if men of skill cost more than women of equal skill the factor of economy would tend to reduce the proportion of skilled male labor whenever superior physical strength is not required by the mechanical inventions.
There are ample data to show the extent to which men and women are performing the same occupations, but that does not measure the ex tent to which an equal degree of skill is re quired. Men and women may be performing the same occupations, but may be working on material of entirely differentquality—one be ing much more difficult to handle and., therefore, requiring more skill and judgment. On the other hand, there are industries where the di vision of work is very marked, but this division does not mean necessarily that the sum of skill, speed and endurance required by one group of occupations is not equal to that re quired by another. For example, men and women do not perform the same occupations in pea canning, but it is a question whether the keen observation, the long concentration and quick deee.ion demanded of a woman looking ior pin point leaks in filled cans which pass her at the rate of 50 to 80 a minute do not all fur as much