It is towards this co-operation between the workers of both sexes, 

 this recognition of equality of right for both, with due allowance for 

 the needful regulation of their energies in the interest of the whole 

 community, in equality of opportunity (to use the old phrase), that I 

 believe industrial salvation must be found. The old custom of woman 

 acting as the useful drudge and tool of the employer, always at hand 

 to cheapen the wage bill, always docile with the docility of the economic 

 slave and the meekness of the permanently underfed, has reacted 

 with deadening effect upon the male worker's standard of living. 

 In the changing conditions of a world at war there has arisen a possibility 

 of removing that menace of industrial oppression, and with the coming 

 of peace it should be one of the first objects of the Trade Union world 

 to set on a firm basis a new partnership between men and women 

 workers, so strongly knit by the common interests of both that no 

 disturbing element can cause its dissolution. 



The present position of women and the changes wrought by the 

 war have been very fully and carefully dealt with in the Report of the 

 Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women's Organisations, pub- 

 lished with its endorsement by the Joint Committee on Labour After the 

 War.* This report sets forth the present and then deals with proposals 

 for the future, and I want just to summarise a few of the results reached. 

 The Report shows clearly the extent to which wages for women 

 have risen and the result of the facts put forward is this : Wages 

 have risen to some extent in all trades in which women are employed ; 

 but in those in which organisation is weak, the rise has been for the 

 most part of a couple of shillings a week by way of war bonus, or by 

 a slight increase of the rate per hour, and only in the case of learners 

 has been strongly marked ; where there are Trade Boards the rise 

 has been gradually gained after much pushing by the Trade Unions, 

 and the recorded increases are as follows : 



" The Sugar Confectionery Trade Board decided on a minimum 

 rate of 3d. per hour prior to the war (though this rate was not 

 ' fixed ' until after the war). A rate of 3Jd. has now been 

 provisionally fixed. In the tailoring and shirtmaking trades the 

 pre-war minimum was 3|d., and proposals to fix a minimum rate 

 of 4d. have just been issued. It will be seen that to maintain these 

 minima at their pre-war value a rate of 4Jd. in the first case and 

 of 5d. in the other should have been made." 



But where women have replaced men in the well organised trades, 

 e.g., engineering, wood work, etc., the wages of women have been 

 brought by Trade Union action to a far higher level. It is unnecessary 

 for me here to go into the details of increases, the extent to which women 

 replacing men have gained the same wages, whether piece or time, 

 the extent to which by action under the Munitions of War Acts a rate 

 of 1 a week was first fixed as a maximum and minimum both in work 



* " The Position of Women after the War," price 2d. To be obtained from 

 The Labour Party, 1, Victoria Street, S.W. 



