39 



other than substitution for skilled men, and finally under the most recent 

 regulations 18/- made a minimum and the rates above that made 

 more elastic. 



What is to be noticed is that it is only where organisation, either 

 of the men in the engineering trade or on the railways, or in the dyeing 

 and bleaching trade, or amongst the women as in some centres of 

 unskilled or semi-skilled work, has been strong, that the increases 

 of women's wages have been marked, and I believe that it is the fact 

 that where the men have believed that the substitution of women is 

 entirely temporary it will be found that they have been somewhat 

 indifferent to equality of rate. Wherever they have realised the 

 possibility of women remaining in a trade they have been more fully 

 alive to the importance of getting economic equality between men 

 and women. 



It may be said that while women's wages have increased so that 

 the prevailing rate of ll/- before the war may be compared to a rate 

 of near 1 now, it is a wage which is only nominally higher on account 

 of the high cost of living. This is undoubtedly an important qualifica- 

 tion, but at the same time I think it will be found that, taken all round, 

 reckoning the greater regularity of employment, the prevalence also 

 of overtime, and the number getting above the prevailing rate, it is 

 the fact that women are receiving even in real as opposed to money 

 wages a considerable increase. 



Nor is a nominal increase wholly unimportant in looking to the 

 future. Even though prices may fall, it can be made difficult to lower 

 wages which have once risen. The number of shillings per week 

 quickly gets a support of custom. 



But they are gaining that increase at considerable cost in certain 

 other ways. If they have been able to get more food, and I believe 

 up to the present that has been the case, they have also been giving 

 far more of their strength. 



This comes about in two ways. Women have been doing much 

 work which was previously held to be unhealthy or unsuitable, and 

 from which they have previously been excluded. I think the grounds 

 for these exclusions have often been slight, and the exclusion has 

 been influenced sometimes by fear of their effect on wages rather than 

 on the ground given of unhealthy or immoral or generally unsuitable 

 conditions. But it is certain that in many cases the grounds were 

 real, and that at present women are employed on many processes 

 which we should be sorry to see them continuing to work at. Anything 

 which they can by any possibility do at the moment, they are now 

 doing, with very little consideration for the after-effects. They are 

 also working under less rigid factory regulations, and constant over- 

 time, Sunday work, and night shifts will all have their effect on women's 

 strength in the future as well as in the present. Moreover, under the 

 double pressure of economic need and patriotic zeal, married women 

 with children are more than ever before taking part in industry. The 

 effects here are not on themselves alone, but the babies and children are 



