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black labour, industrially and politically backward, drags the white 

 worker down to a lower level, so the drudgery of female labour in the 

 past has dragged down male labour with it. And it has done worse 

 than that : it has lowered the whole standard of life for the community, 

 lowered the vitality of the mothers of the race, made thousands of 

 women the prey of vicious living, kept the worst forms of slavery alive 

 amongst us. With the passing of this class of industrial drudge into 

 the better paid ranks of labour, and with the free admission of women 

 into every trade for which they can fit themselves, with their attain- 

 ment of an equal standard of pay with that of the male worker, and 

 with the growing influence of their greater delicacy of mind and spirit 

 on the industry of the world, there gleams before us a better hope 

 than the past has shown of -the development of a nation strong in 

 spirit and body, in generosity and self-control, a nation which has 

 grown in stature because it has been nourished on freedom. 



In speaking on her paper, Dr. Marion Phillips said that her first 

 point was the present condition of women's labour and the effect 

 which the war had had upon industry. The good effects were infinitely 

 more important than the bad ones ; these were, the improvement in 

 the standard of wages and the wide opening of industrial paths 

 hitherto closed to women. In the past they had been restricted to the 

 lower paid branches of unskilled and semi-skilled employment, to a 

 certain number of highly skilled but badly paid employments, and 

 to quite skilled and fairly well paid work in the textile industries ; 

 but in the last only had they been able to sell their labour on the same 

 footing as men ; still even there the best paid work was men's and 

 not women's. During the war women's work had improved all round. 

 It was not only that they had been admitted into every trade in 

 which their strength and skill were sufficient, but the wages in the 

 trades in which they had been accustomed to work had improved. 



As to the future, the big question was what attitude the men, especi- 

 ally the men's trade unions, were going to take towards women when 

 the war was over ? The trade unions had the promise of full reinstate- 

 ment of rules : under the old rules women were excluded in many cases, 

 and the community were bound to see full restoration carried out 

 if the trade unions demanded it. The trade unions should not give 

 away one scrap of their rights until they were certain what they would 

 get instead. But they ought to consider whether they would have 

 the old rules reinstated entirely, or whether they could not get something 

 better. In dealing with women they had to face realities, and consider 

 the women's, the employer's, and the trade union's positions. They 

 could not imagine that women would readily face a situation whereby 

 they were totally excluded from a large number of trades in which 

 they were fully capable of doing the work. In the margin between 

 pre-war and war-time wages there was a very big scope for bargaining 

 with women on the part of the employer, and he would not hesitate 



