850 REPORT— 1900. 



and that tliey worlied one and a half hour a week less. MoreoVet, the loyalty Of 

 these workers to trade unionism was shown hy a high percentage of them heing 

 memhers of their own trade and district hranches. 



Five co-partnership societies with a total number of workers of 501, and wages 

 for 1899 of 23,557^, show an average increase in wages of 17 per cent, since 

 1891 ; hut there is no means of comparing this with the wages of non-co-operative 

 workers. 



With regard to the five remaining societies little more can he said than that 

 they paid more than standard or trade union rate of wages in addition to a share 

 of the profit, and that in some cases they worked fewer hours than non-co-operative 

 concerns. 



The returns also show that in nineteen cases concerned there was an average 

 increase of 11 per cent, from 1891 to 1899, and that in fourteen cases there was 

 an average ditference in favour of co-operative as against non-co-operative wages of 

 9 per cent. 



This result in favour of co-operation is argued to be due partly to the sources 

 from which the facts are obtained, but mainly to the high relative efficiency of co- 

 partnership industries. The causes of this efficiency are held to reside in the fact 

 that co-partnership brings the workers to more points of contact with the profit- 

 making aspect of an industry than ordinary forms of production. Workers in 

 co-partnership concerns have a special incentive to obtain higher wages, because 

 they share in profits in proportion to their wages, thus absorbing as much as 

 possible of the results of the extra efficiency due to their special form of 

 enterprise. The large proportion of the worker being trade unionist is held to 

 increase in force, inducing co-partnership societies to take the lead in the matter 

 of wages. 



5. Labour Legislation for Women. By Margaret E. MacDonald, 



Certain fundamental differences hetween men and women engaged in industry 

 afl'ect the question of legal regulation. 



{a) Physical differences, e.g., young mothers need special protection from un- 

 healthy conditions. 



(6) Differences in economic position. Even those women who do not marry are 

 influenced by the fact that marriage is an event which revolutionises the economic 

 condition and the industrial outlook of the great majority of women. As the 

 result, women have a lower standard of pay and work than men. In a large pro- 

 portion of cases they only need their wages as pocket money, or at most only to 

 keep themselves, and where they are the breadwinners of the family they are 

 usually overburdened with household cares and unable to stand out for better con- 

 ditions. They are comparatively unorganised, e.g., only 116,016 women are re- 

 turned as mrmbers of trade unions, and of these li '0,470 are in the textile trades. 

 They are less ready to complain than men ; e.g., in the Post Office women only get 

 half, or less than half, as much pay as men for the same amount and quality of 

 work ; yet the Tweedmouth Commission, while devoting great attention to the 

 grievances of the men, made no recommendations with regard to women, naively 

 explaining that ' there is a general absence of complaint from them.' 



The comparatively low standard of women's work and pay has an injurious 

 efi'ect upon men's labour wherever it comes into competition with it ; e.g., the 

 introduction of light machinery is constantly made the excuse for suhstituting 

 women for men workers at lower rates. By setting a legal standard the State 

 compensates to some extent for the lack of organisation and of a high standard 

 amongst the women. 



"We have experience of lahour legislation for women in certain classes of em- 

 ployment from 1842 onwards. By comparing the conditions of workers in these 

 trades before and after regulation, and also comparing their conditions at the 

 present time in regulated and unregulated trades, we find that in regulated trades: 



