756 REPORT— 1901. 



It is tliouglit that we miglit find matei'ial compensation, and at the same time 

 meet the hostile tariff's of foreign countries and increase the strength of the 

 Empire, by entering- into a Customs Union with our Colonies on the basis of free 

 trade within the Union and protection against the foreigner. Or, failing that, we 

 might adopt a system of bounties on trade with the Colonies. Bat («) we rely on 

 the foreigner for food and raw materials ; and of the total external trade (import 

 and export) of the United Kingdom, roughly 75 per cent, is, and has been for 

 half-a-century, a trade with foreign countries, (b) The diversity of interests, too, 

 among the Colonies themselves renders it hopeless to expect that any scheme 

 could be formulated which would fail to create discord, (c) Any such scheme — 

 whether of differential duties or bounties — would involve a serious departure from 

 our free-trade policy the great drtue of which is its practical simpliiiity. 



Like that free-trade policy, the existing connection between Great Britain and 

 her Colonies may be imperfect in theory, but, like it, it lias proved workable in 

 practice. Under the one we have enjoyed half-a-ceutury of iinrivalled prosperity ; 

 and, as the outcome of the working of the other for a similar period, we have 

 amongst the Colonies a sense of unity and an intensity of loyalty to the mother 

 country unparalleled in history. This, too, has been most unqualified where the 

 hand of ' Downing Street ' has been least conspicuous. The policy of ' tightening 

 the ties ' is really retrograde and unhistorical. It represents the extreme of 

 reaction from the view which prevailed generally from about 1840 to 1880 — that 

 the independence of the Colonies would be the natural outcome of the concession 

 of self-government. It involves a return to that system of monopoly and inter- 

 ference by the central government which in the eighteenth century lost us the 

 American Colonies. In our colonial policy the most pressing need at present is 

 concentration and economy, based on recognition of the truth that trade follows 

 the flag in no other sense than that it follows the establishment of peace, security, 

 and good government. 



6. The Present Fositioii of Woman as a Worker. By Miss M. H. Irwin. 



Owing to the rapidly increasing number of women who are year by year 

 entering both the professional and the industrial labour market, the nature and 

 conditions of women's employment form a subject of first importance to the 

 economic student, not only in relation to the women themselves, but also in 

 respect to their men fellow-workers, and the general development of our national 

 industries. Many industrial complications have arisen, and threaten still to arise, 

 from the presence and the extended application of women's labour. 



There is a want of adequate and authoritative information regarding women's 

 work. The subject has suffered in the past from being regarded as a matter for 

 philanthropic sentiment rather than economic research. A change of attitude is 

 being brought about through various causes. 



The need for systematic inquiry and exact knowledge as providing a basis for 

 both philanthropic effort and legislative reform. Legislative action is specially 

 desirable for the regulation of the conditions of women's work, owing to the 

 difficulty of forming any organisation among them sufficiently strong to protect 

 them from possible evils in the way of excessive hours and other unhealthy 

 conditions of work. 



Results of investigations undertaken by the Scottish Council for Women's 

 Trades and other bodies into various employments followed by women in which 

 there was either no legislative restrictions, or these were defective. Laundries, 

 shops. Investigations into home work. The economic results of home work. 

 The sanitary side of the question. Proposed regulations. The dressmaking trade. 

 The tailoring trade. A complex and highly graded industry of special value as a 

 subject for economic investigations. 



Among the suggestive ]3oints ofiered for study by the tailoring trade are the 

 competition between the men and women workers. The results of the introduction 

 of the cheap and unprotected labour of women, systems of wages rating, displace- 

 ment of the skilled hand labour of men by the machine-tended and comparatively 



