112 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



premiss, the existence of perfect competition, were true. But com- 

 petition is not perfect while it is clogged by combinations both of em- 

 ployers and employed. An employer of many workmen is in himself 

 virtually a combination, as Dr. Marshall has pointed out. Men being 

 generally better organised than women have exercised an unsymmetrical 

 pressure on the employer to their own advantage. For instance, 

 ' London printing-houses dare not employ women at certain machines 

 unless they are prepared to risk a long and costly fight ' (Mrs. Fawcett, 

 Econoviic Journal, 1904, p. 297, cp. 1892, p. 176). I have been told 

 of similar proceedings elsewhere. 



8. The concession of the employer to male pressure is facilitated 

 by the circumstances that, though the use of male labour beyond a 

 certain limit is to his disadvantage, yet it is probably not very much to 

 his disadvantage. This circumstance is deducible from a proposition 

 pertaining to the theory of maxima, of which I hereafter shall make 

 much use. It may be stated thus : It y is a quantity which depends 

 upon— increases and decreases with — another quantity, x, the change 

 of y consequent on an assigned change of x is likely to be particularly 

 small in the neighbourhood of a value of x for which y is a maximum. 

 For example, in ascending a dumpling-shaped hill from a point of the 

 plane on which the hill stands, the fii'st hundred yards of advance in 

 the direction of the summit might correspond to an elevation of fifty 

 yards above the plane. But as the summit is approached the same 

 change of length measured along the surface may be attended with a 

 change of height that is a hundred times, or even a thousand times, 

 less than what it was at a distance from the summit. The principle is 

 illustrated by the well-known proposition that a small tax on a mono- 

 polised article forms a very small inducement to the monopolist to raise 

 the price and reduce the output of the taxed article. Thus, in an 

 example given by Cournot (to illustrate another property of monopoly) 

 a (specific) tax amounting to 10 per cent, of the price before the tax 

 will afford a motive to thc' monopolist to raise the price, but a very weak 

 motive, since by making the change he will benefit himself only to the 

 extent of I per cent, of his profits. A tax of 1 per cent, would afford 

 a very much weaker motive. By raising the price to the figure which 

 (after the imposition of the tax) yields maximum profit he stands to 

 gain (to save upo-n the loss caused by the tax) about a twenty-thousandth 

 part of his original profits ! 



9. The pressure of male trade unions appears to be largely respon- 

 sible for that crowding of women into a comparatively few occupations, 

 which is universally recognised as a main factor in the depression of 

 their wages. Such crowding is primd facie a flagrant violation of that 

 free competition which results in maximum production and in distribution 

 of the kind here defined as equal pay for equal work. The exclusion 

 of women from the better-paid branches of industry may be effected less 

 openly than by a direct veto, such as the ' No female allowed ' in the 

 rules of an archaic society f Industrial Democracy '). Withholding 

 facilities for the acquisition of skilled trades comes to much the same 

 as direct prohibition. A striking instance is mentioned by Mrs. Fawcett 

 with refei'ence to the allegation that women are unable to ' tune ' or 



