1893 - State Library Information Center

82 STATISTICS OF LABOR AND INDUSTRIES.and the simplification of processes of manufacture. Meanwhileit has lessened the field of what was formerly regarded as exclusivelywoman's work. They do not Bpin ; they do not maketheir husband shirts or stockings; they do not make butter andcheese. These articles are now factory products, and the familybuys them cheaper than they could be made at home. Economyof human labor forbids that women should attempt to competewith machinery by practices that were necessary in our grandmother'sdays. The daughter of the house no longer findsremunerative employment in her home; the factory offersinducements in better pay.This is not so much a matter of choice as of necessity, growingout of the displacement of hand-work by machinery, the domesticfor the factory system. Modern civilization Ja tending in thedirection of enlarged opportunities and of a greater independenceof woman. She is now, in a great variety of industries and professions,an active competitor with men ; in some lines of manufacturethe female already outnumber the male workers. Whatthe ultimate effect is to be is yet a query. A study of the presentsituation is favorable to the conclusion that women have been thegainers by the change. That the factory system is superior tothe conditions which it superseded is apparent, and with wholesomefactory laws to restrict the hours of labor and to induceproper sanitary regulations of establishment where they are employed,it is believed that the opposition 'and prejudice whichmanifested itself in the beginning will entirely disappear. Theadverse side of the future outlook is the fact that, in the fields oflabor which women have entered, the tendency is towards loweringthe rateB of wages of men. Yet, recognizing that the increaseof the products of human labor ought to result in a benefitto all and lighten the whole burden of toil requisite for our support,it would seem that the remedy lies in the equalization ofthe compensation of both sexes for like work. That this mustbe the outcome of our industrial evolution can hardly be questioned.Nor can there be any doubt, if our social and industrialprogression is to advance in like degree, that the equalization ofwages must be in the direction of an increase of women's compensation.