In three, then, out of four of the disadvantages which bear more heavily on women in industry than on men, the reformer, with all his excellent intentions, is unable to be very helpful; while in his zeal to safeguard the race, whose future appears to him to depend entirely on the health of the female sex, he has multiplied their disadvantages in the manner I have already described, without, however, having made any noteworthy advance toward the accomplishment of his purpose. Now, had he chosen to inquire into the causes of the artificial disabilities by which women workers are handicapped, he might have discovered that these and the industrial hazards which cause him such grave concern may be traced to the same fundamental source; and that the just and only effective way of removing these disabilities and hazards is to eradicate the source. Women in industry are the victims of traditional prejudices: I have shown what those prejudices are--the idea that woman’s place is the home, that women workers have no dependents, that they work for pin-money and therefore do not need a living wage, that upon them alone depends the future health of the race. But as I remarked at the beginning of this chapter, these prejudices could not be turned to the disadvantage of the woman worker if it were not for the overcrowding of the labour-market. So long as there are more people looking for work than there are jobs to be had, the advantage in fixing terms and conditions of labour is on the side of the employer. If men are obliged by their need to put up with underpayment, women will be forced to accept an even worse rate; if the tenure of men is uncertain, that of women will be even more so. If the conditions of industry are hazardous, the alternative of starvation will force the workers to risk injury or death unless the employer be required by law to maintain the proper safeguards. Suppose, however, that labour were scarce, that for every worker looking for employment there were a dozen employers looking for workers. Under such circumstances, the employer would be glad enough to hire the worker who could fill his particular requirements, without regard to sex, as employers did during the war when labour was scarce; and he would pay the worker a wage determined not by theory or prejudice, but by the amount of competition for the worker’s services. If the employment he offered were hazardous, he would be obliged to maintain proper safeguards in order to retain his employees, and in addition would probably be forced to pay them a higher wage than they could earn in some safer employment. If he did not do these things, his workers would simply leave him for more satisfactory positions. Nor would he be able to overwork his employees, for if he attempted to do so, some rival employer would outbid him for their services by offering better hours and easier conditions of labour. Thus the peculiar disabilities