LABOR TRADITIONS UPSET All kinds of economic theories and all varieties of economic experiences have been overturned by the abnormal industrialism of the war. The world really passed into a _terra incognita_. Even the firmest foundations of trade unionism have been shaken. There was no more firmly established fact before the war than the inability of women to secure a level of wages equal to that of the male wage earner. Such theories have passed to the limbo of forgotten things. Prejudice and tradition have given away before the actual test of facts. Women have taken the place of men called away to war service in practically all the fields of industrial activity. Apart from theory, biological and otherwise, it is now seen that the old exclusion of women from skilled industry was largely the result of trade union regulation. But the woman war-worker was found in fields untouched by trade unionism. There was the woman bank clerk as well as the woman engineer. There was much discussion, mostly pessimistic, as to what would happen if the woman labor supply should permanently take the place of man labor after the war was over. The best solution was thought to be the placing of the woman worker under a régime of trade unionism. How far such prognostications went is illustrated in the following quotation from Miss Mary Stocks in the London _Athenaeum_. "It has been presupposed that the war will end decisively before the armies engaged are reduced to inappreciable numbers of able-bodied men. It has been presupposed that the return of peace will find British industry based upon the old system of private ownership of capital and haphazard production in response to the effective demand of individuals. It presupposes no change of heart on the part of employers, government or trade unions. But, in view of possible, if not probable dangers, the most urgent stress should be laid upon what is an undoubted palliative, if not a fundamental cure for such prospective economic ills; that is, the strenuous promotion and public encouragement of trade unionism among women. What women, by reason of underlying social and economic causes, are not able to do for themselves, the moral and financial support of the public must do for them, and such support should be regarded not merely as an interference in the old struggle between capital and labor, but as an attempt to ward off a national danger.