Some of these statements may be exaggerations, but there can be no doubt that, throughout the entire history of women in industry in this country, their wages, in thousands of cases, have been inadequate for decent support. Their wages, too, have been far below those of men. In 1833[11] and again in 1868[12] it was stated that women’s wages were, on an average, only about one fourth what men received. Moreover, it has been authoritatively stated that during the civil war period the wages of women increased less than those of men, while their cost of living rose out of all proportion.[13] It is probable that, in general, women’s wages have been less flexible, more subject to the influence of custom and less to the influence of demand and supply, than men’s. Unfortunately custom in this case has furnished a standard of exploitation and not of protection. It is probable, too, that working women have suffered more than working men from periods of panic and depression, for such periods, like war, have thrown upon their own resources thousands of women who in normal times are supported by their male relatives. In the textile industries wages, during the first half of the nineteenth century at least, were higher than in the clothing trades. The Lowell girls during the so-called “golden era” earned from $1.50 to $2 per week in addition to their board of $1.25. Their day’s work, however, varied from 11 hours and 24 minutes in December and January to 13 hours and 31 minutes in April, and averaged 12 hours and 13 minutes, or 73¹⁄₂ hours per week.[14] It must be remembered, moreover, that there were in this country, during these early years, two distinct systems of factory labor, the factory boarding-house system of Lowell, Dover, N. H., and other places in that neighborhood, and the family system which prevailed in Fall River, throughout Rhode Island, and generally in New York, New Jersey and Maryland. In the factories operated on the family system of labor wages were distinctly lower than in those of the Lowell type, and were frequently paid in store orders. In these factories, too, hours were longer, being in summer 13³⁄₄ per day and averaging throughout the year 75¹⁄₂ per week[15]. Girls, moreover, went to work at an earlier age. Child laborers whom the Lowell manufacturers could not afford to keep in their factory boarding houses were employed in large numbers.