He says, however, on another page, that "since steam-weaving became general the number of adults engaged in the mills has been progressively advancing inasmuch as very young children are not competent to take charge of steam-looms. The individuals employed at them are chiefly girls and young women, from sixteen to twenty-two." Gaskell attributed the employment of women in factories, not so much to their taking less wages, as to their being more docile and submissive than men. Out of 800 weavers employed in one establishment, and which was ... composed indiscriminately, of men, women, and children--the one whose earnings were the most considerable, was a girl of sixteen.... The mode of payment ... is payment for work done--piece-work as it is called.... Thus this active child is put upon more than a par with the most robust adult; is in fact placed in a situation decidedly advantageous compared to him.... Workmen above a certain age are difficult to manage.... Men who come late into the trade, learn much more slowly than children ... and as all are paid alike, so much per pound, or yard, it follows that these men ... are not more efficient labourers than girls and boys, and much less manageable.... Adult male labour having been found difficult to manage and not more productive--its place has, in a great measure, been supplied by children and women; and hence the outcry which has been raised with regard to infant labour, in its moral and physical bearings. This passage, involved as it is in thought and expression, is not without interest as a reflection of the mind of that time, painfully working out contemporary problems. Gaskell confuses women's labour with child labour, and it is difficult to discover from this book that he has ever given any thought to the former problem at all. The family for him is the social unit, and women are classed with children as beings for whom the family as a matter of course provides. He omits from consideration the woman thrown upon her own exertions, and the grown-up girl, who, even if living at home, must earn. It is not difficult to find other instances of similar _naïveté_; thus in the supplementary Report on Child Labour in Factories, it was gravely suggested that it may be wrong to be much concerned because women's wages are low. Nature effects her own purpose wisely and more effectually than could be done by the wisest of men. The low price of female labour makes it the most profitable as well as the most agreeable occupation for a female to superintend her own domestic establishment, and her low wages do not tempt her to abandon the care of her own children. Here again, there is apparently no perception of the case of the woman, who, by sheer economic necessity, is forced to work, whether for herself alone, or for her children also.