We can only say in conclusion that, in the first place, women do not take that strenuous interest in their labour conditions which is essential to successful organisation. In the second place, it appears that, except at occasional times of dispute, their work is so well marked off from that of men, that the men's Unions in these trades are coming more and more to the conclusion that it does not pay them to organise the women. In the third place, we have been surprised to find that the great majority of employers and of their women employées assume that wages are fixed and that any effort to alter them by organisation will be doomed to failure.[32] Our investigators have been given instance after instance of both increase and reduction in wages, but the general tenor of conversation is a pessimist and listless view that whatever _is_, is fixed. [Footnote 32: _Cf._ p. 90.] CHAPTER IV. _MEN AND WOMEN AS WORKERS._ [Sidenote: Do women displace men?] One of the most important questions relating to women as workers is the exact relationship between their work and that of men, _i.e._, how far they are rivals in competition and how far they are helpers in co-operation. In some of these trades, such as that of the lithographic artists, this question has never arisen, because women have rarely entered the trade. Only five instances of women working as lithographic artists are known to the head of St. Bride's Institute. But that men and women have been rivals from time to time is placed beyond doubt, although it must always be remembered that the same work nominally is not always the same work actually.[33] [Footnote 33: Men feeders, for instance, carry formes and do little things about the machine which women do not do. In one instance it was reported that a firm with a London and a country house, employed women in the latter to do binding done by men in the former. On enquiry it was found that the heavy work was done in London and the light work in the country. An interesting case in point is reported by a Scottish investigator. "Stated that in another workshop a man had been displaced at a paper-ruling machine and two girls taken on instead. I took special note of this case when visiting the workshop in question later. There were two girls employed at the machine, but they appeared to be working along with the manager of that department, who was supervising it." But there is work, such as the minding of platen machines which men do in London but which women do in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.]