But there is an exceptional circumstance in their case. It is that the women are in the same strong Trade Union with the men, and under the same obligations to the Union, and that any attempt to reduce the wages of the one sex would be resisted with the whole strength of both. But what if this Union were to break down? It is as certain as anything based on experience can be that in a few weeks, or even days, it would be possible for the employers to reduce the wages of the women-workers; that, rather than lose their work, women would consent to the reduction; that, as they accepted lower wages, men would drop off to other industries, and would cease to compete for the same work; and that, in a comparatively short time, power-loom weaving would be left, like its sister cotton-spinning, to women-workers exclusively, and wages fall to the general level of women's wage. For what we are apt to forget is the constant inducement before the employer to reduce women's wages. There are two ways in which a manufacturer can add to his profits. One is by getting up his prices, the other by reducing his costs. In the present state of competition we know what the chance of getting up prices is, unless there is some element of monopoly in the case, and even then it generally requires a combination or syndicate of makers. But the employer is always looking out for ways of reducing cost. Theoretically, the most obvious way of all is by reducing wages. In men's trades, where reductions of wage are jealously watched, employers think twice, however, before they try that particular reduction of cost. In many factories, again, women's wages are purely customary, and employers would not think of touching them. But in the factories where wages are customary and almost fixed, the wages are also _low_. If the customary wages in cotton-spinning were 16s. a week instead of 10s., I venture to think that employers, in times of keen competition, would be inclined to try a reduction. I mean that, if the customary level of women's wages is 10s., the reason why it does not go lower is chiefly because it cannot. And here, I think, we are at the root of the matter. In looking over the field of factory industries, in order to arrive at an average of women's wages, it has struck me that the variations from the average of 10s. a week are comparatively small. This is not an average made up from widely different wage-bills, and from widely varying individual wages, but from pay sheets that show small amounts of variation on one side or other. This definiteness of average wage seems to me most explicable on the supposition that women's wages are very near the only quite definite level that political economy has ever pointed out, the level of subsistence.