=Machinery and Women’s Labour.=--We have seen that in the textile trades men and women do the same kind of work, and are almost equally skilled. Where their labour is organised they can also in some districts command the same rate of payment; but it is certainly true that in most trades which have opened their doors to women, the idea on the employer’s part has been to secure a supply of cheaper labour than could be obtained if men alone were to be relied upon, and to break down the male monopoly. While this may not form a conscious and distinct motive on the part of employers, it is obvious that the intense sub-division and specialisation of manufacturing processes has made it possible as time has gone on to dispense more and more with trained and skilled labour, and to call in women and children who, with a little practice, could soon adapt themselves to the work. The more labour has become impersonal, the more the machine has produced both the muscular energy and the manual skill which were once purely human in their origin, the simpler has the labour question become from the manufacturer’s point of view. “If,” he says to himself, “my machine, on which I have laid out so much capital, and which represents the ingenuity and the experiments of long years of labour, can perform all the movements of the human body a thousand times more swiftly and surely; if my machine does the working and the thinking, it is not likely that I am going to pay the people who watch and tend it as though they did all the work.” It is in those industrial departments where the human processes are most mechanical and lend themselves after a short training to almost automatic performance, that the field of women’s labour under the factory system for the most part lies. All those who are at all conversant with the movements of industry and mechanical invention will be able to call to mind examples in point. Of course the same process is taking place where men only are employed. The skilled artizan has become less of a necessity as the skilled machine becomes more common; and, on the other hand, the unskilled labourer, the man who does the rough lifting, hewing, and carrying work is becoming more of a mechanic, as the mechanical stone-breaker, the steam navvy, the grain elevator, and other contrivances of the kind, come into use. Now, while we have these two sets of forces at work, one superseding the muscular energy, and the other the manual skill and the mental training, the bearing of these tendencies upon women’s employment cannot be overlooked. It seems only reasonable to suppose that the demand for women’s labour in connection with mechanical industry will become greater and greater as the work becomes simpler and lighter; whilst masculine labour, in so far as it stands for special aptitude and skill, is likely to find itself in less request, and may have to submit to accepting a lower standard of remuneration fixed by women.