=Basis of Men’s and Women’s Wages.=--But another condition which faces one at every turn of the labour market, goes so far to differentiate the work of men and women, that it may seem to make all the levelling influences which we have just considered of no account. In the case of men wages are based upon the cost of living. They approximate to a man’s standard of existence and that of his family for the time being. With the woman worker, on the other hand, though there are exceptions, the rule is that her wages are of a supplementary character. If she can add something to the nett weekly takings of the family, that is the chief point. The daughter, who is apprenticed to the dressmaker or milliner, or who begins life as a half-timer in the mills, is not working for her living in the same way as the man who has to provide himself with an independence; and it is obvious that this factor, modified as it is by all the variations of the standard of family living in different parts of the country, must be at the bottom of much that is confusing, arbitrary, and inexplicable in the women’s labour movement. For instance, cases are constantly to be found of a different scale of payment for men and women for the same work. Thus, in the French-polishing, printing, and many other trades, women are paid on a lower scale at piece-work than men. We find that the average value of a woman’s work is 9_s._ or 10_s._ a week, while that of a man is two or three times as high. It is not that she does half or one-third as much work, or that it is to that extent inferior in quality to men’s work: the reason, I think, must in very many cases be looked for from the domestic side. A woman considers what it will be worth while to add to the family revenue, rather than what her work is really worth. This fact more than anything else accounts for the immense difficulties of introducing order and humanity into the field of woman’s labour; for, obviously, if the woman worker is to acquire any form of economic independence she must be able to earn such a rate of wages as will enable her to maintain a decent standard of subsistence. But this is rendered impossible so long as the effective remuneration of women’s work is decided by conditions other than those which properly attach to the work. With some girls working for pocket-money, others literally exploited by their parents, and regarded as a mere means of bringing grist to the mill; others again working to lay by something to get married on, and a further great section of wives toiling to add something to their husbands’ wages; it is only too clear that the economic independence of women, which the advocates of _laisser faire_ in women’s labour hope to bring about, is very, very far from being accomplished.