in which the poorer workers live, crush out the human energy required for effective protest and combination.  Moreover, the power to strike, and, if necessary, to hold out for a long period of time, is an essential to a strong Trade Union.  Almost all the advantages won by women’s Unions have been won by their proved capacity for holding out against employers.  This is largely a matter of funds.  It is almost impossible for the poorest classes of women-workers to raise by their own abstinence a fund which shall make their Union formidable.  Their efforts where successful have been always backed by outside assistance.  Even were there a close federation of Unions of various women’s trades—­ a distant dream at present—­the larger proportion of recipients of low wages among women-workers as compared with men would render their success more difficult.

Sec. 9.  Legislative Restriction and the force of Public Opinion.—­If Trade Unionism among women is destined to achieve any large result, it would appear that it will require to be supported by two extra-Union forces.

The first of these forces must consist of legislative restriction of “out-work.”  If all employers of women were compelled to provide factories, and to employ them there in doing that work at present done at home or in small and practically unapproachable workshops, several wholesome results would follow.  The conditions of effective combination would be secured, public opinion would assist in securing decent wages, factory inspection would provide shorter hours and fair sanitary conditions, and last, not least, women whose home duties precluded them from full factory work would be taken out of the field of competition.  Whether it would be possible to successfully crush the whole system of industrial “out-work” may be open to question; but it is certain that so long as, and in proportion as “out-work” is permitted, attempts on the part of women to raise their industrial condition by combination will be weak and unsuccessful.  So long as “out-work” continues to be largely practised and unrestrained, competition sharpened by the action of married women and other irregular and “bounty-fed” labour, must keep down the price of women’s work, not only for the out-workers themselves, but also for the factory workers.  Nor is it possible to see how the system of “out-work” can be repressed or even restricted by any other force than legislation.  So long as home-workers are “free” to offer, and employers to accept, this labour, it will continue to exist so long as it pays; it will pay so long as it is offered cheap enough; and it will be offered cheaply so long as the supply continues to bear the present relation to the demand.