Note 99 — Chapter V · FOREIGN COMPETITION

A very strange instance of divergence of wages in one factory came under my notice some 15 or 16 years ago. This also was in the shirt trade. A strike arose in a large factory, and when a register came to be taken of the wages received by the various women it was discovered—greatly to the surprise of the workers concerned—that there was a difference of almost 50 per cent. between the rates paid in one workroom and those paid in another, both being under the same roof, and the work being so absolutely identical that the two groups were frequently engaged upon garments cut by the same stroke from the same roll of material. The one room was superintended by a forewoman who resisted any attempt to lower wages, and who, being a valuable official, was able to impose her wishes; in the other the forewoman meekly accepted any reductions proposed by the firm. I need hardly add that the young women who worked in the former room were markedly superior in appearance, in manners and in intelligence to those belonging to the latter. Those who worked under the good forewoman were, indeed, some of the best looking and most agreeable girls with whom I have ever been brought into contact.