AUTHORITIES CONSULTED IN PREPARING THIS BOOK 291

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WOMAN'S LABOR AND OF THE WOMAN QUESTION 294

INDEX 305




WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS;

THEIR PAST, THEIR PRESENT, AND THEIR FUTURE.


INTRODUCTION


The one great question that to-day agitates the whole civilized world is
an economic question. It is not the production but the distribution of
wealth; in other words, the wages question,--the wages of men and women.
Nowhere do we find any suggestion that capital and the landlord do not
receive a _quid pro quo_. Instead, the whole labor world cries out that
the capitalist and the landlord are enslaving the rest of the world, and
absorbing the lion's share of the joint production.

So long as it is a question of production only, there is perfect
harmony. Both unite in agreeing that to produce as much as possible is
for the interest of each. The conflict begins with distribution. It is
no longer a war of one nation with another; it is internecine war,
destroying the foundations of our own defences, and making enemies of