A body of women-workers, equally skilled with male workers, and as strongly organized, would be able to extract the same rate of wages in any trade.

Everything depends upon the words "_as strongly organized_." It is the general industrial weakness of the condition of most women-workers, and not a sex prejudice, which prevents them from receiving the wages which men might get, if the work the women do were left for male competition alone.

An employer, as a rule, pays the lowest wages he can get the work done at.

The real question we have to meet is this.

Why can he get women who will consent to work at a lower rate than he could get men to work at?
What peculiar conditions are there affecting women which will oblige them to accept work on lower terms than men?
Well, in the first place, the wage of a man can never fall much lower than will suffice to maintain at the minimum standard of comfort both himself and the average family he has to support.