174
CONCLUSION.
harm than good? As to the manner and degree in which the labour-market might be affected by such a readjustment as is proposed, it is difficult to predict anything with certainty. It is impossible to tell beforehand how many women would take to what is called (by a very conspicuous petitio principii) men's work, and how large a portion of their lives they would devote to it. If women, already destined to work for their bread, chose to earn it in some hitherto unaccustomed way, it is obvious that in the exact measure in which their entrance into a new profession reduced the rate of wages in that particular calling, it would tend to raise it in some other which they would have otherwise pur-
