CHAPTER II 
 
 
     DESCRIPTION OF THE MILLINERY 
       TRADE AND OF ITS PROCESSES 
 
                          SECTION I 
 
               CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TRADE 
 
  A parasitic trade, as defined by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, 
is one in which the employers "are able to obtain the use of 
labor not included in their wage-bill." " Two classes of para-

sitic trades are distinguished-one in which the workers are 
partially maintained from the incomes of persons unconnected 
with the industry, and the other in which the employers are en- 
abled to take such advantage of their workers as to pay wages 
insufficient to maintain them in average health, or to force them 
to work for very long hours or under dangerous and unsanitary 
conditions. 
  The first form of parasitism is less vicious than the second 
and is characteristic of much labor done by women and chil- 
dren. It is illustrated by the labor of those women who are not 
paid sufficient wages to maintain them in efficiency unless these 
wages are supplemented by aid from their families or from other 
sources. "The employer of partially subsidized woman or child 
labor gains,... actually a double advantage over the self- 
supporting trades; he gets without cost to himself the extra 
energy due to the extra food, and he abstracts--possibly from 
the workers at a rival process, or in a competing industry- 
some of the income which might have increased the energy put 
into the other trade." 2 The second and more vicious form of 
  ' Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, Induatrial Democracy. (London, 1897. 2 
vols.) Vol. II, p. 749. 
  2 Ibid., p. 750.