LADIES’ PAGE.
"EQUAL pay for equal work" is one of the standing mottoes on the "feminist" banner, and the concrete demand is now being urged by the must compact and distinctive body of women workers that we have—namely, the women public elementary school teachers. The men teachers do not want the women to have it; in their trades union, of which both sexes may be members, the men teachers have proved strong enough to veto the demand of the women for equal pay, so far as their opinion counts. It is not easy to see why they should thus object. The wiser trades unionists generally perceive that a great check on the employment of women is to demand that they shall always receive equal pay with men. The passing of the Education Bill in the House of Commons was then made an opportunity to urge this principle upon Parliament, but it was there rejected. No valid argument was offered against the proposition; but the Minister in charge of the Bill urged that, before ordering local education authorities to give what would amount to a considerable rise in the salaries of women, the Government itself must show the way—the women Civil Servants must first be given equal pay for equal work with the men. Finally, the London County Council was approached by the women teachers in its employ with a large petition for a rise in the women's salaries so as to make them equal with those of male teachers. The County Council have refused the request, on a Committee's report that the women assistant teachers in the London schools get an average salary of just under £200. with provision for an annuity at a certain age of £128. Moreover, they add, there are posts available for one in every ten of the women teachers carrying salaries ranging from £300 to £450 a
year. The Council observe that "there is no other occupation employing nearly 12,000 women at anything like such rates of payment," which is certainly perfectly true. And as these salaries are wholly provided from the rates and taxes—which have to be contributed to by the single working women with salaries smaller by far than those of teachers, and by middle-class parents who are also bearing the cost of the education of their own families themselves—it is praiseworthy for a public body to stand firm against all unreasonable demands for rises in the pay of their employees, both men and women.
I know of but one valid argument against "equal pay for equal work," and that is that the salary or wage of a man has to be based upon the assumption that he will marry and maintain a home. His money, you see, must suffice to cover the maintenance of a woman and children. To make this a fair argument, the men who do not actually undertake to "raise" a family ought to be taxed extra for the benefit of the women whom they have not married—the poor elderly spinsters! There is one instance of a man seeing this for himself. After the great San Francisco earthquake, in which thousands of women lost all their possessions by fire, a wealthy bachelor of the State voluntarily taxed himself a very large sum to supply a complete new wardrobe to several hundred women, giving as his reason for this novel benefaction that he felt himself responsible to society for the fact that he had never provided for a wife and daughters of his own.
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