CORRESPONDENCE 479 



too much to secure a decent and sufficient livelihood for a married man 

 with children ; indeed, I doubt whether it be really enough. Of course, 

 out of the present chaos of wages and salaries must eventually come, I 

 think — and may it come soon ! — the extension to all wage-earners and salary- 

 earners of the new Army-system of adjusting standard pay to the needs of 

 a single man (or woman), and making fixed additions for a wife (or dependent 

 sister or parent), and for each child up to a limit to be fixed, as we most 

 fervently hope, on eugenic and Galtonian principles. As things at present 

 are, however, we must argue from the datum of a docker's or policeman's 

 pay to that of a demonstrator or professor of the same age ; and on this 

 basis we must admit that a salary of ;^5oo per year would be below the 

 demonstrator's deserts, and that clearly to offer him ;^200 is a scandal and 

 a crime — a crime against science and learning as well as against the man — of 

 which any governing body of any university should be most heartily ashamed. 



Of course, it will be replied that universities and demonstrators alike 

 cannot help themselves ; but I suggest that they can. If the university 

 boldly and publicly proclaimed to the country generally, and to the Ministry 

 of Education in particular — " We must have so many demonstrators {e.g.) 

 to whom we cannot and will not under any circumstances offer less than 

 ;^5oo : we have funds sufficient to pay only ;^2oo ; unless the balance be 

 made up, we will appoint no demonstrator at all, and the teaching of our 

 students must more or less collapse ; we wash our hands of all responsibility 

 unless you find the money " — then I shrewdly surmise that the money would 

 very quickly be found from public or private funds, or both. 



In the next place, if the demonstrators and lecturers throughout the 

 country would promptly organise themselves on Trade Union lines — the 

 Association of Science-Workers now provides a machinery — would draw up 

 a full scheme of minimum standard pay based, like the dockers' and miners' 

 and all other manual workers', on expenses of to-day, and would bind them- 

 selves individually and collectively to resign at a certain date unless such 

 pay were conceded ; if they would collectively and individually bind them- 

 selves to regard as a blackleg, and to boycott personally and scientifically, 

 any and every man or woman who should accept such a post at less than 

 standard pay ; if they would endeavour to sweep into their organisation 

 all third-year science students at all the universities ; I believe that the 

 reform, big as it is, would be carried through speedily. It is nonsense to 

 suggest that highly trained brain- workers, enjoying the advantages of prac- 

 tically a closely-restricted " craft " — since it would take years to train men 

 to displace them, even were any willing to be trained arduously as blacklegs — 

 cannot achieve what uneducated heavily-handicapped workmen have 

 achieved. 



If any such scheme of standard pay for scientific workers were so drawn 

 as to discriminate between pay for a single man, pay for a married man, 

 pay for a married man with one, two, three children, the draftsmen of the 

 scheme would set an example of inestimable social value to the whole nation 

 but I admit that this suggestion travels beyond the main record which sets 

 forth that to-day the demonstrator is commercially " worth " 20 per cent, 

 less than the docker. Here we have a lurid blot on the national scutcheon, 

 and on the university quarter thereof. Let those concerned clean away the 

 disgraceful stain at once — for very shame's sake, if from no higher motive. 



Yours faithfully, 



POLPERRO, CoRNW.\LL, FRANK H. PeRRYCOSTE. 



October 14, 1920. 



