WOMEN TEACHERS AND EQUAL PAY 67 



salary, for as a single person he requires no more. No doubt such 

 a sliding scale would be most acceptable to college instructors so long 

 as it went up and would encourage early marriage. The only bitter 

 pill would be to have the scale slide down. In the actual world, how- 

 ever, the bachelor does not receive less because he has no family and 

 the married man does not receive more because he has. The woman 

 teacher still generally receives even as high as fifty per cent, less than 

 a man, whether she has a family to support or not. 



But, it is replied, the single man expects to have a family in the 

 future for which he must lay a financial foundation now. Is then the 

 young woman not expected to have a family ? Will her savings be less 

 of a help to the future family because they are feminine ? Or will they 

 go farther for the same reason and do they therefore not need to be so 

 great ? Is not the family the ultimate loser by this principle of stint- 

 ing women, since the family funds are derived from one source alone? 

 After marriage, if both father and mother are capable of earning, is 

 the family not the gainer if the earnings of the mother are at the same 

 rate as those of the father? If the father dies, is the family not the 

 gainer by having full support instead of two thirds or thereabout ? 



The highest expediency that attaches to natural justice is brought 

 out by an economic principle that few will dispute. Women who are 

 discriminated against in the matter of pay immediately become a cheap 

 labor class, and cheap labor is bound to injure the cause "of well-paid 

 labor. This injustice bears within itself the germ of that economic 

 vengeance that has wrought such harm in the profession of teaching, 

 and has been so conducive a factor in driving men out of the ranks. 

 This principle has been brought home to the laborers in industry, and 

 in the ranks of labor the feeling is becoming wide-spread that men and 

 women have a common cause, and all movements that make for eco- 

 nomic improvement for women are apt to find there much greater sup- 

 port than in the so-called higher ranks of society. The world of trade 

 could easily appreciate the principle also. If a woman set up a suc- 

 cessful business with a margin of profit 25 per cent, or 50 per cent. 

 less than that of her masculine competitors in the same business, would 

 the men not immediately protest and combine to force her to sell at 

 their terms or to wreck her trade ? 



It has been stated that where men and women teachers receive 

 equal wages the men will vanish. This assertion, however, seems to 

 rest on the implication that the wages are low, for when it has been 

 suggested that women receive the high wages of men, opening the way 

 for a natural competition irrespective of sex, the answer has frequently 

 been that the natural result of this competition would be that the men 

 would be chosen and the women would be left. Now certain qualities 

 excellent in a teacher have been conceded to women. For instance : 



