THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 93 



hardly suffice to pay her share of the salaries of her sub- 

 stitutes. Looked at in the light of reason, the situation 

 would be ludicrous were it not so melancholy. 



We are inclined to classify for biological purposes, 

 as we have done elsewhere, women and men as respec- 

 tively the capital and income of the State, the one to 

 provide for the future and the other to maintain and 

 uphold the affairs of the present. Tacitly the national 

 system of economy has always accepted the existence 

 of a vital difference in the functions of men and women 

 as the basis of its scale of payment of their services. 

 Normally, a man's wages are calculated to represent, 

 not only his own keep, but also a sum sufficient to 

 maintain a wife and family. This means that it is 

 recognized that a man can perform two duties to the 

 State. He can do his day's work and be the father of 

 a family. A woman's wage represents her keep only, 

 or sometimes merely pocket-money, while she remains 

 under her parents' roof, for she can only undertake one 

 of the two essential functions of an adult person ; she 

 can either earn her living, or give birth to and bring 

 up an adequate number of children, in which case her 

 payment is included in the father's wage. When, in 

 industrial communities, we find that a large proportion 

 of married women are forced into remunerative em- 

 ployment, to the detriment of the number and health 

 of their children, the result virtually is that, while the 

 women attempt to perform two duties which are 

 mutually inconsistent, the husbands cease to undertake 

 their full responsibilities ; for too often they are no 

 longer to be counted as fathers of families. 



The same effect of the disregard of natural limita- 



