118 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



with the bigger boys, is something different from that of a mistress, 

 and that it is considered indisjsensable, it is not unreasonable (in a 

 regime of pure econoinics) that the desired article should be purchased 

 at the market price. The market price of a master is higher if he comes 

 from a class between om- M and Z (14), for which the average is higher 

 than a corresponding class of women between A and F. His higher 

 pay is quite consistent with the finding of tlie teachers abo'Ve cited 

 (2), that ' the work of women, taking the schools as a whole, ... is not 

 less zealously and efficiently done than that of men.' They might, 

 indeed, be more diligent and in most branches of education better 

 teachers than men. A steel knife is a more useful implement for general 

 l^urposes than a silver blade. But if silver is required to presence the 

 flavour of dessert, the epicure must pay for the metal which has the 

 greater value in exchange. A good cab-horse may, for all that I 

 know, draw a vehicle as well as a high-steppmg thoroughbred. But 

 if for purposes of State and show the high-paced animal is required, 

 high prices must be paid for the high paces. The distinction, it will be 

 noticed, turns upon the nature and presence of the horse. If for the 

 caiTiage of parcels one kind of horse was as efficient as the other, then, 

 indeed, a cari'ier who^ charged a. higher price for the delivery of parcels 

 because he employed a particular breed of horse could only maintain 

 this differential charge through a, presumably noxious, monopoly. That 

 is the difference between the case of the schoolmistress and the case 

 of Mrs. Jones, whose grievance is recorded by Mrs. Fawcett. Mrs. 

 John Jones during the illness of her husband passed off her own work 

 as his to the firm of outfitters which employed him to braid tunics. 

 ' When, however, it became quite clear, John Jones being dead and 

 buried, that it could not be his work, . . . the price paid for it by the 

 firm was immediately reduced to two-thirds of the price paid when 

 it was supposed to be her husband's ' ! [Economic Journal, 1918, p. 1). 

 Here, in the absence of tertiiaiy (and presumably also secondary) 

 differences, the differentiation of wage was certainly contrary to the 

 principle of equal pay for equal work. 



On behalf of the schoolmistresses it may still be urged that the market 

 price of male work is artificially raised by inequitable laws and customs. 

 To this the Teachers' Committee might reply that if the time in this 

 respect is out of joint, they were not created tO' set it right. But it is here 

 questioned whether the time is so much out of joint. It has been sub- 

 mitted that the average earnings of male labom- [m—z) would probably 

 be higher than the female average (a — f), even if there had been intro- 

 duced the most perfect freedom of competition that is thinkable in the 

 present state of things (3 2). If so, the higher pay of masters for 

 similar work does not violate the ride of equal pay for equal work in 

 the first, purely economic sense of the rule (2). The unequal pay 

 for equal effort does violate the rule in the second, utilitarian or hedonic, 

 sense. In fact, the instance is well suited to bring into view the 

 essential difference between the two definitions of the formula. The 

 political Socialist who aims at a. closer approximation of pay to efforts 

 and needs, the Utilitarian moralist who desiderates, indeed, that ideal, 

 but has regard to the danger of pursuing it too directly, naturally do 



