120 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



extensive observation of samples that ' only 12.06 per cent, of women 

 have either partially or entirely to support others beside themselves ' 

 (' Eesponsibility of Women Workers,' p. 36). If we except the cases due 

 to the death of ' the normal breadwinner ' — admittedly requiring special 

 treatment— the proportion is reduced to 4.12 per cent. The figure 

 would not be serious even if it proved on further inquiry to be some- 

 what greater. For the figure has not the same significance as that which 

 relates to the dependants of the male wage-earners. The sustentation 

 of the old and infirm cannot be compared, as regards at least economic 

 importance, with the support of the young, the cost of which normally 

 falls on the male breadwinner. The world got on tolerably before the 

 institution of Old Age Pensions; but it could not have got on at all 

 without the support of young children by their fathers. 



18. If the bulk of working men support families, and the bulk of 

 working women do not, it seems not unreasonable that the men should 

 have some advantage in the labour market. Equal pay for equal work, 

 when one party is subject to unequal deductions from his pay, no 

 longer appears quite equitable. It is hardly to be expected that the 

 representatives of female interests should look at this question from the 

 masculine point of view. The ladies who have shown this miusual degree 

 of sense and sympathy are entitled to a very attentive hearing. Miss 

 B. L. Hutchins, in her ' Conflict of Ideals, ' has discerned with remarkable 

 insight the antithesis between the traditional status of the husband and 

 father, expected to support a family, and the modern regime of contract 

 tending to universal competition. Miss Hutchins does not see her way 

 to ending the conflict : 'it is almost impossible to make any logical 

 scheme or theory that will fit the woman and the young child exactly 

 into a commercially organised society based on exchange values ' (loc. 

 cit., p. 69). Miss Eleanor Eathbone, equally discerning the difficulty, 

 is more confident about the solution. She proposes a scheme which has 

 certainly the merit of being logical, the endowment of motherhood, as 

 set forth in her article on the ' Eemuneration of Women's Services ' in 

 the Economic Journal for 1917. The plan desen^es consideration here 

 as a step towards that freedom of competition which has been prescribed. 

 The plan may also be advocated as conducing to advantages less purely 

 economic than those now considered. When those other advantages 

 come to be thrown into the scale, the weight of the economic arguments 

 which I now attempt to estimate will still be a relevant datum. 



As text of the plan to be examined we may take the pamphlet 

 entitled ' Equal Pay and the Family, ' the report of the Family Endow- 

 ment Committee formed in 1917 at the suggestion of Miss Eathbone. 

 With this pronouncement should be placed the proposal independently 

 made by Mrs. Sidney W^ebb in her evidence before the War Committee 

 (1919, Cmd. 135). The bright and clear resume of the arguments 

 given by Mrs. Stocks in the booklet entitled ' The Meaning oi Family 

 Endowment ' is also to be considered . 



The pm'pose of the scheme may be summarised in the words of the 

 Endowment Eeport : to secure ' that within each class of income the 

 man with a family should not be in a worse position financially because 

 he has a family than the single man in tJwf class.' For the partial 



