p.— KCONOMICS. 121 



attainment of this purpose, allowances for childi'en being paid only 

 for six years, there would be required an annual grant of 154,000,000i. 

 For the fuller realisation of the plan, continuing allowances for children 

 up to the age of fifteen, the cost would be 240,000,000L (toe. cit., 

 p. 44). ' Something like 250 millions sterling annually ' is the estimate 

 oi Mrs. Sidney Webb {loc. cit., p. 307). 



Let us separately consider, firstly the advantages, secondly the 

 disadvantages, which this plan presents, and, thirdly, whether there is 

 any alternative course by which much of the good result with little 

 of the evil may be obtained. 



19. i. One main advantage is thus stated in the Endowment Report : 

 ' "When the national endowment of mothers and children becomes an 

 accomplished fact this excuse for the under-payment of women (that 

 men have families to keep) will no longer hold good and women will 

 be free to* claim — and men to concede to them — whatever position in 

 industry their faculties fit them for, at a wage based on the work they 

 do, and not on their supposed necessities ' (p. 18). The endowment 

 ' would do away with, the present involuntary blacklegging of men by 

 women, by depriving employers of tlieir one really plausible, if not 

 actually valid, excuse for paying women less than the standard rates; 

 so putting the competition between the sexes for the first time on a 

 basis which is at once free and fair. ' The endowment would certainly 

 facilitate the adoption of that free and fair competition which has been 

 above recommended (9). But that recommendation presupposed that 

 there had been ruled out a sort of competition which is described by 

 some high authorities as not free, which is at any rate generally 

 regarded as deleterious. That tendency to the degradation of labour is, 

 as above explained (4), aggravated by the competition of women. 

 Now the endowment of motherhood would not suffice to remove this 

 danger. The transitoiy and episodical character of female labour would 

 still threaten male wages. It may be objected that men, freed from 

 the obligation oi supporting a family, woadd no longer havei a. reason for 

 not competing a oulranee with equally free women. They might not 

 have any reason ; liut they would surely long retain the habit, the 

 ' social custom ' as it has been called, engendered by tlieir traditional 

 position as at least potential heads of families. In short, the proposed 

 endowment would not remove all the difficulties attending competition 

 between the sexes, but only those attending the ordered competition 

 for which alone I venture to prescribe (Class B above). How large 

 an endowment would be required to counteract the consequences of 

 removing the restrictions on female competition ? A measm^e is 

 afforded by the extent to which male wages would be depressed. In 

 making this computation we may, I tliink, omit to take accoimt of 

 wives' earnings. For if, on the one hand, the greater efficiency, and 

 possibly the gi-eater number, of married women competing in the labour 

 market tend to depress male wages, on the other hand there is a 

 counten'ailing gain to the family. We ne«d only, then, consider how 

 much male wages are likely to be diminished by the liberated competition 

 of spinsters. In making this estimate we have to take into account the 

 elasticity of labour, the probability that the greater supply of work 



