F.— ECONOMICS. 125 



ii. Where the number of the children is snuall, may not some con- 

 tribution often be expected from the wife? ' it is possible to foresee 

 piece-work airangements to suit women who cannot work too many 

 hours ' a high authority, Mrs. Pember Reeves, observes. It may be 

 hoped that in the future the only alternatives open to married working 

 women will not be a w^hole day's work away from home, or work in 

 a home made intolerable by the conditions of home work (as strikingly 

 described by Mr. and Mrs. Webb, for instance, in ' Industrial Demo- 

 cracy, ' p. 541). Something better may be expected from the progress 

 both of physical and of economic science. Leroy-Beaulieu, who is 

 sanguine as to this resom-ce, characteristically hopes much from science 

 and notliing ivom legislation. 



iii. Leroy-Beaulieu also hopes for the contribution to a prospective 

 family made by spinsters who expect to be married. ' The girl accu- 

 mulating a dot by work in the factory, in order to remain at home as 

 a mai-ried woman and bring up her family in comfort (dans de bonnes 

 conditions) — this is the only real and practicable progress ' (' La femme 

 ouvriere . . . ,' p. 425). Mr. Cadbury's obsen^ations on the ways of the 

 factoiy girl do not encourage us to hope much from this resource in 

 this country at present. ' Only in very few cases are they [saving-s] 

 accumulated in readiness for a marriage outfit ' ('Women's Work and 

 Wages,' p. 244 and context). But we may suppose an improvement 

 in economic character as well as conditions. 



iv. A more obvious compensation to men for the loss of wages — 

 not, like the preceding, indirectly resulting from the circumstance 

 which occasions that loss — would be afforded by an extension of the 

 allowance now made in furtherance of education. They should be in 

 kind; conforming to Mill's principle that what Government may 

 provide with most propriety is the commodities which people would 

 not have spontaneously demanded ('Pol. Econ.,' v., xi., 8). 



These compensations may suffice to meet the male objection to 

 removing restrictions on female competition. 



For the further object of equalising the application of resources to 

 the nurture of children within each grade a further extension of the 

 last-named allowances (21, iv.) may Be risked. But they should be 

 guarded against the dangers objected to the endowment scheme (20, ii., 

 iii. and iv.). Are those dangers sufficiently guarded against by Miss 

 M. E. Bulkley when, in a work prefaced approvingly by Mr. R. H. 

 Tawney, she recommends the provision of a free meal for all school- 

 children (' Feeding of Schoolchildren,' pp. 223-6)? The cost would be 

 12,500,000?. a year. That is for one meal, dinner. But of course 

 breakfast would often be required (p. 228). 



V. A plan for equalising the burden of dependent children would be 

 especially serviceable in the case when the family is larger than the 

 average. That case might be met by the comparatively modest subsidy 

 proposed by Mr. Seebohm Eowntree (' Human Needs '). He estimates 

 that the alloiwance necessary to secure physical efficiency ' in case of 

 more than three dependent children ' would come to only 8,000,000/. 

 (if only families with incomes below a certain figure are to he 

 subsidised). 



