106 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
writes that this jealousy is? ‘ due partly to his well-grounded fear that her 
lesser family responsibilities will enable her to undersell him.’ And finally 
we have the attempts of legislators in setting up Trade Boards and other 
machinery for dealing with wages, crowned by the Widows’ and Orphans’ 
and Old-Age Pensions Bill, which deliberately attempts to make payments 
in respect of work cover the bulk of the cost of contributions for the 
maintenance of the worker during old age, of his widow after his death, and 
of his fatherless children until such age as they be thought competent to 
maintain themselves. 
We are challenged daily, by proposals for minimum wage rates, cost of 
living standards, family allowances, contributory insurance schemes, to 
consider the connection between the normal wage and a wage adjusted 
to the needs of the worker. The question is a complicated one. Marshall 
writes? : ‘ Wages tend to equal the net product of labour; its marginal 
productivity rules the demand side for it; and on the other side, wages 
tend to retain a close though indirect and intricate relation with the cost 
of rearing, training, and sustaining the energy of efficient labour. The 
various elements of the problem mutually determine (in the sense of 
governing) one another ; and incidentally this secures that supply price 
and demand price tend to equality.’ 
It is far easier to see the connection between the wage and ‘ training 
and sustaining ’ the worker’s energy than between the wage and the cost 
of rearing the worker. If labour be not adequately sustained during the 
period for which the worker is engaged the product will suffer. Diminution 
in the number of workers available, or in efficiency, or both, follow swiftly 
on lack of sustenance. Further, the wage must bear some relation to 
the cost of training, since so long as there are occupations which demand 
no training, or less training than others, those needing most will lack 
recruits if the earnings they offer are not relatively high. 
The cost of rearing the worker raises different questions. It is clear 
that the individual worker does not pay for his own childhood; no bill 
of the cost is presented to him when he begins to work. It is equally 
clear that the childhood of most wage-earners is paid for from wages ; 
part, and a considerable part, of the wage of many workers is devoted to 
the maintenance of their children. It may be said crudely, therefore, 
that unless wages cover the cost of rearing workers there will be no 
workers. It cannot, however, be asserted that because a worker pays 
certain expenses from his wages those expenses-are the cause of his wage, 
or of any part of it. } 
There is a tendency to assume that, while the efficient sustenance of — 
labour during working days and hours is a prime cost of industry to be 
covered by the wage, sustenance in non-working days and hours, in 
sickness, during unemployment, in old age, and the maintenance of wife 
and children not only during but after a man’s working life, is a kind of 
supplementary cost for which provision should be made in respect of work 
done. This presupposes a vast amount of calculation both on the side 
of the employer and the employee. 
First let us take the employee, as being the party to any wage contract — 
most likely to reckon such costs. Here, roughly, we find workers divided 
2 The Disinherited Family, Eleanor Rathbone, p. 48. 
8 Principles of Economics, Marshall, Book VI, ch. ii. § 3. 
