66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



This strain immediately gives us our clue, for we have heard it 

 often before, as when we laid claim to souls and to minds, and though 

 the gods of nature and of economics are appealed to, we know that we 

 are dealing with the ancient sex prejudice, conscious or unconscious, 

 which the present day is gradually overcoming with the increasing 

 realization of the sanctity of human personality irrespective of sex. 



It was still longer ago that Wendell Phillips said, in 1851 : 



When Infinite Wisdom established the rules of right and honesty, he saw to 

 it that justice should be always the highest expediency. 



What is the clear and natural justice of paying women teachers 

 equally with men? Two persons are expending an equal amount of 

 energy in rendering services of equal value. In exchange a return 

 energy is given in the form of financial reward. There is no reason 

 why the return energy should diminish in quantity, the moment the 

 recipient is a woman, but retain its normal volume if the recipient 

 happens to be a man. Is it not an ancient principle of justice that the 

 laborer is worthy of his hire ? 



The immediate reply to this will be : It is just that a man receive 

 more, because he has to support a family. And Mr. Perry, whose 

 argument rests on the ethics of not violating the principle of the 

 " market-value " of teachers, unmindful of the principles of the bargain 

 counter, says: 



The fact that the great majority of men have families to support has led to 

 an economic balance whereby men 's wages expressed in terms of money are such 

 as enable a man to support his family. 



This is plainly an economic fallacy, since wages and salaries are not 

 a result of a nice adjustment to personal and family needs. A man 

 supports his family in accordance with his wages; he does not receive 

 wages in accordance with his family. And does the man who has no 

 family receive less and the woman who has a family receive more ? Is 

 it the custom to arrange salaries on a sliding scale in accordance with 

 celibacy or marriage among men? Why is it that late marriages are 

 so common ? Is it not because the incomes earned are thought not to 

 be sufficient for the support of a family? Does any one know of a 

 scheme like the following? An instructor in a university receives a 

 salary of $1,000 a year, and manages to be fairly comfortable on it. 

 He marries, and the trustees grant him an additional $100. He has 

 a child, and his income is increased again by $100, and again for every 

 succeeding child. We leave it to the trustees to estimate the proper 

 value of a child on the basis of a full professor's salary. Now the wife 

 dies, and $100 are subtracted from his salary, and as his children become 

 self-supporting the salary is reduced in proper measure, leaving him, 

 when all his children have departed in the status quo with his original 



