70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



support?) for labor that is by no means unskilled $1.25 a day, while the 

 unmarried Italian who digs ditches gets $1.75 or $2.00. 



There are other causes, to be sure, besides sex discrimination, 

 which have encouraged unequal wages. Foremost among these is that 

 women have not realized their own worth, have not demanded equal 

 wages, have not been able to do so, in fact, through lack of organization. 

 Moreover, in the past, women were crowded into a very few callings, 

 among which teaching was a very prominent one, and thus they com- 

 peted with each other. In the past, too, when women left the home to 

 work, it was because they were forced to. Any addition, however 

 meager, to the family income was welcomed. In the higher walks of 

 life, again, women were content to earn the luxuries, depending on 

 their families for the home and necessities. The parents, meanwhile, 

 took pride in the fact that their daughters did not "have to" work. 

 The effect on the worker, on the profession and on the family was bad. 

 You got cheap labor, poor and half-hearted labor, and the family was 

 out something, too. With modern times has come the realization that 

 labor and self-support are necessary for the dignity, the character and 

 the development of women, and that the welfare of society and of the 

 family demands that she become a contributor of wealth rather than a 

 mere consumer. But we shall not have the best efforts from women 

 in professions until professional rewards are open to them. That in- 

 crease of salary, with advance in position, based on merit alone is a 

 necessary stimulus no one can deny. It will be well when all women 

 realize the harm that is done, not only to their sisters, but to their pro- 

 fession, when they permit themselves to be stamped as cheap labor. 



And as for the man, we fear that it is not chivalry that fails to 

 recognize the equal value of woman's labor with his own. We fear that 

 it is not cbivalry that frowns upon the married woman teacher. And 

 bo we hope that he will be moved to a more generous spirit when he 

 realizes that woman's loss is his own. The modern marriage is a 

 halving of resources, whereas the colonial family was a doubling of 

 resources. What the wife formerly actually produced by the labor of 

 her hands in the way of food, clothing and household supplies, in a 

 personal field of industry, quite free from competition either with her 

 own sex or with the other, she must now produce in the form of the 

 wherewithal to buy the food, clothing and household supplies. Her 

 field has become wider, she must compete with others, but her capabili- 

 ties have also grown wider, and must increasingly grow as she, with 

 her husband, progresses farther and farther from that rude and simple 

 life that was enclosed by four walls and called forth only a few of the 

 manifold potential powers of hand and mind. Men must come to an 

 insight of the economic waste of an unproductive life for their women, 

 or of production without fair returns. But perhaps they will also begin 



