Chapter IX

Labor

§1. A Retrospect on Laissez-faire. When, a century and a half ago, the foundations were being laid in the Western world of systematic economic theory, the public attention was much occupied with a subject, which indeed has not ceased to hold it: that of the failings of Governments. The general interest in that topic was shared by the pioneers of economic thought, of whom, in Great Britain, Adam Smith was the most notable. It was indeed their practical concern with the concrete economic issues of the day which very naturally gave the impetus to their scientific quest. It was hardly less natural that they should have expressed their opinions on these concrete issues with considerable emphasis.

Now the keynote of their practical conclusions was that Governments were doing immense mischief by meddling with a great many matters, which they would have done better to leave alone. In this they were in general agreement with one another; incidentally—let there be no mistake about it—they were right. But, as invariably happens in public controversy, their opinions became crystallized in a compact formula, or cry, with unduly sweeping implications. This was the cry of "laissez-faire." Let Governments preserve law and order; and leave the economic sphere alone. The economists picked no quarrel with this formula; it served well enough for workaday purposes to indicate the lines of policy which they rightly thought essential in their day.

The history of this cry is the history of every cry which has won a wide acceptance from mankind. It did good work for perhaps half a century; but then many crimes were committed in its name. The instrument which had been forged to clear away a noxious tariff jungle and the monstrous laws of Settlement, was turned against Lord Shaftesbury and the Factory Acts. Not only was inaction recommended to Governments as the highest wisdom; other institutions, like trade unions, were warned off the economic grass. An ideal of perfect competition became an idol to which much human flesh and blood were sacrificed.

But, what is more to our present purpose, the idea took root of an intimate association between the laws of economics and the policy of laissez-faire. People who opposed some long-overdue measure of State regulation believed themselves to be justified by the eternal verities of economic law, and this claim even the advocates of the measure seldom ventured to dispute. They took refuge rather in a conception of economic law as a dangerous monster, whose claws must be clipped in the interests of the higher good. This notion that all interference with so-called "free competition," is a violation (though very likely fully justified) of economic laws has sunk deep into our common thought. So that to this day, whenever we see at work the hand of a State department, a trust or a trade union, we are apt to say "Demand and supply are here in abeyance," and possibly we add "A good thing too." Since in the matter of wages, the hand of the trade union is very generally evident, it is impossible to discuss the subject-matter of this chapter, until we have rid our minds of this quite baseless prepossession. To sweep away this cobweb, I urge the reader to recall here the general tenor of the analysis of the preceding chapters. Whether we were dealing with the price of an ordinary commodity, with joint products, land or capital, we came across relationships which seemed altogether more fundamental than our present industrial system; nor, we may incidentally observe, were we ever required to suppose that the present system was one of "perfect competition." These relationships were almost invariably such that even a world socialist commonwealth would find it necessary to maintain them. It was not suggested, and most certainly it must not be thought, that a world socialist commonwealth, or even a more modest remodeling of the social order would not effect great changes, possibly for good, and possibly for ill. The same economic laws might be made to bear very different fruits, but they themselves would remain unchanged. What is true in all these other fields—this should be our predisposition—is not likely to be quite untrue in the field of labor.

§2. Ideas and Institutions. Another point is worth noting here. We are sometimes advised to distinguish sharply between "What should be" and "What is"; often two very different things. The advice is pertinent and useful, particularly in the sphere of sociology. But our incorrigible habit of confusing the two things together is not without justification, or at least excuse. For, in fact, they gravitate towards one another with a force which is just as strong as the capacity of man for understanding and controlling his environment. When we have a system which is clearly bad, and when we see our way to make it better, we generally make the change however tardily. Our sense of "What should be" thus reacts upon "What is." Meanwhile, until we can make the system better, our appreciation of "What is" affects our sense of "What should be." And the more so, as we are sensible. For "What should be" is pre-eminently an affair of relativity. A man may hold very strongly that equal pay to every individual is desirable, as he puts it, as an ideal. But this will not prevent him, in a world in which managers are paid far more than manual workers, from maintaining hotly (at any rate, if he is sensible) that to pay the manager of a particular concern a manual worker's wage would be monstrously unfair. He would also argue that it would be highly inexpedient. Equity and expediency are, in fact, intricately intertwined in our sense of "What should be"; and our sense of "What should be" in the particular is governed by our knowledge of "What is" in the general.

These may seem unnecessary commonplaces. But they have a vital bearing on the modus operandi of economic laws. These laws do not work in vacuo. They work through the medium of the acts of men. The acts of men are greatly influenced by their institutions, and by their ideas of right and wrong. Both institutions and ideas may serve to smooth rather than obstruct the path of economic laws; because the laws may represent either "what should be" in the general, or "what is" in the general, and therefore "what should be" in the particular. This may hold true even of a trade union or a sense of "fair wages." The business of economic theory is not to justify a regime of laissez-faire, still less to show the folly of bringing morals into business. Its value is rather that it may help us, by improving our understanding, to shape our institutions, and to adopt our moral sentiments so as to promote the public welfare. With these general notions in our minds, let us turn to see how stands the case with Labor.

§3. The General Wage Level. The term Labor may be used in a broad or in a narrow sense. It may be confined to weekly wage-earners: it may be extended to include all those who work, as the phrase goes, "with either hand or brain." It is with all classes of Labor, in the broadest sense of the term, that we must here concern ourselves. It will be convenient, however, in the first instance to ignore the differences between them, and to consider the forces which determine what we may regard as the general wage-level.

The general laws of supply and demand hold good. The wages of labor tend to a level at which the demand is equal to the supply. For, if the demand exceeds the supply, if, in other words, labor is scarce, wages tend to rise, sooner or later in any case, and the more promptly in proportion as the workpeople are organized. Conversely, if the supply exceeds the demand, if in other Words there is general unemployment, wages tend to fall, and the strongest trade unions cannot resist the tendency, though they may delay it. Moreover, the higher the wages that must be paid, the smaller, other things being equal, is the demand for labor. For, even if we leave foreign competition out of account, and consider, as it were, labor throughout the world as a whole, the demand for labor is by no means inelastic. It is derived along with the demand for the other agents of production in the manner described in Chapter V. As was there shown, the greater the supply of the other agents of production, the greater is likely to be the demand for labor; but these other agents can be substituted for labor in a great variety of ways, and an increase in wages (unless accompanied by increased efficiency) will make it profitable for employers to effect such a substitution, where it was not profitable before. Thus, higher wages for the same labor efficiency must stimulate the tendency for capital to act as a substitute for labor at the expense necessarily (since the aggregate supply of capital will not be increased thereby) of its tendency to serve as a complement; and this must mean a decrease in the volume of employment. Hence the power of labor to secure a general advance of wages by concerted or simultaneous trade union action, applied if you will, not merely to every industry, but to every country, is necessarily very limited. Beyond a certain point, such a policy must result in general unemployment; and, if pushed sufficiently far, in unemployment so extensive that it would continue even in periods of active trade. Such a policy could neither be maintained in practice nor would it be a wise policy from the workers' point of view.

In other words, given on the one hand the conditions of the demand for labor (i.e. the supply of capital, natural resources, business ability, risk-bearing and knowledge of technical processes, etc., which happens to exist), and given on the other hand the supply of labor (i.e. both the numbers of workpeople and their efficiency), the wage-level in the long run is fairly rigidly determined. The introduction of the phrase "in the long run" in this connection is apt to provoke comment which may be pertinent, but may be misconceived. The worker, it is pointed out, is deeply concerned with "the short run" in which he has to live. It is very true; and it is this that supplies one of the many justifications of trade unionism. To secure for the workers advances of wages, which economic conditions justify, sooner than would otherwise have been obtained, is certainly no trivial or contemptible function. But it is none the less an illusion to suppose that the general wage-level can be appreciably and permanently raised by trade union action, except in so far as it increases the efficiency of the workers or incidentally stimulates the efficiency of the employers.

§4. The Supply of Labor in General. The efficiency of labor may be regarded as affecting either the demand for labor on the one hand or the supply of it on the other, according as we look at the matter from the worker's or the employer's standpoint. The employer is concerned with the labor costs per unit of his output, the worker is concerned with the wages he receives. An increase in the efficiency of labor may, and usually will, mean both a decrease in labor costs to the employer and an increase in the earnings of the worker. It is thus wholly to the good. But the effects of an increase in the supply of labor in the sense of a growth in the numbers of the population are far more dubious. Unaccompanied by an increase in the demand for labor, it must result in a diminished remuneration for the individual worker. To some extent indeed the demand for labor would almost certainly be increased. The supply of Capital may expand, perhaps proportionately, perhaps more than proportionately to the increase in population. But one factor of production, as we have seen, is not capable of such expansion. This is the factor of Land, or Natural Resources. It is the limitation of this factor which gives rise to what we have most of us heard of as The Law of Diminishing Returns. It is this that is the essence of the problem of Population, portrayed in somber hues more than a hundred years ago by Malthus.

This problem will form the subject of the sixth volume of the present series. In the meantime it may be suggested that we are easily credulous if we suppose that the problem has been finally disposed of by the peculiar progress of an abnormal century. But that experience has at least destroyed the view that there need be, or even is in fact in Western countries, a relation between real wages and the numbers of the people so close and direct that an improved standard of living must be temporary only, doomed to destroy itself by the increased population it engenders. One may perhaps go further and say that it is doubtful even in what direction changes in remuneration will influence the aggregate supply of labor. When we pass to "what should be," it is plain that there is nothing whatever to be said for the sort of relation indicated above. The view once widely held that the principle of population must inevitably keep the mass of people close to the verge of the bare means of subsistence was no statement of a desirable ideal. It was a nightmare; a nightmare none the less though it may haunt us yet. It is far from fanciful to suggest that it is because this relation is so obviously not "what should be" that it may be ceasing to hold true in fact. But it would be very fanciful indeed to maintain that as yet "what should be" is represented by the actual population. Thus, just as with capital, so with labor, there is no reason to suppose that the aggregate supply is determined by any fundamental economic law, or corresponds in practice to what is socially desirable.

§5. The Apportionment of Labor among Places. Again, as with capital, it is when we turn to the apportionment of labor between different employments that both economic law and social ideal make their appearance. It will be well, however, to consider briefly in the first instance the different question of its apportionment between places. This was hardly necessary in the case of capital, because the possibilities of foreign investment are very numerous and easy: the mobility of capital is thus sufficiently strong (once again it is only marginal adjustment that is necessary) to establish over at least a large part of the world something near to a uniform rate of interest. But this is not the case with labor. People do indeed move from place to place within a country, and from one country to another, in response to economic opportunities. That even the latter movement may be a considerable thing, the present population of the United States is a striking testimony. But obviously the mobility is very incomplete. Here, then, we have what we might loosely call an economic law that labor tends to "flow" (as it is sometimes unhappily phrased) to those places where it can command the highest reward; we have this tendency in evidence, but it is far too weak to enable us to lay down what would deserve more strictly the title of an economic law, that in the long run the reward of the same kind of labor is roughly equal in all places. Perhaps we can say this for many districts in a single country; but for few countries is this true as between all their districts. As between countries, it is not remotely true.

Here, however, the imperfection of economic law is balanced by an extreme uncertainty as to the ideal. Perfect mobility of labor may be economically desirable in a very narrow sense of the term; but it opens out a vista of racial, national and cultural problems, into which it will be better for us not to enter here. We must take for granted the population of a country, like that of the world, as a given fact.

When we do this, the question of its remuneration is on all fours with the more general question discussed above. That the remuneration of the labor of a country is mainly governed by the relations between demand and supply is an inexorable fact. In view of the international mobility of capital, the main distinctive factor in the demand for the labor of a particular country is the supply of natural resources, which it knows how to use. Where the natural resources are great relatively to the population, there wages will rule high; where the converse is true, wages will rule low. This result of economic analysis is abundantly confirmed by experience. The relatively high wages in the new world, the low standard of living in the densely populated East; the economic history of Ireland are so many object-lessons of its truth.

§6. The Apportionment of Labor among Social Grades. The question of the apportionment of the labor of a country among different employments falls under two heads. Some differences of occupation are associated particularly in Great Britain with differences of what we know as class. The movement of labor between different social grades is clearly a very different thing from its movement between different occupations in the same grade. The grades themselves are not easy to define: not a little ingenuity has been expended on the attempt, and perhaps the best brief classification that has been put forward is one which divides labor into the following four grades:—

But the matter is one perhaps for the satirist of manners rather than the economist. It suffices for our purpose that the distinctions, however vague, are very real.

It is obvious the mobility of labor between the occupations of a platelayer and a barrister is not very great. It may seem perhaps to be even smaller than it is. For here it is important to bear in mind a general consideration which is equally applicable to horizontal movements within any social grade. There may be a considerable movement of labor between different employments without any individual worker having to change his occupation. The personnel of any industry is constantly changing. At one end, men die, retire, or are pensioned off; at the other end, young recruits are taken on. By a diversion of the new recruits from one employment to another, a radical change can be made in the occupational census in a comparatively short space of time. It is in this manner that such movement as takes place is largely effected at the present time. Within the ranks of the professional classes, a man does not commonly leave the profession to which he has been trained. But his choice of profession is determined by him or his parents not solely on pecuniary grounds but usually with an anxious scanning of the general prospects, which include pecuniary advantages together with many other things. The same thing is true in no small measure of manual wage-earners. This general consideration must be borne in mind throughout the remainder of this chapter.

But even the sons of platelayers do not commonly practise at the bar. The obstacles in the way are various and subtle. Many of them are ideas, inherited from a bygone epoch, about keeping other people "in their proper stations," which the whole drift of circumstance, and the spirit of the age are rapidly wearing down. In the new world such obstacles are rare. But an obstacle of a more tangible and formidable kind arises from the fact that the liberal professions and many business careers require a long and expensive education and training, which the platelayer is quite unable to afford to give his son.

Now this expense of training is highly relevant not only to "what is," but to "what should be." It includes, it should be observed, a negative as well as a positive element; a long period of waiting before income begins, as well as the actual outlay on educational and other charges. When the burden both of the waiting and the positive costs must be borne either by the individual or the family, there are few people who would seriously dispute that this goes to justify, on grounds of fairness as well as of expediency, a higher level of annual remuneration later on; though many people would doubtless argue that the amenities and dignities of the professions should be taken into account on the other side. But the same consideration makes it a matter of legitimate doubt whether it would be desirable, even as an ideal, that the community should provide so completely the costs of training and of maintenance in the waiting period, as to make it no longer "fair" that the individual should be remunerated more highly than workers in less expensive occupations. For this would mean that more labor would be absorbed in the former employments than in principle would be socially desirable, for reasons which the argument of the next chapter will make plain. But the most desirable number of doctors, barristers, teachers, etc., is not a thing which can be settled on purely economic grounds, and it is unprofitable to carry further this particular line of thought. Few people would advocate, as an ultimate ideal, that the remuneration of the professional grades of labor should exceed that of lower grades by more than the extra expense of training and waiting they involve. That the excess is usually greater than this at the present time seems very probable: though it is a matter on which it is very hard to generalize. But it would certainly be far greater than it is if the principle of laissez-faire ruled supreme in these affairs. Fortunately it does not, and has never done so. Even before the days of free elementary education, the endowment of education was not unknown. The ancient public schools and universities, which have come down to us from the Middle Ages, are a standing witness to what in this field a far poorer community thought fit to do. Their systems of scholarships and exhibitions, no less than their courts and towers, deserve our notice. For these were designed to form what we now call "a ladder" by which talent could climb from the humblest origins to the callings which then seemed the summit either of spiritual or of worldly ambition.

This reference to "talent" makes it well to consider here a factor which necessarily complicates, though it does not substantially affect, the whole argument of the present chapter. There are differences of natural ability, which no education or training can obliterate, which it should rather be their business to excite. These differences are associated to a great extent with differences of occupation; they should be so associated far more closely than in fact they are. They are also associated with differences of remuneration even within the same occupation; "what should be" here is a question which we may excuse ourselves from discussing. The principle which, however vague, is sufficient for our present purpose is that the same natural ability should command the same reward in all occupations, subject to differences which should not exceed the differences of educational cost and initial waiting they involve. We cannot assert, as an economic law, that this is generally true in fact. If ever it becomes true, it will be due not to "laissez-faire," or "free competition," but to social arrangements, which express a sense of what is right.

§7. The Apportionment of Labor among Occupations. When we pass to the apportionment of labor among different occupations in the same social grade, the same principle as to "what should be" applies in a simpler form. Equal natural ability should command an equal reward in all occupations; assuming that differences in cost of training can be ignored. The reward must, of course, be interpreted not in terms of money only but of "real wages," with allowance for the varying amenities of different tasks. Now it was here that the extreme advocates of laissez-faire made one of their cardinal mistakes. They assumed that this ideal would be best secured by "perfect competition." The employer would choose the worker who would come for the lowest wage; the worker would choose the employer who would pay him the highest wage; and so, by a process similar to the higgling of a commodity market, the desirable uniform wage-level would become established. But in fact the conditions of the labor market differ greatly from those of a commodity market. People are ignorant, do not look ahead, cannot afford to risk the loss of a job, however wretched, which they happen to have got. For reasons such as these, a considerable departure from laissez-faire is necessary in order to realize the theoretical results of laissez-faire. To prevent the putting of boys in large numbers into "blind alley" occupations, you must supplement the foresight of parents with Juvenile Employment Exchanges and After-Care Committees. To secure a proper uniformity of wages within the same occupation, you must have trade unions. To secure a proper uniformity between different occupations, you must have again trade unions, or, failing them, Trade Boards.

That the actions of trade unions are very largely of this type is a fact insufficiently appreciated by the middle-class public. The elaborate system of piece-rate lists which has been evolved in the Lancashire cotton industry is primarily designed to secure the same wage for workers of equal efficiency in all mills, irrespective of the degree to which the machinery is antiquated or up to date. This result is wholly to the good: not only does it secure "fairness" for the worker, it stimulates the employer wonderfully to efficiency. The same result could never be secured so effectively by the free play of competition. But this tendency, which is easily the predominant element in the trade union regulations of the cotton trade, is at least an important element in the policy of "The Common Rule" of all trade unions, though it may often be mixed up with the more questionable tendency to eliminate differences of pay for differences of natural ability, and the unquestionably bad tendency to discourage output. As between different occupations, the insistence of a trade union that wages must be leveled up towards the wages obtaining in similar trades acts again as a far more powerful force than competition.

But the actions of trade unions are by no means wholly of this type. They often serve rather to secure still higher wages for workers who, comparatively speaking, are already highly paid. It makes little difference whether this effect is secured directly by wage demands, or indirectly by restricting the right of the entry to the trade. In either case the consequences are the same, and there should be no ambiguity as to their nature. They are certainly bad for the community, certainly bad for the other workers of the grade, almost certainly bad for the workers of the grade regarded as a whole. The higher wages must raise the money costs of production, and result, sooner or later, in fewer workpeople being employed in that occupation; larger numbers must accordingly seek employment elsewhere; and this cannot but depress the wage rates of less strongly organized trades. Thus the effect is twofold: a larger proportion of workpeople will be employed in badly paid occupations; and the wages there will be lessened.

The power of a strong trade union to secure wage advances of this type is considerable, but it must not be exaggerated. Trade unions employ as a matter of course devices which, in the case of trusts, we regard as the extremest weapons of monopoly. To say, "If you buy from anyone except us, you must not buy at a lower price than ours," which Messrs. J. & P. Coats are represented as having done, is analogous to insisting that if non-unionists are employed, it shall be at the trade union rate, as every trade union very properly insists. To say, "You must buy only from us," the method of the boycott, as it is called, is analogous to the very common refusal to work with non-unionists at all. But in one important respect the tactical position of a trade union is weaker than that of an ordinary combination. It has usually got a buyers' combination up against it, in the shape of an association of employers. The latter will be governed in their attitude towards the workpeople's demands, not only by immediate expediency, but also by their own sense of "what should be"; and they will usually resist demands for wages greatly in excess of those obtaining in comparable trades. In this way, the tendency for workers of the same efficiency to receive the same real wages in all employments is far stronger than might at first sight appear.

If we had to rely for this result upon trade unions alone, it would be highly problematical. For here a psychological curiosity emerges, which, familiar and intelligible as it is, is none the less a curiosity. So far from still higher wages for well-paid workpeople being regarded in the world of manual labor as detrimental to the interests of other workpeople, it has become almost a point of honor to believe the contrary. A wage dispute in a particular trade is conceived as an engagement in a far-flung battle between Capital and Labor, in which success at any part of the line will facilitate the victory of the whole army. This conception contains a measure of truth, as regards immediate and purely temporary effects; though, even here, it is made to seem unduly plausible by the recurrence of trade cycles, which cause wages at any time to move in the same direction all along the line. But, if the foregoing analysis has been appreciated, the essential falsity of this notion should be evident. It is an illusion, which should receive no endorsement, either tacit or express, in any work on economics. The general wage level of a country cannot be regarded (except temporarily, and within narrow limits) as a function of the efficiency of labor organization; it depends on the far deeper economic facts set out in §3 above.

Let us now try to summarize the conclusions of this section. There is a tendency towards a uniformity of real wages for workers of the same grade and of the same efficiency. This tendency is not due to competition alone. It is helped by many acts of a collective kind, arising from a sense of "what should be"; it is obstructed by other acts of a like kind, where the sense of "what should be" is based on imperfect understanding. The more people act in accordance with "what should be," and the better their understanding, the more will this tendency approximate to an accurate economic law.

§8. Women's Wages. The wages of women represent a problem of great public interest, upon which the principles laid down in this chapter have a most important bearing, and which in its turn serves to illustrate these principles further. It has been suggested that male and female labor can be regarded as a strong case of Joint Supply, and the suggestion is not merely facetious. The essential point, that the proportions of available male and female labor are fairly constant (not that they may not alter with time and circumstances, but that they are essentially independent of the conditions of demand) holds true not only of a country as a whole, but hardly less of a particular district. If men and women are to be regarded as separate grades, they are grades between which immobility is complete. Now men and women differ in many ways which affect both the demand for and the supply of their services. On the one hand, far fewer women wish to enter business employments of any kind, as women have plenty of work that must be done at home. On the other hand, though women can do many kinds of work as well as or better than men, it so happens that for much the greater number of services, which are in large demand in the business world, men are the more efficient. Incidentally, it happens that many occupations which women might do as well as men are closed to them by exclusive regulations. The resultant of these forces is that men and women are for the most part employed in different occupations, and the scale of payment in women's occupations is far lower than that in men's. Of this last fact singularly small complaint is made.

It is otherwise, however, when we come to occupations where men are either wholly or partially employed, where women are at least approximately as efficient as men, and where the barriers to their entry are at least formally removed. There a ferocious controversy rages over what is known as the principle of "equal pay for equal work." It is easy to understand why the male trade unionists in, let us say, the engineering trades, should support this claim. It is also, indeed, intelligible why the enthusiasts for Women's Rights should urge it; but it is much more doubtful whether they are wise. Possibly they are wise enough in their generation, since it might not serve them on this matter to get across the men. But it is clearly not prudential considerations of this kind by which they are mainly actuated. They make the demand, with extreme intensity of feeling, as a demand for fundamental justice. They are also very obviously inspired with the belief (similar to the illusion which is a point of honor with the male trade unionist) that high wages for women in well-paid occupations will help to raise the wages of sweated women workers in other trades.

Now, here again, any lack of candor would be inexcusable. The effect of this policy on the wages in women's trades is certainly to reduce them. The policy serves, as powerfully as any trade union custom, to restrict the entry of women into the men's employments, and often spells virtual exclusion. For the "equal efficiency" may be approximate only, and there may be advantages in male labor from the employer's standpoint which are none the less important, because they are not easy to define. Moreover, from the employer's standpoint, the efficacy of female labor will be largely a matter for experiment, and "equal pay" will give him no inducement to experiment at all. The diminished number of women in these occupations (as compared with what might have been) increases the number who must fall back on the purely women's trades; and it must serve to reduce the wages there, where organization is by no means strong. I am far from asserting that this consideration is conclusive against the principle of "equal pay for equal work" (though I think it conclusive against a rigid interpretation of it); for other matters, such as the standpoint of the male trade unionist must be taken into account. But the reactions on the wages in women's trades permit of no ambiguity.

In occupations of another type, the issue takes a somewhat different form. In the teaching profession, "equal pay" would not exclude the women; it would be far more likely to exclude the men. For, though the advocates of the principle would declare that their intention is that the salaries of women should be leveled up to those of men, it is more probable that the ultimate outcome would be a leveling down. Educational authorities have the ratepayer and the taxpayer to consider; and, apart from this, they have their own interpretation of "what should be." To pay a woman less than a man for the same work may seem glaringly unfair; but it is not very clear why a woman, who is an elementary school teacher, should be paid much more than, say, a hospital nurse, merely because in the former case a number of men happen also to be employed. In fact, there is a clashing of equities in this connection; and there is little doubt which of them the educational authorities would prefer. A leveling down of the men's salaries would make it all but impossible to attract men of the desired type into the profession, and would thus lead to the virtual extinction of the male elementary school teacher. This might seem in a narrow sense to be economically desirable. Why should not men take their services to the tasks for which they can command a higher reward, and which women cannot do as well? But whether this would be desirable in the true interests of education is a far more doubtful matter. And this is the real problem of "equal pay for equal work" for male and female school teachers. The reader will notice that I have refrained from alluding to the controversy as to whether men should receive more on the grounds that they have wives and families to maintain. That, although a most absorbing issue, is not the real issue in practice at the present time. The real issue is a clashing between a sense of "what should be" on obvious general grounds and a sense of "what should be " in the particular, derived from the very patent and general "what is" that men receive as a rule far higher pay than women.