Women's The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have witnessed a growing acceptance of the principle of a national minimum. The State compels certain minimum conditions in the factories and shops; it enforces minimum periods of rest by restricting the working hours; in recent years it is tending increasingly to fix minimum rates of wages. The early legislation dealt with women more than with men, though the restrictions on the employment of one class of workers necessarily affect the other workers. The limiting of women's working hours, for example, indirectly served also to cut down the men's working day, especially where both sexes were employed in one factory, and where it would have been uneconomical for the machinery, heating, etc., to be kept going for only a portion of the workers. The possibilities and difficulties of a national minimum, equally applicable to everybody, were considered in Chapter IV., and it is not necessary to repeat the economics of the problem. The further question arises, should the minimum, whether for the industry or for the nation, be identical for both sexes? Since the national minimum is designed to prevent a person's income from falling below subsistence rather than to raise it to provide a decent standard of life, the question resolves itself into the respective requirements of men and women. If it is admitted that a woman requires as much as a man-taking all necessary expenditure into account, not only outlay on food-there is a strong argument for equal minima. Mrs. Webb denies that "there is any recognisable difference between the necessary cost of maintenance in health and efficiency of a man of 21 and of a woman of 21.' *War Cabinet Report, p. 274. If, on the other hand, the needs of the two sexes are demonstrated to be different, the minimum rates, so far as they can be said to depend on needs, might vary accordingly. Actual wages, however, are not determined by needs to the extent that this argument would imply. As already shown, the factors determining wages are numerous, and the only part played by subsistence is to fix the lower limit. But it happens occasionally that women workers are subsidised from home or do not view their wages as the first consideration. They may be willing to accept less than the minimum subsistence wage, and so depress other women's wages. The national minimum would serve a useful purpose here. So far the problem of family obligations has been ignored. Even if a man consumed no more than a woman, it is undeniable that, making all allowance for the large number of women who have dependants, the average man has a larger number of persons to support than the average woman. The dependants are to a small extent adults, to a large extent juveniles. The support of the adults, contends the writer of the Minority Report, should not necessarily be a private function; the State already recognises its obligations of this character, and embodies them in the Old Age Pensions Act and the Insurance Acts. The principle, it is urged, should be further extended. With regard to children, an essentially different method from that of to-day should be adopted. There might be a central fund consisting of employers' contributions and Government grants, out of which the worker's income would be made up according to the number of dependent children. Or the State might adopt the more courageous plan of direct endowment of motherhood, and bear out of taxation the social responsibility for the children. This and allied schemes are considered below. The writer of the Minority Report speaks for a growing body of opinion in suggesting the adoption of a new or supplementary method which would make the occupational rates correspond more than they do at present to relative efforts Closer Relation and needs. "It seems that the problem is not to be solved merely by an adjustment of the relative rates of wages of men and women respectively. Men and women in industry are, in fact, ceasing to be distinct classes, even if they ever were, and are more and more becoming merged in the armies of the skilled and the semi-skilled, each of them divided into numerous sectional grades. The great majority of the organised women workers are members, not of women's trade unions but of trade unions common to both sexes, either" skilled" or not. It is already plain that the internecnine struggles of the trade union world will take the form, not so much of conflicts between men and women workers, as of the rivalry between the sections classed as skilled and those classed as semi-skilled," largely irrespective of sex. It appears to be indispensable, alike to stability and to the prevention of unrest, that the chaos of earnings should be reduced to some sort of order. 66 "There is now a widespread recognition of the paramount importance of providing for needs. The physiological needs of adults may differ according to the character of the work -the steel-smelter, for instance, may require more food than the agricultural labourer-but no worker needs ten times as much food as another. The housing requirements of various sections of workers may differ; but the essentials of a home, including a suitable environment for the next generation, are common to all families. Democracy implies a common standard of education and manners. I conclude therefore, that the basis of any general adjustment of occupational rates must assume the form of a closer correspondence of the several rates to the efforts and needs of the various sections."* The way in which the closer correspondence between occupational rates and relative efforts and needs can be effected is subject to a variety of opinion. Some would make the maintenance of dependants an industrial charge; others would make it a social charge. Of the two the second seems more feasible and practicable. But whatever line of thought one follows, one must recognise the deficiencies in the present system of remuneration. The subject needs careful and thorough investigation before a reasonably satisfactory scheme can be evolved. Some would go further and urge that no doctoring of the wages system can ever bring a real remedy, short of a surgical removal of the wages system itself, which would involve more than the mere overthrow of the capitalist order of production. State Socialism, in the eyes of these critics, would not of itself entirely remove the differences of remuneration, unless it was accompanied by adequate public subvention of family needs. State Subvention to Families. The question of direct State assistance to wage earners with dependants has come into prominence during the past few years. In some countries the motive has been primarily militarist : people are to be induced to rear larger families mainly in order in order to provide an adequate potential army against the contingency of war. In other countries, the object has been more humane, it being recognised that the present wages system makes inadequate provision for a large proportion of the population, and that there is a social obligation for the maintenance of dependants, if the wage earner is in receipt *War Cabinet Report, pp. 294-5. of insufficient income. Many urge, also, that women who go out to work in order to provide for their children should receive sufficient help from the State to make it unnecessary for them to be wage earners at all. Thus there are two proposals, (a) the endowment of motherhood, and (b) pensions for mothers. National endowment of motherhood is advocated as a way out of the difficulty noted in the previous pages. Different workers have different family needs. Yet to differentiate wages on this basis (assuming for the moment that such a scheme were possible) would tend to encourage the employment of those with relatively few dependants in preference to workers whose needs were greater. Family endowment, it is claimed, would not only prevent this insidious competition between those with few and those with many dependants, but it would improve the position and remuneration of women in industry, for the excuse that their needs are less and therefore their wages should be lower, would lose much of its weight. The Family Endowment Committee, for example, propose that the State should make grants to mothers of families similar to the separation allowances during the war. The sums proposed are 12s. 6d. a week for the mother, 5s. for the first child, and 3s. 6d. for each other child. It is estimated that the annual cost would be £144 millions if endowment ceased at the age of five, £240 millions if it were extended to the age of fifteen. A scheme on these lines is supported by other women's associations. Many labour organisations, however, while sympathising with the principle, doubt the practicability of family endowment in the present system, and urge that main efforts should be directed to raising men's wages sufficiently to maintain a family without necessitating the wife going out to work or engaging in home employment. A criticism from |