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
