The crux of the demand for equal pay for equal work is that, because of her natural lesser strength and endurance, when a woman is doing work identical in nature and equal in quantum to that of a man, it means that _she_ is doing _more_ than a woman's work, and is overtaxing and injuring her constitution, therefore; or it means that _he_ is doing _less_ than a man's work, and is "slacking," therefore. A further important issue is that when rendered too easy by both husband and wife earning wage, marriage is entered upon far too lightly, and at too early and irresponsible ages, than happens when the whole burden of support rests with the man. Moreover, in such case masculine selection makes only too often for economic rather than for human values in the wife. A man upon whom is to fall the whole tax of supporting the home and the family regards marriage more seriously, and delays it until he is more mature of years and of settled position. Moreover, he chooses more carefully. And the Race benefits proportionally. In manufacturing towns, with opportunity for both husband and wife earning wage, boy-and-girl marriages, feckless, discordant homes, and sickly degenerate, neglected children are the rule. That women should be paid for work they do, a salary enabling them to live honestly and in comfort, goes without saying. Economics should be adjusted on a far higher basis than that mainly of a competitive struggle which allows the employer to fix wages less according to the value of work done, than by the number of persons at his mercy, who, in their eagerness to live, will undersell their values and thus cheapen labour. Nevertheless economics have, in a degree, adapted to the evolutionary trend. Because, in the main, the more skilled and difficult tasks are more highly remunerated than the less skilled, and are performed by the more fit. And not only are these better qualified to expend such higher remuneration intelligently, and with benefit to themselves and to the community, but they are able to secure thereby those better conditions which are the due and the need of families higher in the scale of humanity, and requiring, therefore, higher conditions of nurture. The cases of colliers and of other rough-grade humans who earn wage beyond their mental calibre to expend intelligently, show how an income too large for its possessor leads to coarse and demoralising extravagances, rather than to personal happiness or elevation. (The like is true of many plutocrats.) War has shown us boys' lives wrecked by the same factor. No greater fallacy exists than that of supposing progress to lie in freeing persons from all disabilities--poverty, and other restrictive conditions. Wives should be legally entitled to a just proportion of their husband's income, as a _right_, not merely as dole. This, in recognition of their invaluable work in home-making, and of their invaluable service to the State in producing and rearing worthy citizens for it. VI