The second reason given is that, women not being as a rule the sole bread-winners of the family, their wage is auxiliary to that of its head; the woman's wage is, as it were, "found" money in the household purse. Underlying this statement is an assumption which is at least questionable. It is that the economic or wage-earning unit is the _family_. This is an old-time idea which, however beautiful and desirable, is a little out of place in the conditions to which the factory system has brought us. Once-a-day it was recognised that children had a far greater claim on the persons who brought them into the world than we now allow. It was thought that the one wage should be earned by the head of the house, and should be large enough to maintain the wife and daughters without outside work, and to educate and apprentice the sons till they were able to hive off for themselves. Any money earned by the junior members of the family was, in this case, supplementary, and determined by a different law. Perhaps in time we may come back to this view. Mr. Frederic Harrison is sanguine that we shall. But meantime the factory system has changed all that, and it is scarcely worth while looking for laws of wage in a condition of family life which does not now obtain. Putting aside the objections that many married women are not members of a family, and that many married women and widows are the sole bread-winners of the family, it is perhaps sufficient to point out that this answer would not be taken as explaining or justifying a low wage among what we call the "better classes." It would not be counted an excuse or reason for a publisher asking a lady novelist to accept a lower price for her books, or for a patient offering a lower fee to a lady doctor. If the sex of the author, artist, musician, doctor, intellectual or artistic worker generally, has nothing to do with her remuneration, why should sex determine the wage of the factory girl?