More clearly does this objection emerge when we consider the third answer. It is said that the inferiority of women's wage is owing to their standard of living being less than that of men. It is true that a woman, as a rule, eats less, drinks less, and smokes less. Tea to her is, unfortunately, both meat and drink, and it would be counted extravagance in a working woman if she took to eating twopence worth of sweets a day as balancing the man's half ounce of tobacco. But I am afraid a woman's standard of life differs from a man's rather in its items than in its cost. I have yet to learn that her standard of dress is less than ours, and I am quite sure she takes more medicines, and spends more on doctors' bills. As in the former case, we change our view according as we look at different classes. Among the "upper" classes, as we call them, the woman's standard of life is very much higher than that of the man. It is only because the poor seamstress, when put to it, will live on a shilling a-day, while a man will become a tramp or go to the workhouse first, that we say the woman requires less. In a word, it is not that the physical and mental needs of woman are less than the physical and mental needs of man, but that many women, for some reason or other, can be got to accept a wage that will only keep them alive. If so, the answer, translated, simply runs: women's wages are less than men's because, for some reason, women accept less. It is to be noted, however, as very significant of the popular ideas about wage, that the second and third answers just given account for the standard of women's wages by the _wants_ of the worker. A woman's wage is low because she does not _require_ a high wage, whether it be because her father partly supports her, or because her maintenance does not require so much. Now it may be said in passing that it is quite against our modern ideas to represent wage as regulated by wants. Under a socialistic régime, indeed, the wages of all might be thrown into a common purse, and divided out according to the wants and necessities of each; but under an individualist régime, like the present, what the worker _is_ is nothing, what the worker _does_ is everything. To assess the value of goods by the cost to the human life which makes them is to take ground on which the world is not prepared to follow the economist whatever it may say to the moralist. It is not the cost in killed and wounded that decides the battle. To the purchaser it is indifferent whether the cloth he buys wore out the fingers and heart of a woman, or only took a little tear and wear out of a machine. The one question he asks is: How will the cloth wear? _Caveat venditor._ If a man-worker, then, is supposed to get a high wage when he produces much, a low wage when he produces little, why should a woman's wage be determined by another principle? We cannot hunt with the individualist hounds and run with the socialist hare.