The cry of “equal pay for equal work” has so far fallen on deaf ears, except in very exceptional cases; and this is true not only of trades and callings followed by the working classes, but in many professions also. The teaching profession gives us one of the best examples of this inequality of remuneration. Women teachers, both head teachers and assistants, are always paid much lower salaries than men. It is this kind of thing which sets the standard of value. It is a fact denied by no one with knowledge that low wages for girls and women result in producing the “social evil” of our time. Thousands of women live their lives through in penury and want, facing hardship and grinding poverty in a heroic endeavour to preserve personal virtue and honour. Others succumb to the call of the streets, and either make up their scanty wages to a living standard or give up the struggle and sink down and down into the whirlpool of vice which is to be found in all great cities. I am told, by those who profess to know, that some women prefer to live under such conditions. It may be so, but I am not concerned with that problem here. It is the vast army of involuntary victims for whom I ask consideration and compassion. When we read of women working long hours at hard laborious work for paltry pittances of a few shillings a week, we need not wonder that prostitution, the most ancient of trades for women, thrives in our great cities, and that its accompanying evils of venereal disease become like an avenging scourge. It is strange indeed that the splendid men and women who give money and work to rescue women from the streets do not understand that until the causes of prostitution are tackled all their labour and effort is in vain; and the causes are vouched for, in the main, by the police authorities, and by all students of industrial conditions. In every garrison town, in most of our seaports where the Navy has headquarters, low-paid industries are established for women. It is impossible not to connect the two things. And even in such a matter as this there is a great difference between the poor and the rich--the daughters of the rich seldom endure the torment of the lock hospital. These places are reserved for the children of the workers. It is they who are betrayed when working under conditions which make them easy victims of the lust of the rich, or driven to sell their bodies because society refuses them decent conditions of life and has placed so low a value on woman’s life and service.