efficient. Incidentally, it happens
that many occupations which women _might_ do as well as men are closed
to them by exclusive regulations. The resultant of these forces is
that men and women are for the most part employed in different
occupations, and the scale of payment in women's occupations is far
lower than that in men's. Of this last fact singularly small
complaint is made.

It is otherwise, however, when we come to occupations where men are
either wholly or partially employed, where women are at least
approximately as efficient as men, and where the barriers to their
entry are at least formally removed. There a ferocious controversy
rages over what is known as the principle of "equal pay for equal
work." It is easy to understand why the male trade unionists in, let
us say, the engineering trades, should support this claim. It is also,
indeed, _intelligible_ why the enthusiasts for Women's Rights should
urge it; but it is much more doubtful whether they are wise. Possibly
they are wise enough in their generation, since it might not serve
them on this matter to get across the men. But it is clearly not
prudential considerations of this kind by which they are mainly
actuated. They make the demand, with extreme intensity of feeling, as
a demand for fundamental justice. They are also very obviously
inspired with the belief (similar to the illusion which is a point of
honor with the male trade unionist) that high wages for women in
well-paid occupations will help to raise the wages of sweated women
workers in other trades.

Now, here again, any lack of candor would be inexcusable. The effect
of this policy on the wages in women's trades is certainly to reduce
them. The policy serves, as powerfully as any trade union custom, to
restrict the entry of women into the men's employments, and often
spells virtual exclusion. For the "equal efficiency" may be
approximate only, and there may be advantages in male labor from the
employer's standpoint which are none the less important, because they
are not easy to define. Moreover, from the employer's standpoint, the
efficacy of female labor will be largely a matter for _experiment_,
and "equal pay" will give him no inducement to experiment at all. The
diminished number of women in these occupations (as compared with what
might have been) increases the number who must fall back on the purely
women's trades; and it _must_ serve to reduce the wages there, where
organization is