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 by no means strong. I am far from asserting that this consideration is conclusive against the principle of "equal pay for equal work" (though I think it conclusive against a rigid interpretation of it); for other matters, such as the standpoint of the male trade unionist must be taken into account. But the reactions on the wages in women's trades permit of no ambiguity.
In occupations of another type, the issue takes a somewhat different form. In the teaching profession, "equal pay" would not exclude the women; it would be far more likely to exclude the men. For, though the advocates of the principle would declare that their intention is that the salaries of women should be leveled up to those of men, it is more probable that the ultimate outcome would be a leveling down. Educational authorities have the ratepayer and the taxpayer to consider; and, apart from this, they have their own interpretation of "what should be." To pay a woman less than a man for the same work may seem glaringly unfair; but it is not very clear why a woman, who is an elementary school teacher, should be paid much more than, say, a hospital nurse, merely because in the former case a number of men happen also to be employed. In fact, there is a clashing of equities in this connection; and there is little doubt which of them the educational authorities would prefer. A leveling down of the men's salaries would make it all but impossible to attract men of the desired type into the profession, and would thus lead to the virtual extinction of the male elementary school teacher. This might seem in a narrow sense to be economically desirable. Why should not men take their services to the tasks for which they can command a higher reward, and which women cannot do as well? But whether this would be desirable in the true interests of education is a far more doubtful matter. And this is the real problem of "equal pay for equal work" for male and female school teachers. The reader will notice that I have refrained from alluding to the controversy as to whether men should receive more on the grounds that they have wives and families to maintain. That, although a most absorbing issue, is not the real issue in practice at the present time. The real issue is a clashing between a sense of "what should be" on obvious general grounds and a sense of "what should be " in the particular, derived from the very patent and general "what is" that men receive as a rule far higher pay than women.
Chapter X
The Real Costs of Production
§1. Comparative Costs. Beneath the great diversity of the considerations which are applicable to the different agents of production, certain general conclusions emerge from the analysis of the last four chapters. In no case did we find that the aggregate supply of the agent was determined by clear and certain economic laws, possessing any fundamental significance. The supply of natural resources is a fixed thing, quite independent of the efforts or the desires of man. However the supply of capital and the supply of labor may react under present conditions towards economic stimuli, these reactions possess no quality of inevitability and bear no clear relation to "what should be." The supply of risk-bearing responds perhaps more decidedly to the prospects of increased reward; but it is so intimately associated with special knowledge and the qualities of business enterprise, as to leave some uncertainty attaching even to this conclusion. When, on the other hand, we turn to the apportionment of these factors among different uses, we find relations which are both clear and fundamental. Laws emerge which state at once not only "what is" or at least "what tends to be," but also "what should be"; and it is the fact that they taste "what should be" that gives them their fundamental character.
These conclusions enable us to give a general answer to the question which was raised at the end of Chapter V: What are the ultimate real costs to which the money cost of production correspond? The attempt has often been made to relate money costs to such things as the effort of working and the sacrifice of waiting. The existence of such costs is beyond dispute. Much saving does mean a sacrifice of immediate enjoyment to the man who saves. Most labor is irksome and disagreeable in itself, and involves strain and wear and tear; while all labor means a deprivation of the utility of leisure. Workpeople, moreover, do not grow on gooseberry bushes, but must be fed and clothed from the cradle; and their rearing and maintenance represents a real cost which someone must incur.
But the existence (or the importance) of such costs is one thing, their relation to money costs is another. In Chapter VIII we saw how difficult it was to establish any clear relation between the rate of interest and the sacrifice of saving. The costs of labor present similar difficulties. The relative irksomeness of two occupations may affect the relative wages which will rule in the two cases; so, certainly, will the differences in the cost of education and training which they require. But these are matters which concern the apportionment of labor between different employments. There is no good reason to suppose that the general wage-level would be reduced, merely because work as a whole became less irksome, or involved a smaller physical or mental strain. The supply of people is not determined by the same kind of influences as is the supply of a commodity. Parents do not produce children for the sake of the wages which the children will receive when they go out to work; or, if this happens, we rightly regard it as a horrible anomaly. In so far as parents are affected by economic conditions it is by their own economic conditions; the question is rather one of how many children they can afford to have, than of a balancing of the cost to them against the incomes which their children may subsequently acquire. But other considerations enter in; and, in fact, it is doubtful how the aggregate supply of labor will react to changes in prosperity. Finally, the supply of land involves neither effort nor sacrifice; and, among our money costs, we have to account for the item of the rent of land. To dispose of this difficulty by arguing that rent does not enter into marginal costs (in any sense which is not equally true of wages and profits) is to lose contact with reality. Thus the attempt to explain money costs in terms of the costs of producing the ultimate agents of production leads us into a quagmire of unreality and dubious hypothesis. For a systematic theory, which will rest on firm foundations, we must interpret money costs in very different terms.