WOMEN’S WAGES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18322, 12 August 1921, Page 8

WOMEN’S WAGES.

There is no subject (says an English writer) which peaceable folk handle more delicately than that of the relation between women’s wages and men’s; none \vhich excites more envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness. The battle cry of equal pay for equal weak has resounded over many an embittered meeting, and will yet agitate many more. To the Bureau of Municipal Research in New York belongs the honour of achieving what we had thought impossible, of discovering some new facts and new arguments for the combatants. The bureau has been engaged upon tho valuable, if melancholy, task of investigating the cost of living, it has established that a family of five in New York requires £665 a year to maintain a minimum standard of comfort, a single man £273, and a single woman £279. There are several criticisms which a domestic financier would like to make on these figures, and we cannot refrain from remarking on tho singular success of the citizens of New York in keeping down the expenses of family life. That a Household of five should be comfortable on a sum which would but iust provide tho bare living wage for two people living t separately is surprising. But the great discovery is that a woman’s necessary expenses are larger than a man’s. Hitherto it has been generally assumed that, considered merely as machines, women are naturally more economical than men; that their fad consumption, and consequently their work ing costs, are less. The most ardent feminist would hardly deny that the normal man eats more and more expensive food than a woman. How the food bills are adjusted in New York we are not informed, but it is stated that a spinster is more costly than a bachelor because she has to spend more on clothes. We do not envy the task of the Bureau of Municipal Research in defining what a “minimum standard of Comfort” is in terms of frocks and hats. The telegraphic sum mary of their proceedings, indeed, gives a list of garments which it would bo embarrassing to discuss in public ; but we shall not be indiscreet in remarking that the mere number of articles in a lady’s wardrobe is ‘hot a of its cost, and wo arc wholly without information as to how much “the minimum standard of comfort” in the longitude of New York requires a woman to spend on her frock or her stockings. The conclusions of the bureau stand desperately in need of a commentary, for we find that minimum comfort for a spinster and for a wife is interpreted to ordain milliners’ bills on quite different scales. And, unfor tunulely, the distinction will encourage no frugal man to marry. Whether single or marded, a woman, if she keeps to the minimum, may have but two hats a year; but the spinster has to buy them for some I6s apiece, while the wife may dazzle tho world in a confection at precisely double that price. Who now dare say that mar riago is a failure?