Page:Women Wanted.djvu/198

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WOMEN WANTED

at all, the wage envelope for them has been very small, as lady-like an affair as an early Victorian pocket handkerchief—and just about as practical. Remarks of protest on the part of the recipient were customarily met with irritation or derision: Wages? Why, woman, what would you want with more wages anyhow—to buy a new ribbon to put on your hat? Now a man, of course, must have all the wages that he can get: he has to have them to buy the children's shoes and to pay the grocery bill and the coal bill and to support a wife who keeps his house and darns his socks. And, even if he has to have them to buy a cigar or a drink? Oh, don't ask foolish questions! A man has to have wages to meet all of his expenses, a large part of which is Woman. Now run along and be a good little girl!

But the new woman in industry can't be dismissed so easily as that. Especially a feminist in khaki can't. And she was respectfully saluting Government and begging to inquire if women were doing men's work so well as Government had said they were, when would women be getting men's pay?

EQUAL PAY IS COMING

And it was more than a "foolish question." It was a disturbing interrogation. Government looked up surprised from its war orders and statistical investigations to answer: "Why, really, don't you know, woman's work isn't the same as man's. You see, we have made over the machines for her. And