Page:Women Wanted.djvu/200

 : "You fool," she turned on him in scorn, "can't you see now that it's equal pay for equal work for men's sakes?"

At last he began to. Mme. Duchene is the wife of a celebrated architect in Paris. As the chairman of the Labour section of the Conseil National des Femmes, she had pled ineffectually for equal pay for women's sakes. When she cleverly changed the phrase "for men's sakes" it had a new punch in it. The aroused Bourse de Travail formed the now world-known Comité Intersyndical d'Action contre l'Exploitation de la Femme to back the feminist demand. And organised labour in land after land has begun to sign up its endorsement. For the flaming poster points out in effect: If a woman can be had to drill 1000 holes at 50 centimes an hour who will hire a man to drill 500 holes at 75 centimes an hour? That was the little sum the feminist set labour to work out the answer to.

And for the Government, there was Mrs. Black's breakfast. If it takes a breakfast that includes three rashers of bacon to produce the maximum output of munitions for a day, how many munitions will be missing if you don't get the bacon? Mrs. Black wasn't getting the bacon. Welfare supervisors reported that while Mrs. Black ate her dinner with all its formulated calories at the canteen, she didn't eat her breakfast there. In fact Mrs. Black didn't seem to eat much breakfast anywhere. It wasn't the habit of the British working class woman: She usually started work for the day on merely a piece of bread