Page 5 - 1912 February - To Dragma

71 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

THE EQUAL PAY QUESTION.

M Y DEAR MRS. ESTERLY:

My part in obtaining "Equal Pay" for the women teachers of
New York City was so small a one, that it is quite unimportant.
However, I am glad to write about the City's final recognition of
the principle itself—because "Equal Pay for Equal Work" is one
of the great principles for which the "woman movement" in general
stands. Economic equality is almost i f not quite as important as
political equality. I n fact it was one of the greatest of women
suffragettes, Susan B. Anthony, who first demanded that that eco-
nomic principle be recognized in the State of New York, when in
1862 in the N . Y. Teachers' Association she offered the following
resolution which was there voted down, "Justice requires that the
amount of compensation should not be regulated by sex, but by
the amount of service rendered." I n 1906 the Interborough Assoc-
iation of Women Teachers was founded in N . Y. City, to obtain
"equal pay" for the 14,000 women teachers in the N . Y. City Public
Schools. From 1906 to 1910 that association carried on a vigorous
campaign both in the Board of Education and in the legislature
to whom it was necessary to appeal before "equal pay" could be
put into effect. Unceasingly the women worked but with no definite
success. I n 1910 Mayor Gaynor and the Board of Estimate and
Apportionment appointed a Commission to investigate the whole
subject of teachers' salaries in the N . Y. Public Schools and to
report to the Board of Estimate. There were four men appointed—
one a Banker, one a Lawyer, one the officer of an insurance company,
one an educator, and myself. We carried on our investigation with
the aid of trained experts for 9 months, serving without pay, and
in October, 1910, reported to the Board of Estimate and Apportion-
ment recommending many radical changes in the salary schedules and
advocating "one salary for one position" «or "equal pay for equal
work." The fight of the women teachers was not won yet. Our
recommendations had to be made law—and to our report there was
much violent opposition. But the Board of Education itself soon
saw the light and in January, 1911, recommended "equal pay"
schedules. To make a long story short—the legislature in October,
1911, finally passed the teachers' equal pay bill—embodying our
commissioners report with the exception of minor changes, and the
Mayor and the Governor signed the bill making "equal pay" man-
datory in our N . Y. City Public Schools. You can see that my
work was only one cog in the wheel; it was however an intensely
interesting piece of work and it seems to me it was exhaustive of