But, if the "pin money" argument is sound, then the case against a low wage becomes doubly strong. The argument would justify the payment of less than living wages to women employees who live at home and are not dependent upon their earnings for their living. The objection to this arrangement is evident. If an employer pays these women less than living wages, is he not in receipt of their working energy at less than cost? Who pays the difference? Their parents. What is the character of this payment? A gift or a bounty paid toward the revenues of the employer. The man who would uphold such a reprehensible practice as this should not be argued with, he should be investigated.

Then too, since it is impossible to have one wage schedule for women workers who live at home and another for women "adrift," the practical results of paying the former less than a living wage is to put the latter on the same wage basis. Thus the employer levies tribute indiscriminately upon all; and the pity of it all is that the woman adrift must pay that tribute or fare worse, and as she has no legitimate way to supplernent her wages, she must either starve or pay for the means of livelihood with the loss of her virtue. Is it possible to conceive of a more vicious parasitism than this?

In view of these facts, gathered from many reliable sources, it seems evident that there is a very important percentage of women workers who are living on or below the bread line, and whose potential competence as workers and mothers is, in consequence, seriously impaired. Who will maintain that this condition of affairs does not affect the public welfare, the health and material well-being of this and future generations? Is it not within the police power of a State to protect the weak members of society from exploitation, and to make it possible, if it is possible, for the unborn to be well-born? If then the end be legitimate, and in harmony with our ideal of government, should not the legislature possess the choice of means that are conductive to the attainment of this end?

Morals: Turning from a consideration of the relationship of low wages to safety and health, to the relationship between starvation wages and vice, we enter a much disputed sphere. Investigators differ in their conclusions. The consensus of opinion seems to be, however, that although low wages may not be the direct and immediate cause for the fall of many women, still their indirect influence is very disastrous. Poverty is a menace

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and a snare. Poverty is an opiate that blunts the moral sensibilities, weakens the will, and makes the descent into an immoral life easy. Once having broken faith with her womanhood, a fallen woman finds little in a life of decency, that is conditioned upon a return to poverty, to attract her away from the criminal ease, luxuries and excitement of the brothel.

But there is a closer relationship between low wages and immorality than through a mere weakening of the will, important as this is. One of the direct results of inadequate wages is to compel thousands of girls to live in cheap boarding or tenement houses. The close quarters in these places permit little if any privacy. Often where there are men and women lodgers in the same house the entrance to the rooms of the men lead through the rooms of the girls, or vice versa. About fifty per cent. of them have no other place than their rooms in which to receive friends. This cannot help but blunt a girl's sense of proper relations with the other sex and foster standards that are prejudicial to an enlightened morality. It is a matter of common knowledge, too, that many of the tenement house landlords expect to make their profits not primarily from the rent, but from a vicious traffic in the virtue of their tenants. Jacob Riis wrote of these landlords in 1901: "We have heard it until it has made our hearts sick, how they traffic in virtue, these vultures, that their pockets may bulge and their diamonds blaze while mothers weep; how girls are snared for the bagnio, and sold by their seducers into a slavery from which death is the only escape, for while they live they must help fill with the wages of their shame the bottomless coffers that buy elections and our liberties."

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Another result of a low wage is to leave the recipient nothing for amusements. Says one report: "When it comes to amusements, most of the women have nothing left to spend. Of the 1,568 women who reported on this question, 62 per cent said that they spent no money for pleasure-that it took all their earnings to meet their daily expenses." Yet these girls crave considerable diversion-they want to forget their troubles-they

1 The Social Evil in Chicago, Report of Vice Commission, 1911, p. 42-43. 2 Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, 1911, p. 66. 8 Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, 1911, p. 62. Report of Commission on Minimum Wage Boards (Massachusetts), 1912, p. 213.

Outlook, October 26, 1901.

Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, 1911, p. 73.

want to get away from their cheerless and unsanitary lodgings. As a result they either accept whatever amusement men are willing to give them, or they flock to cheap amusement places, as they are the only ones they can afford. In either case they are subjected to tortuous temptations to which many yield.

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Then there is the effect of the attitude of the employer to consider the employer who does not have to pay a living wage and who assumes that his girl employees supplement their wages from the outside. Take the case of one of the hundreds of girls whose weekly expenses exceed their wages. If she has no relatives or friends to assist her, what is she to do? If she protests to the employer she is met with a "Haven't you a man friend to help support you?" In fact, the attempt on the part of many employers to employ girls who are willing to work for less than a living wage, seems to be nothing less than a barefaced bid for girls who are supplementing their wages immorally, or it is a veiled suggestion to innocent applicants that they are supposed to earn a little on the outside. Miss Evangeline Booth, commander of the salvation army in the United States, while in Minneapolis in the spring of 1913, made the comment : “I know that in New York City, where I make my headquarters, a working girl cannot live without being subjected to strong temptations unless she is paid more than $9.00 or $10.00 a week. This is the situation in New York and I do not believe a girl can live for less in other cities. I know from the results of investigations by the Salvation Army in New York to better the conditions of the working girl, that hundreds of girls are advised to 'go wrong' when they are employed."

Finally, it cannot be controverted that low wages are the immediate cause of the downfall of some girls. According to a report from Kansas City, seventy out of the 300 inmates of houses of ill fame in that city gave low wages as the cause of their downfall. During the investigation in the spring of 1913, by the Illinois Senate Vice Commission, Senator Nels Jual of the Commission said: "The employers think that low wages have nothing to do with immorality among women; the women of the town say it has everything to do with it." The Minne

1 Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session. 2 Ibid., p. 30.

3 Ibid.

1911, p. 93, 94.

Report_on Wage Earning Women of Kansas City. Board of Public Welfare of Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1913, p. 81.

apolis Morning Tribune for March 8, 1913, reported: "The women witnesses talked in whispers and all to the same effect, namely, that they had been unable to make a living at reputable callings, and so took the downward path." (On March 6, 1913, Lieutenant-Governor O'Hara, the chairman of the Commission, said in a public statement (quoted in part above): "In brief this is the situation: environment is responsible for a majority of crime. Women go wrong because they are compelled to. They have to live. Life is dear to us all. . . . The senators declare that if the women of Illinois are being paid starvation wages and that, as a result, many of them are being made the victims of the infamous 'white slave' traffic, it is high time the public take cognizance of such conditions." Elizabeth B. Butler shows the intimate relation between low wages and prostitution by the following examples from Pittsburg: "A girl whose father was killed by an electric crane was the only one of the family old enough to work. Forced by financial means to accept a wage fixed by custom at a point below her own cost of subsistence, much more below the cost of helping to maintain a family of dependents, she drifted into occasional prostitution. Another Pittsburg girl was induced by the bitter need of her younger brothers and sisters to raise her wages from $6 a week to $10 by concessions to her employer, and finally to choose prostitution as a means of support. A comrade of hers came long ago from a country town to work in a cigar factory, but after an unsuccessful struggle with the city, drifted into the same way of life. Without a home to supplement her wages, she caught at what seemed to her the only way of making them meet her needs. In such cases, scarcely typical, but far from uncommon, cause and effect are glaring in their directness."

The underpaid working girl's two-horned dilemma is this: her business employer demands cleanliness, neatness and efficiency, but he is willing to pay her in wages only a part of what she needs to satisfy these conditions. On the other hand, in the sorry business of prostitution those who deal in virtue are willing to pay her well if she will but commercialize her womanhood. What shall she do? That is the problem that is torturing the tempted soul of many a starving girl. Yet wise individuals, who have always basked in plenty, insist that there is no relation between low wages and vice.

1 Elizabeth B. Butler, "Women and the Trades," p. 347-8.

Protection against Oppression. That the State occupies, with respect to its citizens, a position of "parens patriae," trustee, or guardian, has been repeatedly asserted by the United States Supreme Court.1 It is the duty of the State, therefore, not only to protect the health and morals of its subjects, but also to extend to them protection against economic oppression. "We hold, therefore," said Professor William F. Willoughby of Princeton University, in his presidential address before the American Association for Labor Legislation in December 1913,2 "that the refusal by the State, which alone has the power of enacting and enforcing general rules of conduct, to determine the minimum conditions of health, security and comfort which the public conscience demands as the birthright of all, its refusal to prevent the exploitation of the weak and helpless through excessive hours of labor or payment of inadequate compensation, and its refusal to insure that due provision will be made, through insurance institutions, or otherwise, against the four great contingencies threatening the economic security of the individual— accident, sickness, old age and inability to work, means its failure to met that duty which it is the prime function of a constitutional government to perform: viz., the protection of the individual against oppression and the guaranteeing to him of the fullest possible enjoyment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." On this understanding of the powers and duties of a state, minimum wage legislation is based. But in the opinion of Judge Catlin,3 and others who oppose the legal regulation of the rate of wages, the State cannot lawfully become a “pater familias" until our present form of government has been entirely changed; they hold that the enforcement of a minimum wage law is an assumption by the State of this paternalistic power and is expressly prohibited to the State by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

The Police Power and the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment does not impair the police power of a state to legislate in the interest of the public welfare. This was conclusively determined by the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Slaughter House Cases in 1873. This same

1 Missouri v. Illinois, 180 U. S., 208; Kansas v. Colorado, 185 U. S., 125; Mormon Church v. The United States, 136 U S., I.

2 American Political Science Review, February, 1914.

3 Ramer Co. v. Evans, District Court, Second Judicial District, November 23, 1914. Minnesota.

The Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wallace, 36, and 111 U. S., 746.