ent entirely, and into the poorhouse;[2] for, at a fixed
price, it is obvious that the employer will employ only the most
efficient labor, and the same argument causes some of their more
thoughtful friends to dissuade the women school-teachers in New York
from their present effort to get their wages or salaries fixed by law
at a price equal to that paid a man.[3]

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 161; below, p. 213.]

[Footnote 2: In the old town of Plymouth the chairman of the selectmen
asked what, he should do under vote of town meeting requiring him to
pay two dollars a day for all unskilled labor employed by the town.
"We have," he said, "about one hundred and twenty old men in Plymouth,
largely veterans of the Civil War. We have been in the habit of giving
them one dollar and a quarter per day. Under this two-dollar vote we
cannot do it without bankrupting the town." He was advised to go ahead
and still pay them the dollar and a quarter per day and take the
chance of a lawsuit, which he did, and so far as the writer knows no
lawsuit has ever been brought; but in all cases that would not be the
result.]

[Footnote 3: This is law in Utah; but nevertheless a letter from a
State government official informs me that women are willing to [and
do?] work for a smaller salary.]

A principle somewhat akin to that of a vote of a town fixing the rate
of wages is the recent constitutional amendment in the State of New
York (see above, p. 161) which validated the statute requiring that in
public work (that is to say, labor for the State, for cities, towns,
counties, villages, school districts, or any municipality of the
State), or _for contractors employed directly or indirectly by the
State or such municipality_, that rate shall be paid which is usual
at the time in the same trade in the same neighborhood. This was the
earliest statute, which was declared unconstitutional (see above, p.
161). The lack of interest in this tremendously important matter is
shown in the fact that not one-third of the voters took the trouble
to vote on the amendment at all, and that for three days after the
election no New York newspaper took notice of the fact that the
amendment had passed. Up to this constitutional amendment the courts
of New York, as well as those of California and even of the United
States, had resented with great vigor the attempt of statutes to make
a crime the permitting of a free American citizen to work over eight
hours if he