articular kind of service is absolutely inelastic (a rare if not
impossible situation in a large market), there must be fewer jobs
for the less capable workers at high than at low wages, other prices
remaining the same. Further, some of the less capable workers must be
crowded out of such jobs as remain; for an artificially higher wage
attracts into an occupation some from other occupations before paid
more highly. It seems to be admitted by the friends of minimum wage
legislation that this result is logically to be expected and that to
some degree it appears. Of course it is never possible to tell to just
what extent workers have been and are being excluded in this way from
any particular establishment or occupation. Forbidden to earn what
they can, the poorer workers must become dependent on charity. It
may be said, and perhaps truly: better this than underpaid labor
destructive to the health of the workers and evil in its competitive
effects upon other wage workers.

In most discussions of the wages of women there is a ready confusion
of sympathetic ideals of what one would like to see with the cold
facts as they are. Women's services (especially those of young women)
have increasingly of late been coming upon the labor market in such
a way as to cause abnormal congestion in a few occupations. Employers
have not caused low wages in these cases. Partly these occupations
are the clean, light, and agreeable ones, partly they have a relative
social glamour, largely they can be followed for a few years near the
home of the worker, nearly always they may be undertaken with brief
training and little skill. Investigation has shown that at least
eighty per cent of this group of girl workers live at home. A wage
that is amply a "living wage" when used as a pro-rata contribution
to an American family income is frequently insufficient for the girl
living "independently." Such a girl is, under the conditions, unable
to earn a living in her chosen occupation, and it may be better to
recognize that fact and to deal with such individual cases as appear
among the one fifth of all girls employed.

The one unquestioned service of the minimum wage law is that of
diagnosing the evil of low wages rather than in remedying it.
The minimum wage law brings to light the industrial incapacity of
particular individuals to earn a living wage. The direct remedy is to
abolish the incapable workers or their incapacity by such methods
as regulating