Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/72

Counter-Currents if we are daunted by the gulf between people who are theorizing and people who are merely living, we can take refuge with the reformers who demand "increased remuneration for women" whether they are worth it or not; who would make the need of the worker, and not the quality of the work, the determining factor in wages. We may "protect women from themselves," by prohibiting them from accepting less than their legal hire.

The only real peril of a minimum wage law is that it has a tendency to relegate the incompetent to beggary. It cannot, as some economists claim, discourage efficiency. Nothing can discourage efficiency, which scorns help and defies hindrance. But, by the same ruling, nothing can command more than it is worth in the markets of the world. We do wrong when we release the worker from any incentive to good work. We do wrong when we release her from a sense of 56