Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/68

 attempt here to answer the difficult question whether the establishment of such a wage is or is not, on the whole, desirable. But, however that question be answered, it is certain that its establishment would not secure the universal prevalence of adequate earnings. For earnings depend, not on the wage level alone, but on the wage level coupled with the amount of employment; and the setting up by law of a wage-rate superior to that which many persons can command in a free market could not fail to act injuriously upon the employment they obtain. Whether or not, therefore, a legal minimum wage is established, the fundamental difficulty, that the earnings of many persons are inadequate to the totality of their reasonable needs, still calls for a solution. We are thus led forward inevitably to the consideration of a third policy, additional to the two already discussed, which is relevant to the minimum standard of housing accommodation—the policy, namely, of State aid towards the housing of the poor.