"Don't you see
the increase in the cost of living? The working-man gets more money
in his pay envelope, but he can't buy more with it because prices go
up. And even supposing you could pass a minimum wage law, and stop
competition in wages, you'd only change it to competition in
efficiency--you'd throw the old and the feeble and the untrained
into pauperism."
"You make the world seem a hard place to live in," protested Sylvia.
"I'm simply telling you the elementary facts of business. You can
forbid the employer to pay less than a standard wage, but you can't
compel him to employ people who aren't able to earn that wage. The
business-man doesn't employ for fun, he does it for the profit there
is in it."
"If that is true," said Sylvia, quickly, "then the way of employing
people is cruel."
"But what other way could you have?"
She considered. "They could be employed so that no one would make a
profit. Then surely they could be paid enough to live decently!"
"But whose interest would it be to employ them without profit?"
"The State should do it, if no one else will."
I had been playing a game with Sylvia, as no doubt you have
perceived.
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