THE PRICE OF VIRTUE
Morality at Eight Dollars a
Week—The Minimum.
If the price of girls is dependent on
eight dollars per week (the minimum
wage) over which Chicago is at
present so loudly clamoring, then indeed has our standard of morality fallen very low. The investigating committee has proven nothing beyond the
fact that girls paid less than eight
dollars per week, cannot maintain
their respectability, but must resort to
immoral living in order to keep up appearances. This seems a strange
reason for transgression, a devious
winding from the path of virtue.
Is Virtue to be maintained by dollars and cents? Are department
stores, houses of refuge for the weak
fibred, weak-kneed girls and young
women who have no morals excepting
those that are bought and paid for?
The stores would do well to establish
houses of rectitude for such young women,
instead of thrusting them upon
department stores to keep straight at
eight dollars per week.
Virtue that can be bought at this
minimum wage will not be virtue of
long standing; for eight dollars brings
more demand than four or five dollars
and the accessories that complete the
living wage of eight dollars is liable
and propable to lead to grosser wrong
and greater immoral practice, than
that at a lower wage.
The legislature is imposing a very
different taste upon the employee.
Many girls entering stores have no
standard of right conduct and right
living. The fault is in their home environment where virtue should be
inculcated and implanted so deeply
that the vanities of life will not lead to
ruin, for after all. it is not the low living wage that leads to girls going astray. It is the glamor of life, the love
of grandeur and luxury, the longing
for the delicate accessories and comforts. The wage of eight dollars per
week will not naturally benefit the
girls in this way. The heart longing
will be just as keen at eight as at five
dollars a week, the means of securing
them will also be just the same.
The investigators, seem to take no
consideration of the fact that there are
hundreds of thousands of pure, honest
upright girls working for their daily
sustenance to whom this investigation
is an insult and a slur. By what right
do they cast aspersions upon the
characters of so many honest bread
winners?
It is libel that should be punishable,
for such reflections upon ones character and reputation demands explanations and calls loudly for redress. Let
the honest girls of toil rise up in denunciation of the ignominy at present
being assailed and branded. Human
nature is human nature, and we cannot
legislate against it. There are men
and women, boys and girls, whose instincts and ruling passion are for the
immoral life, cannot be gainsaid. The
minimum wage will never affect these
They must be placed at a different
angle with regard to human life, before their moral status can be chang-
ed. Neither eight dollars, ten dollars,
nor fifteen dollars will ever cause
them to change their physical emotions. Virtue that can be gauged by
the minimum or the maximum wage
is not water tight virtue. Department
stores should not be made to stand the
brunt of this investigation of wage
and morality, nor should suspicion be
cast upon the innocent. The least ef-
ficient should not be forced into the
place of the most efficient. It is a
line artificially drawn to repress the
best activities of the more capable.
Chicago is digging a pit for its wage
earning girls, into which many will
heedlessly fall. She is showing them
how immorality is more lucrative
than honest labor, discouraging their
efforts at bread winning, and her loud
clamorous cry of virtue at eight dollars per week, will make more converts
to a life of shame and ease, than to a
living wage life of toil and struggle.
LALLA BLOCK ARNSTEIN
