A minimum wage is demanded and in several states made a legal requirement, but to name a definite sum per week puts a stated figure where a movable and changeable condition inheres in the situation.
Experts in labor reform, therefore, urge the passage of legislative bills providing for "wage commissions to determine living wages for women and minors," and such have been secured in several states.
The linking of women of all ages with minors may be necessary for protection of individual women from exploitation, but again, it must be insisted that such a blanket cover for women workers of all ages may not be for the ultimate good of the adult, competent yet struggling women, who are trying to compete with men for a place in the world of labor.

The fact is that we often approach the problems of work and wages and general labor conditions from the angle of the most needy, the most exploited, the least trained, and the poorest in opportunity.

This may be the highway of philanthropy and to be travelled in the interest of social helpfulness, but it is not all the roads labor reform must use.
=Minimum Wage for Fathers of Families Real Need.=--When we study questions of labor as related to family well-being we must begin with an ideal of what the normal family requires of its members, men, women, and older children, and place in the first position of economic requirement the family demand upon the husband and father.

He must, we have said, be in position to be a "good provider" for his group.

That means he must be trained to be a worker, faithful, efficient, intelligent, who does something which society needs to have done and for which employers can and will pay adequate wages.