STATIC STATE AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF ECONOMIC REFORM 33 
Again, such an artificial advance in a country to which immi- 
grants have been coming may, under certain special conditions, be 
made a means of retarding rather than of accelerating immigra- 
tion. If the artificial wage scale creates unemployment, and 
immigrants are discouraged from coming until they actually have 
jobs, such a measure would practically stop immigration. 
On this general ground, a drastic minimum wage law, rigidly 
enforced, could consistently be advocated. If such a law were 
rigidly enforced, and no one was given a special dispensation to 
work for less than the legal minimum, then every laborer who 
could not get the minimum wage would automatically become a 
pauper. If the resulting large number of paupers of breeding 
age were segregated and prevented from multiplying, it would 
tend to thin out that class of laborers, at least by the second 
generation. In this way, not only would the legal minimum wage 
tend to become the equilibrium wage, but such a law would prob- 
ably work eugenically besides.” 
If the problem of the unemployed can be dealt with in any 
of these ways, the higher wages received by those who are 
fortunate enough to find employment may also, in many cases 
at least, act as an educator to raise the standard of living and 
thus keep down the birth rate among them. In other cases, 
especially in the cases of those of lowest intelligence, unless they 
are automatically forced into the pauper class, the higher wages 
may merely result in earlier marriages and larger families. If 
sufficient numbers should react in this way, the numbers of 
laborers would increase, and the country with a minimum wage 
law would be perpetually burdened with a problem of artifically 
created pauperism. 
In spite of all these qualifications, it is clear that these direct 
methods of raising wages are permanently effective only on con- 
dition that some of the original factors in determining the 
equilibrium wage are so changed as to produce a new equilibrium 
of forces which will make the legally decreed wage the actual 
equilibrium wage. It is well to remember that if some of these 
original factors could be intelligently changed, a new equilibrium 
and a new equilibrium wage would result anyway, semi-auto- 
matically, and without direct legislative wage fixing. 
* The writer has, on these grounds, for many years persistently advo- 
cated minimum wage laws.