There were no minimum wages laws prior to the late 19th century. I was curious what people at the time thought, so I dug up [1]: This is the basis of the o

There were no minimum wages laws prior to the late 19th century. I was curious what people at the time thought, so I dug up [1]: This is the basis of the oft-repeated accusation [...] that it prevents an employer from preferentially selecting an old man, or a physical or moral invalid, when there is a vacancy to be filled. [...] If the old man is engaged instead of the man in the prime of life, because he can be hired at a lower rate, the man of irregular habits rather than the steady worker, because the former is prepared to take smaller wages, there is a clear loss all round. The fact that the employer's mind no longer able to seek profit by "nibbling" at wages is constantly intent on getting the best possible workmen [...]. The young workman, knowing that he cannot secure a preference for employment by offering to put up with worse conditions than the standard, seeks to commend himself by a good character, technical skill, and general intelligence. If the conditions of employment are unregulated, it will frequently "pay " an employer (though it does not pay the community for him to do so) not to select the best workman, but to give the preference to an incompetent or infirm man, a "boozer" or a person of bad character, provided that he can hire him at a sufficiently low wage, make him work excessive and irregular hours, or subject him to insanitary or dangerous conditions. Some other arguments that were already tired by 1915: In 1896 [...] provision was made for the enforcement in those trades of a Legal Minimum Wage. Naturally this was opposed by all the arguments with which we are familiar - that it was "against the laws of Political Economy",that it would cause the most hardly pressed businesses to shut down, that it would restrict employment, that it would drive away Capital, that it would be cruel to the aged worker and the poor widow, that it could not be carried out in practice, and so on and so forth. And interesting context: In the five sweated trades to which the law was first applied sixteen years ago, wages have gone up from 12 to 35 per cent, the hours of labor have invariably been reduced, and the actual number of persons employed, far from falling, has in all cases, relatively to the total population, greatly increased. Still more convincing, however, are the continuous demands from the other trades, as they witnessed the actual results of the Legal Minimum Wage where it was in force, to be brought under the same law. All the "moral character" stuff didn't age well, but I'm more disappointed that we're rehashing otherwise identical arguments more than a century later. [1] http://doi.org/10.1086/252125 http://doi.org/10.1086/252125