Morality Pay Volume 5

In early twentieth-century Texas, women workers, labor union partisans, politicians, and Progressive reformers clashed over the idea of minimum wage laws for women. In Morality Pay, Leah LaGrone examines how national debates over women's minimum wage took shape around sex work throughout Texas. As progressive reformers pushed for wage protections, they tried to shift the narrative around sex work from morality to economics, attributing the practice to economic necessity rather than moral degeneracy. Though Texas did pass a minimum wage law in 1919, the discussion on including Mexican American women workers along the border changed the momentum. LaGrone reveals how white men who reigned supreme in the state became alarmed at the notion that wage laws "protecting" white women would also extend Mexican American and Black working women's economic freedom. Efforts to instate a new wage law for women in 1921 ultimately fell to the politics of class and race in the region. An exploration of the long-standing intersection of race, class, labor, and gender politics, Morality Pay clarifies a moment in history that still shapes discussions about which women's labor is "worthy" of a livable wage.