My first job was hauling hay for a man outside town who paid in cash at the end of the day and never once said thank you. I was sore for a week. I have never been prouder of anything. That job taught me to show up, to keep quiet, and to be grateful for whatever was put in my hand.
The minimum wage in Texas is the same as the federal one, $7.25 an hour. Every so often somebody stands up and says that is not enough to live on. I understand the feeling. But I think they have the question backwards. A first paycheck is not supposed to be enough to live on. It is supposed to be enough to learn on.
Here is where I part ways with some of my friends on the right, who will agree with me that far and then stop. I do not think the lesson ends when a young man turns into a grown one. I think a modest paycheck is good for a person at any age. The man with a family who works for that wage learns things the comfortable man never does. He learns to fix his own truck. He learns which bills can wait and which ones cannot. He learns to tell his children no, and to mean it. Those are not small lessons. Those are the lessons that built this country.
There is an old saying where I come from that a hungry dog hunts best. My grandfather said it about bird dogs, and he was right about bird dogs. I have come to believe it about people, too. A man who has a little extra starts to get ideas. He takes a day off. He goes to the doctor about a pain he could have walked off. He starts asking his boss questions. None of that is wicked, but none of it gets the hay in, either.
I have heard it said that if wages went up, workers would spend more, and the whole town would do better. Maybe so. I am not an economist and I do not need to be. I know what a little money does to a young man, because I have seen it, and I would rather he stay a little hungry and keep his edge. Comfort is a slow poison. I have watched it take good men.
When I see a fellow working the register at night, tired and polite and making exactly what the law says he has to be paid, I do not feel sorry for him. I feel something closer to envy. He is being made into something. Most of us never get that kind of schooling once we are grown.
So I will be voting for the Republican for Senate when the time comes. As far as I can tell, the other fellow wants to raise that wage, and I would hate to see a whole generation lose its hunger before it learned anything from it.
A hungry dog hunts best. I have believed that my whole life, and I have never once been hungry.
D. M.