What if there were no minimum wage?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/24/opinion/greene-minimum-wage/index.html?hpt=op_t1

In this article, Bob Greene uses historical evidence, quotes, and interviews to argue that life without a minimum wage would be terrible.Although, he never says outright that the government should raise the minimum wage,  he implies that it would improve the quality of life for those who struggle to survive under the current $7.25 federal minimum wage law. He begins the article with rhetorical questions, asking "What do you think life in the United States would be like if there were no minimum wage. If employers were allowed to pay workers anything they wanted? Would much of American life turn into something out of Charles Dickens? Or would the country flourish?".  In the next few paragraphs he answers his own questions with logic. In 1938, congress passed the first minimum wage law, helping the country rise from the remaining vestiges of the Great Depression. Greene quotes FDR as saying "All but the hopeless reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of manpower, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor, and the exploitation of unorganized labor.". Another piece of evidence Greene uses is an interview with someone who makes minimum wage saying, "([With a minimum wage increase]I'd be able to buy better quality food some of the time. I could pay for gas and car insurance, so I could drive to my job instead of taking public transportation or riding a bicycle. And it would help me be able to pay my electricity and phone bills on time." These pieces of evidence support the idea that minimum age is necessary and that an increase in minimum wage would benefit the country. Greene then argues that as the minimum wage was increased from only $.25 cents an hour to $7.25 an hour over the decades, many people have argued that the raise would prevent employers from hiring more people and raise the cost of living, goods, and services. That same argument is currently being made in congress to prevent minimum wage being raised to $9.00 an hour. Greene ends the article with an interesting thought: "If there had never been a minimum-wage law passed...Americans today could be paid as little as employers could get away with". People could still potentialy be making $.25 cents an hour with no hope of making an adequate living, supporting a family, or providing for a future. Greene subtly answers the question e asked at the beginning of the article; without a federal minimum wage, our country would not be formed by the standards of democracy, but the a Darwinian idea of "survival of the fittest".