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OCTOBER TERM, 1913.

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FRANK C, STETTLER,
Plaintiff and Appellant,

US.

EDWIN V. O’HARA,

BERTHA MOORKHS,

AMEDEE M. SMITH,
Constituting the

INDUSTRIAL WELFARE COMMISSION OF THE
STATE OF OREGON,

Defendants and Respondents.

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APPENDIX
To the Briefs Filed on Behalf of Respondents

Prepared by
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS.
Assisted by BN
JOSEPHINE GOLDMARK,
Publication Secretary, National Consumers’ League.

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THE LIBRARY
OF THE

NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL
OF
INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR

RELATIONS

 

AT
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

 

 

 

 
TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART FIRST—Legislation Providing for the Establishment

of a Legal Minimum Wage for Women...........-..----.---2---0-0--— 1
I. THE AMERICAN LEGISLATION..............0000.000.----------Insert
II. THE FOREIGN LEGISLATION.........000000000000c cee 3

PART SECOND—E£aperience upon which the Legislation pro-
viding for the Establishment of a Legal Minimum Wage

  

 

 

 

FOP WOMEN. AS: BOS EDs. ciscce véccevsvex cidaesscenaavensetas vectvesvetansseeisexses0ee3 5
I. THE EVILS OF LOW WAGES. ..02.2ccceececeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 5
Ax PHYSICAL. ASPECT. ._.22.-cc.cccccccccccccececcnscsceccceteeeneaeeceneeesccensteen 5
(1) Bad Effect of Low Wages on the Healthof Women 5
(2) Bad Effect on the Next Generation.......................... 21
B. MORAL ASPECT. Q..2...2.222222cccceceececeececeeneeecceeeeeeceneccneesceoeeseseeeees 29
(1) Bad Effect on General Standards of Living. 29
(2) Bad Effect on Morals..........0.0.0000000.0c0ccecccccceeeceneee eens 40
C. ECONOMIC ASPECT. .....-2:c0..22 sce ee even een need 48
(1) No Present Standards for Women’s Wages............ 48
(2) Wages and Irregularity of Employment.................. 58
(3) The “Pin-Money” Fallacy. Contributions of
Working Women to the Family Income.................. 76
(4) Underpaying Industries are Subsidized 87
(a) By the Families of the Workers........ 88
(bb) By Society sce oop enc neu eevee vee ea a 91
(5) Underpayment the Root of Poverty... 104
II. BENEFITS OF AN ADEQUATE WAGE.......00.000000...... 108
(1) Benefits to Efficiency and Protection.................... 108
(a) On the Part of Employers
(b) On the Part of the Workers............0..020020..2.... 118
(2) Relation to Cost of Production...........00000000000220000- 125
(8) Benefits to General Standards of Living................ 137
Ill. BENEFITS OF THE LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE
(1)
(2)
5 (8)
(4)
(5)

 

(6)
IN THE

SUPREME COURT

OF THE

STATE OF OREGON

OCTOBER TERM, 1913.

FRANK C. STETTLER,
Plaintiff and Appellant,

vs.

EDWIN. V. O’HARA,
BERTHA MOORES,
AMEDEE M. SMITH,
Constituting the
INDUSTRIAL WELFARE COMMISSION OF THE
STATE OF OREGON,
Defendants and Respondents.

APPENDIX
To the Briefs Filed on Behalf of Respondents

Prepared by
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS.
Assisted by
JOSEPHINE GOLDMARK,

Publication Secretary, National Consumers’ League.
PART FIRST
THE EXISTING LEGISLATION

Eight states of the Union, besides Oregon, have
enacted laws providing by various methods for the estab-
lishment of a legal minimum wage for women. Similar
legislation exists in Great Britain and Australasia. The
most important provisions of the American Legislation
are given in the following insert:
[3]
Il. THE FOREIGN LEGISLATION.

As to the operation elsewhere of Minimum Wage legislation,
we quote here from the report of the Commission on Minimum
Wage Boards of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1912):

“Such a system of (Minimum Wage) legislation has been in
operation in the State of Victoria, Australia, since 1896, and in
Great Britain since January, 1910. Some form of fixing legal
minimum wages is also in operation in the other Australian states
and New Zealand. In Victoria and England the minimum wages
are determined by wage boards created for considering the special
requirements of the respective industries or trades.

THE VICTORIAN SYSTEM.

“In Victoria, at the instance of either employers or employees,
or of the minister of labor, the legislature may authorize the
creation of a special board, which is empowered to fix a minimum
wage for a given trade. Employers and employees are equally
represented upon such a board, and a non-partisan chairman is
selected by the two parties at interest, or, if they fail to agree,
is then appointed by the minister of labor. The chairman has a
casting vote. Determinations, as the decisions of the special boards
are called, if accepted by the minister of labor, are published in
the Government Gazette and become law for that trade; but if the
minister of labor considers that a determination may cause injury
to the trade, he may suspend it for a period of six months, and
then send it back to the board for reconsideration. There is also
the court of industrial appeals, to which determinations may be
referred, and this court has the power to amend or annul a deter-
mination. The decision of the court is final, but it may review its
own decisions. Moreover, the court of appeals is specifically in-
structed to consider whether a determination has been or may
be injurious to a trade, or may limit employment, ‘and if of opinion
that it has had or may have such effect, the court shall make
such alterations as in its opinion may be necessary to remove or
prevent such effect, and at the same time to secure a living wage
to employees.’” (Factory and Shops Acts, 1905, No. 1975.)

THE ENGLISH SYSTEM.

“In England, the industries in which the system may be
applied are named by Parliament, but the Board of Trade may pro-
visionally extend the application of the act to other industries,
subject to subsequent continuation by Parliament. The wage
boards, known as trade boards, are composed of representatives of
employers and of workers in equal numbers, elected by the respec-

3
La)

tive organizations, and of other members, including the chairman,
appointed by the Board of Trade. The determinations of these
trade boards are made obligatory by an order of the Board of
Trade, but the Board of Trade may suspend the operation of the
order. If the order is suspended the trade may after six months
again renew its recommendation, and the Board of Trade may
then issue an obligatory order or further suspend it. Minimum
wage orders determined in this manner apply to both men and
women, and they may apply universally to the trades or apply to
any special process in the work of the trade, or to any special
class of workers in the trade, or to any special area. The act (9,
Edward VII, chap. 22), went into effect Jan. 1, 1910, and applied
immediately to the trades of wholesale tailoring, box-making, lace-
making and chain-making. The act has not been in operation long
enough to judge of its ultimate success, but it was adopted after
mature consideration by a select committee, whose laborious inves-
tigations included a field study by Ernest Aves, commissioner of
the home office, into the workings of minimum wage regulations,
both in Australia and in New Zealand.” In 1913 wage boards were
established in four additional trades, sugar, confectionery and
food preserving, shirt-making, hollow ware, and cotton embroidery.

4
PART SECOND

EXPERIENCE UPON WHICH THE LEGISLATION PROVID-
ING FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A LEGAL
MINIMUM WAGE FOR WOMEN IS BASED.

THE EVILS OF LOW WAGES
A. PHYSICAL ASPECT.

(1) BAD EFFECT OF LOW WAGES ON THE HEALTH
OF WOMEN.

The dangers to the health of women from low wages
are two-fold: lack of adequate nourishment and lack of
medical care in sickness.

1—Investigation proves that with insufficient wages,
food is necessarily cut down below the level of subsistence
and health inevitably suffers. In order to meet unavoid-
able expenses for lodging and clothing, working women
often reduce their diet to the lowest possible point. More-
over insufficient clothing is more detrimental to persons
who are underfed than to those who are well nourished.

2—Statistics prove that expenditures for medical
treatment increase as income increases. Workers receiv-
ing the lowest wages are able to spend least on health and
hence are often without care in sickness, although their
need is greatest, by reason of low earnings and conse-
quent hardship. The percentage of income spent for
health has been found highest among factory workers.

Report of the Social Survey Committee of the Consumers’ League
of Oregon. CAROLINE J. GLEASON. Portland, Oregon, 1918.

The investigation has proved beyond a doubt that a large
majority of self-supporting women in the state are earning less
than it costs them to live decently; that many are receiving sub-
sidiary help from their homes, which thus contribute to the profits
[6] :

of their employers; that those who do not receive assistance from
relatives are breaking down in health from lack of proper nourish-
ing food and comfortable lodging quarters, or are supplementing
their wages by money received from immoral living. (Page 24.)

Department store girls adrift rise nearer to a decent standard
when they spend $118 per year, or nearly $10 per month for room
rent. Board for them amounts on the average to $196.26, or
$16.85 per month, which is 54 cents per day. This is divided
between toast and coffee for breakfast, 10c; for lunch, meat, bread
and tea, 15c; or salad, dessert and tea, 15c; and for dinner what-
ever they can manage to order for 25 cents. Picture these menus
as a source of energy for ten hours’ work in a factory or store,
and two or three more hours’ work “at home” in the evening. The
average spent for one month on both room and board is $26.18, a
sum which, it has been shown, will cover the cost of room and
board when bargained for at one time. (Page 61.)

The investigation showed the fact that many young women
avoid a doctor’s care because of the expense, and sometimes because
they know that it will mean an order to stop work—an order
which to them seems impossible to fulfill. Medicines and eye-
glasses are items which must not be forgotten here. Both are a
decided expense, but the latter often means a repeated one on
account of breakage. (Page 65.)

Wage Earners’ Budgets. [A Study of Standards and Cost of Living
in New York City.]| Louise B. More. New York, Henry
Holt & Co., 1907.

. There were 21 families, mostly with small incomes,
who expended less than 5 per cent of their total expenditures for
“sundries.” Their average income was $509; the average for
“sundries” was only $14.48. The deduction from this is that fam-
ilies on small incomes must spend practically their entire income
for the actual necessities of life, i. e., food, rent, clothing, light and
fuel, and that if sickness or death comes they must be helped by
some outside source to bear the extra expense. (Page 94.)

Women Workers in Milwaukee. IRENE Oscoop, Special Agent.
18th Biennial Report Bureau of Labor and Industrial Sta-
tistics, 1907-1908.

In the tanneries so far as could be observed, no great amount
of serious illness existed. To be sure, many complained that the
work “makes us sick.” Many had trouble with their eyes. Many
declared they “couldn’t eat.” Some complained of injuries from
C7]

over-lifting. Tuberculosis, too, was suspected in some cases and
confirmed in several. But the great harm to the health of women
in such work is the general and almost imperceptible undermining
of the reserve power of the individual.

Men who are on a salary, or who are independent, may work
long hours for many weeks, but to such there usually comes a
time when they may take a rest without losing their incomes.
This difference is too often ignored by well-to-do managers and
superintendents who sometimes find great personal satisfaction
in making comparisons between their long day and night business
vigils and the ten-hour work day of their employes. The business
manager may go to Europe for a month without losing his income.
The salaried worker has his regular vacation. But if the wage-
worker stops, the pay check stops too. If a factory girl is ex-
tremely tired or is really ill in the morning, she goes to work
just the same. She does a poor day’s work and drags herself home
still more worn and dejected. And this continues. Her nervous
system and youthful bodily strength give way little by little until
ability to resist disease practically disappears. (Pages 1060-61.)

Women and The Trades. ELIZABETH B. BuTLER. The Pittsburg
Survey—Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York,
1909.

For social strength, it would seem that the question ought to
be: What wage must a girl have in order to live decently, main-
tain sound health, and have reasonable recreation? For decency’s
sake, a community cannot afford to permit five girls from an iron
mill to diminish expenses by sharing one room with five men from
the same work place; neither can it afford to permit a girl to
hire board and a couch in the kitchen of a crowded tenement flat
for $3.00 a week. I question whether it can even afford the dim-
ming of bright thoughts, the effacing of individuality, that tend
to follow occupancy of one bed in the dormitory row of a working
girls’ home.

For health’s sake, the community cannot afford to permit its
girl members to receive a wage too low for nutrition, or for the
refreshment of exhausted strength. It reacts ultimately to the
harm of society when a garment worker has weak coffee for break-
fast, goes without lunch altogether, and eats two or three sand-
wiches for dinner, as her habitual diet. She may keep up through
her working life, but in her domestic relations she leaves a heri-
tage of weakness and inefficiency. We all are the sufferers when
a shop girl continues at her work after vitality has ebbed because
her wages are too low to permit treatment or rest. (Page 349.)
[8]

The Standard of Living Among Workingmen’s Families. ROBERT
Corr CHAPIN, Professor of Economics and Finance, Beiott
College, Wisconsin. Russell Sage Foundation Publication.
New York, 1909.

Table 98 (page 188) shows more clearly how expenditure for
the cure of sickness increases as income increases. The table
shows the number of families, by income and nationality, that
report spending less than $10, from $10 to $20, and so on. It
will be seen that the number of families reporting the smaller
sums is greatest in the lower income-groups and vice versa. of
the 132 families with incomes between $600 and $800 that report
expenditure for health 48.5 per cent. spend less than $10, as
against 36.6 per cent. of the 82 families with incomes of from
$900 to $1100 that report expenditure for health. On the other
hand expenditures of $75 and over are reported by 18.4 per cent.
of the families in the upper income classes ($900 to $1099), and
by but 3.8 per cent. of the families in the lower income classes
($600 to $799). (Pages 182 and 183.)

An examination of the cases of serious illness shows how such
an illness draws on the slender resources of the family. An
American family, for instance, in the $700 income group, reports
spending $41.60 for a child who did not live, and for the mother,
who suffers from nervous prostration. In another case in the
same income group an expenditure of $41 is reported, with the
statement that the mother had pleuropneumonia, following the
birth of a child. These families spent 6 per cent. of their income,
or three weeks’ wages of the man, for relief in sickness. Items
of $31, $24.50, $33, $53 must involve an even heavier burden on
the families with from $600 to $700 that report them. In many
cases where these expenditures on health-account. are high, there
is evident curtailment of expenditure in other directions. An
abnormally low expenditure for the man’s clothing appears in
one schedule, wherein it is stated also that the man was laid up
in the hospital for several weeks. In other cases where doctor’s
bills are large, expenditures for amusement and recreation and
for miscellaneous purposes disappear.

To judge from all these data, it seems that the liability to
disease does not vary greatly in the different income groups repre-
sented in our schedules, nor in different nationalities, but that
the resources available for combating disease are much more lim-
ited among families with only $700 or $800 to live on. These
families are accordingly thrown upon dispensaries and other free
medical assistance, or else their members are left to succumb to
the attacks of disease without adequate medical aid. If the family
[9]

undertakes to make better provision at its own charges, the result
is a lowering of the standard of living at some other point. An
income of less than $800 does not permit expenditures sufficient
to care properly for the health of the family. (Pages 184 and 185.)

Homestead: The Household of a Mill Town, The Pittsburg Survey.
MarcareT F. Byincton, Russell Sage Foundation Publi-
cation. New York, 1910.

One interesting point is that expenses incurred for health
(which may well be grouped with these other home expenditures)
count as a luxury to be indulged in only with increasing income.
When, for instance, a child is ill, the state of the pocket-book, no
less than the seriousness of the disease, determines whether the
doctor shall be called. Tonics for the rundown in spring time are
dispensed with in a laborer’s home. (Page 87.)

But however strong the desire for money savings may be, it
appears that with only a small margin above the sum deemed
necessary for essentials, most families in the lower wage groups
must face a choice between some present comforts and enjoyments
and the peace of mind which a bank account gives. (Pages 97-98.)

The Living Wage of Women Workers. [A Study of Incomes and
Expenditures of 450 Women Workers in the City of Bos-
ton.] Lourse M. Boswortn, Fellow, Women’s Educational
and Industrial Union. Longmans, Green & Co., New York,
1911.

The problem of getting a sufficient supply of wholesome food
at a price within her means is probably the most serious one that
the woman on a small wage has to face. With nourishing, plenti-
ful meals, other problems become less serious, and are met with
comparative ease, but in an ill-nourished condition courage and
initiative wane, perplexities multiply, and the woman loses heart
for the struggle. (Page 40.)

It is true that a smaller amount spent for food may mean
very much more adequate nourishment when the cooking is done
at home. It is a question, however, whether the expenditure of
strength which this exacts from a tired woman does not offset
the advantage of more wholesome food. The landlady of one girl
remarked, “Miss I often doesn’t have any dinners. She gets
home at 7 P. M. from the factory, and is too tired either to go
out to dinner and climb the five long flights to her room or to
cook anything for herself.” And this is not an infrequent case. “I
know that I ought to get my meals regularly,” said another girl,

 
[10]

“but when I get home I am so tired that I don’t feel like fussing
to go out and buy stuff and bring it home and cook it.” (Page
44.)

The standard of living in respect to food varies considerably
for different occupations. . . . The factory worker pays the
smallest amount for food; her entire expenditure is only $2.84 per
week, or 38.64 per cent. of her income. (Page 45.)

Expenditure for health varies considerably for different occu-
pations and wage groups, both in respect to amount of outlay and
its. proportion to income. It is not possible, however, to draw
definite conclusions from the figures as to the effect on health of
workers in the various occupations and wage groups. Workers
receiving low wages are often obliged to do without needed med-
ical treatment, although by reason of small earnings and conse-
quent hardship they may need it the more. (Page 76.)

The percentage of income expended for health by the
factory woman is also the highest, 6.27 per cent. The percentages
for other classes are: Saleswomen, 5.33; professional, 3.79; wait-
ress, 3.14; kitchen, 2.52. It may be concluded, therefore, that
factory women as a class have a comparatively heavy burden in
caring for their health. (Page 76.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. V. Wage-Earning Women in Stores and
Factories. Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd
Session, 1911.

In all too many instances the reader will find, between the
expenditures for the current and incidental necessaries and the
average earnings, little or no margin for clothes. Usually this has
but one meaning: The girls have given the cost of such food
as they get for themselves when other demands are not more urgent.
When clothes must be purchased, when emergencies arise, some-
thing must be cut from the expenditures for the current neces-
saries in order to meet the demand for periodic necessaries. It is
wholly intelligible and quite pardonable that the majority of
these girls, whose earnings were inadequate, should have concealed
the methods of making up the deficit. It is but the impulse of the
self-respecting to ‘‘put the best foot forward.” ‘You see I’m diet-
ing,” said a frail slip of a department store girl as she held
out her tray upon which the cafeteria cashier, in the presence of
the Bureau’s agent, put a 2-cent check, covering the cost of the
girl’s lunch—a small dish of tapioca. She may have been dieting,
but the evidences were pathetically against the need thereof, and
there were some things telling other tales to a thoughtful ob-
[iL]

server. The girl’s shoes and waist and skirt were plainly getting
weary of well doing, and to hold her position as sales-woman they
must soon be replaced. Was she finding a way? She is given,
not as an illustration of the majority, but as a type of many
whose earnings are inadequate.

In a number of cases ways of making ends meet were made
plain. For example: Sarah J. was first called upon in a reason-
ably comfortable boarding house, where she paid $4 a week for
her accommodations. When the agent went a second time, in
order to complete the schedule, Sarah had moved into a cheaper
lodging house, where she was getting her own meals. Her own
explanation was that it was time to get some new clothes and she
had to “save it out of her board.”

“Oh, my; where would we get our clothes if we bought meat
every day?” was the way in which one of the group of four house-
keeping girls answered the query as to this detail of housekeeping
expenses. A woman who has spent ten years keeping a lodging
house for factory and department store girls, not as a philan-
thropy but as a means of livelihood, said to the agent: “The girls’
stories to the contrary notwithstanding, very few of those getting
their own meals have adequate breakfasts. In some cases, of
course, this is due to a desire to sleep late in the morning, but
in most cases it is due to the necessity of making ends meet—
when the wardrobe must be replenished, or when additional con-
tributions to dependent relatives must be made, or doctor’s bills
or medicines make demands upon the meager earnings.” (Pages
17-18.)

Taking up first for detailed study the women keeping house,
represented, as we have seen, by 267, or 16.6 per cent., of the
total of 1,607 for whom the information necessary was secured.
(Page 54.)

For the woman keeping house the average cost of food, shelter,
heat, light, and laundry is $3.18, and the average weekly earnings
are $6.57. There is left $3.89 out of which she must pay for the
clothes and living of herself and dependents, and for doctor bills
and other inevitable expenses.

It would seem sufficiently obvious from these facts that there
will be no margin for recreation or amusement for the woman
with such responsibilities as the entire dependence of one or more
persons entails, and 17.2 per cent. of the women keeping house
have these responsibilities. More than that, her standard of living
must be low, and her time, strength, and energy all exhausted in
the effort to gain a livelihood. Besides working all day in the
factory or shop or store, she has to do the cooking, sewing, and
[12]

housework also, with sometimes the inefficient help of a child
too young, or a relative too old or incapacitated to work.

Sometimes, too, the work of the day is supplemented with work
at home in order to earn enough to meet the necessary expenses.
A number of women take in washing besides their regular work.
(Page 57.)

St.’ Louts.

But if they are thrown entirely on their own resources their
problem is more difficult. As has been said, they must be good
managers; but “good management” in many cases consists in going
without food. Usually it is breakfast or luncheon. In a cafeteria
in the city, where many women employed in stores get their
luncheon, the cashier is often told “I have forgotten my purse;
will you trust me until next Tuesday?” when the cashier knows
that next Tuesday is just after the next pay day and the girl
hasn’t the money to pay for her food, and is too proud to tell the
truth. The cashier stated to the agent that, with very few excep-
tions, the women are honorable and pay the money as soon as
they get it.

Then comes the question of clothes. They are often found
making their clothes in the evening from materials bought at sales
with money saved from food. Sometimes they owe the landlady
for their room rent, but she is kind hearted and lets them pay her
some week when no clothes have to be bought. Very often a
married sister or brother helps in purchasing a pair of shoes or
a winter coat. All these methods of making ends meet appeared
either on the schedules or in the interviews with the women
visited. (Pages 185-186.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. 16. Family Budgets of Typical Cotton
Mill Workers. Senate »Document No. 645, 61st Congress,
2nd Session, 1911. :

In visiting large numbers of families in many different com-
munities of the South, it was found that the manner of living of
some of them was such that they appeared to be physically ineffi-
cient as a direct result of it. They seemed to be underfed and
underclothed. There was not enough fire to keep them warm.
Mere observation could not determine conclusively the cause of
this state of affairs.

The study of incomes revealed some so low that it seemed that
no family could live upon them without suffering. (Page 133.)

Fifteen out of the 75 families have incomes that fall
[13 ]

below the sum necessary to maintain the minimum standard, 38
have incomes above the minimum but below the fair standard, but
two barely exceed the minimum, and only 22 have incomes that
are above the fair standard.

This means that 20 per cent. of these people are living in the

direst poverty. They are underfed, or underclothed, or they have
not enough fire to keep them warm. In the majority of cases the
incomes fall so far below the minimum standard that they must
be suffering from the lack of everything—food, clothes, and fire.
Because of their weakened conditions, they are the readiest victims
of disease, yet they are the ones who must forego medical attention
unless some kind-hearted physician bestows his services upon
them. ...
There are 50.7 per cent. (38 out of a total of 75) of the fam-
ilies who have incomes above the sum necessary to maintain the
minimum standard but below that required for the fair standard.
All of these are living in poverty of one degree or another. Some
are barely above the starvation line; others have enough for food
and clothing and a few of the other things considered as neces-
saries in the fair standard of living, yet they feel the pinch of
poverty somewhere. It is not safe to assume that none of these
people are underfed or underclothed, for there are certain things
included in the fair standard, like expenses for sickness and
death, which would have to be met at the sacrifice of food and
clothing. (Page 170.)

The Standard of Living Among the Industrial People of America.
FRANK HATCH STREIGHTOFF. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston
and New York, 1911.

Since physical health is indispensable to the highest intellectual
development, food is the foundation of mental as well as bodily
efficiency. Properly to perform its physiological functions, diet
must have two constituents—proteids for body building, and fats
and carbohydrates to furnish energy, whether for immediate use
or to be stored against future demands. (Page 86.)

Although there has been much discussion as to the amount of
food really needed by human beings, the question has never been
settled. Professor W. O. Atwater concluded that a man at mod-
erately active work should have 115 grams, or .25 pound, of avail-
able protein, and enough fats and carbohydrates to produce in
all 3,400 calories of heat. (Page 87.)

Clothing, Mrs. Richards calls “the corollary of food.” While
diet furnishes the material from which tissue is created and re-
newed, and the energy by means of which the body does its work,
[14]

good clothes, like the packing about a steam pipe, act as an insu-
lator—conserve the body heat. A man sufficiently dressed does
not need so much food as one poorly clothed. Conversely, a well-
nourished man does not need so many clothes as one underfed.
(Page 1038.)

A clear understanding of what the standard of living is per-
mits some appreciation of its significance. In the first place,
unless the standard includes adequate food, clothing and shelter,
health will inevitably suffer and the race will degenerate physic-
ally. If, on the contrary, men obtain a proper satisfaction of
these fundamental wants, not only will health be preserved and
improved, but a foundation will be laid for intellectual progress.
(Page 7.)

Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage
Boards. Jan., 1912. House No. 1697.

Even with women who have no other assistance, the wages
may be forced below the minimum cost of living, without provi-
sion for the assurance of health, for unemployment, or for old
age, and this deficit must inevitably come ultimately as a charge
en society. This class already includes no small proportion of
the working women, and with the present tendencies in industrial
life women may be obliged to depend more and more upon their
unaided efforts for a livelihood. (Pages 16-17.)

The proposition that underlies this interference with the con-
tractual relations of employer and employee is that, on the broad
sca'e and in the long run, earnings as distinct from wages, cannot
be less than the necessary cost of maintaining the worker alive and
in health. No mechanical or labor-saving device used in industry
can be worth less than the cost of its manufacture and mainte-
nance. The normal human worker cannot earn less than a like
cost. (Page 18.)

The proposed legislation is therefore recommended for the
following reasons:

1—It would promote the general welfare of the State because
it would tend to protect the women workers, and particularly the
younger women workers, from the economic distress that leads to
impaired ‘iealth and inefficiency. (Pages 25-26.)

The unhealthfulness of the trade, however, has a vital con-
nection with wages. The workers’ earnings should enable them
to live well enough to preserve their health and strength at a nor-
mal point, or they should be sufficient to compensate for time lost
because of illness due to the occupation, and to allow them to
sive against the day when they may well be broken down. (Page
144.)
[15 J

A Minimum Wage for Workers. Addresses by H. LA Rug Brown,
Chairman of Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission, and
Mrs. GLENDOWER EvANS, Member First Massachusetts Mini-
mum Wage Commission. City Club Bulletin of Philadelphia,
Jan. 27, 1918.

If the difference between income and expense is not met in
any of these ways, if the girl clings to the ideals she learned, if she
is getting five dollars ($5) a week and it costs her seven dollars
($7) to live properly, where is that two dollars ($2) difference
coming from? Who is paying it? You and I are paying it in
flesh and blood. We are paying it in the most splendid asset that
society can have. And we are not only paying it in the cost to
that girl of her own health and strength, and in the probability
that she is going to be one of the dependents for whom you spend
your five million dollars or ten million dollars, but you are paying
it in the deterioration of the physique and in the inefficiency of
the generations that are going to come, because it is the women
who are living today who are going to be mothers of the next
generation. If thousands of young women are living in a state
of semi-starvation and under-nourishment, easy prey to disease
and nervous collapse, unfit for motherhood and facing an old age
of dependence, it is not only matter for wonder that so many are
so patient, so uncomplaining, so good, but it is your duty, and my
duty, and it is your interest and my interest, as members of
society, to find out what we can do to set our house in order, if
for no other reason than because it pays. (Page 200.)

It is easy to talk about the family unit. It is easy to use high-
sounding phrases about economic laws, but if you will look at the
records of the tuberculosis camps, if you will look at the records
of the hospitals, the cases of anemia and nervous breakdown, to
say nothing of other less pleasant records about us, you will find
that it is less expensive to pay out that cost directly in wages
rather than indirectly as we are paying it now. (Page 202.)

If an employer, buying labor at the cheapest figure at which it
can be secured, succeeds in paying less than it costs the laborer to
live, then, in so far, he is shifting the cost of production or of
distribution to other people’s shoulders. His is to that degree a
parasitic industry. And while he may be making money for him-
self, it is at a ruinous cost to the community if at the same time
he is manufacturing prostitutes or human beings so under-nour-
ished that they are worn out while still young and become in-
capable of bringing forth healthy offspring. It is specifically
upon this ground that much of the legislation protecting women
is held constitutional in Massachusetts and in some other states;
[ 16}

it is being argued as a matter of public well being that the mothers

of the next generation should be protected from a ruinous exploi-

tation. It is not as an act of justice, or even an act of mercy;

it is social self-preservation. The whole body, it is obvious, must

perish when a too considerable part becomes diseased. In England

and in Australia, which countries are not bound by our constitu- -
tional limitation, the well being of men as well as of women is

held to be vital to the state, and wage boards accordingly are

applicable to both men and women. (Mrs. Evans, page 204.)

Second Report of the New York Factory Investigating Commission,
1918. Appendix IX. Mercantile Establishments.

Of even greater importance than the demand of the work and
the hours of labor are the prevailing wages paid to girls and
women employed in department stores. Their whole standard of
living obviously is set by the adequacy or inadequacy of the wages.
We have seen that during rush seasons the inroads upon the
health of the workers are undeniable. It is, then, clearly of the
highest importance that the vigor of the girls should be repaired
as far as possible by nourishing and sufficient food. This is the
most elementary requisite. A wage to be considered really ade-
quate must assure the girls not only a minimum of food, but also
an assured income for the other essentials of daily life: lodging,
car fares, clothes, recreation, and provision for possible sickness.
(Page 1257.)

Since the earnings are not adequate for self-support, it is
apparent that the standard of living in a large number of cases
must be depressed below the level on which health and efficiency
can be maintained. Yet the working efficiency of the individual
is primarily dependent on her standard of living. The inadequacy
of the wage is an evil which no amount of care in the sanitary
appointment of the stores nor hospital service, nor welfare work
can compensate for. (Page 1263.)

In New York City, where living expenses are highest, the pro-
portion of those earning less than $7 was 44 per cent. These
wages, though higher than those paid in five and ten cent stores,
are also clearly beneath the level of subsistence. Such is the
income of these women. The Massachusetts Minimum Wage Com-
mission estimated that $9 to $11 is a “living minimum wage for
women.”

In some way, therefore, the difference must be met between
the ascertained earnings of these New York women and their
necessary expenses of living.
[17]

The girls often live with such excessive economy and upon such
short rations that health suffers and future earning capacity is
permanently undermined. Thus the workers themselves are made
to pay unfairly in strength and vigor, instead of receiving a living
wage from the industry which employs them. (Pages 1260-1261.)

Poverty—-A Study of Town Life. B.S. ROWNTREE. Macmillan &
Co., London, 1901.

Particulars were obtained regarding 11,560 families. (Page
26.)

Unless an unreasonably stringent diet be adopted, the means
to purchase a sufficient supply of nourishing food are not pos-
sessed by the laborers and their families. The serious physiological
effects of inadequate food have already been pointed out, and
they are powerfully attested by the health statistics. But it may
be doubted if the English public has yet recognized their economic
importance. The relation of food to industrial efficiency is so
obvious and so direct as to be a commonplace amongst students of
political economy. ‘What an employer will get out of his work-
man,” as a well-known economist has reminded us, “will depend
very much on what he first gets into him.” (Page 260.)

If his diet be liberal, his work may be mighty. If he be
underfed, he must underwork.”

z If adequate nourishment be necessary to efficiency,
the highest commercial success will be impossible so long as large
numbers even of the most sober and industrious of the laboring
classes receive but three-fourths of the necessary amount of food.
(Page 261.)

Women’s Work and Wages. A Phase of Life in an Industrial City.
Epwarp Capsury, M. CEcILE MATHESON, AND GEORGE SHANN.
T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1906.

How is this anomaly of taking a woman’s life and giving her
less than the living wage of her standard affecting the woman of
England? We have mentioned the results in the premature nar-
rowing or ageing of many of our educated workers; we could
mention more if we could get statistics of nervous collapse and
illness or search the lists of homes and institutions. Fortunately
some women who have not the ability or good fortune to reach the
top of their profession escape the results of under-payment through
their private circumstances. Many of all classes accept the
downward pressure as inevitable, and quietly shrink out of sight
and descend step by step. Take the lower classes, and we come to
[18 ]

the great crowd of those who just live, are content with their
lives, and remain where they are in an easy acquiescence, marry,
and work on in one way or another until death cuts them off, or
old age and infirmity make them turn to indoor or outdoor relief.
And the great crowd of those lower still, who just do not make
enough on which to live, who are always underfed and under-
clothed; what of them? (Page 189.)

Sweating, by EDWARD CADBURY AND GEORGE SHANN. Headly Bros.,
London, 1907.

Even if it were true that the community would have to pay
for reform, it would be well worth the cost, for there are two
sides to the account, and a slight examination shows that the
community is already paying a price for the present condition of
things, which is no less heavy because hidden and little realized
by the majority of people.

One item in this cost is the diminished health and vitality of
the sweated workers. Even if these men and women expend their
miserably low wages with the utmost wisdom and efficiency, it
is impossible for them to obtain the necessaries for health and
comfort. The consequent low vitality predisposes them to attacks
of illness in various forms. And this weakness is passed on to
the children, because even if the children are born healthy, insani-
tary surroundings and poor and insufficient food tell their tale,
and so a new generation of inefficients is reared. (Page 45.)

Stinting of necessaries for efficiency means a direct economic
loss to the nation, because it is a degradation of the labor power
of the community. (Page 50.)

It is amongst this class of people, also, that the highest rate
of infant mortality is found. One woman known to the writers,
a match-box maker, has had seventeen children, out of which three
only are alive. Nor is this an isolated case. The recent report
of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration,
amongst other causes of physical degeneracy, emphasizes over-
crowding, pollution of atmosphere, and bad conditions of employ-
ment. Now, although there are other reasons for poverty besides
inadequate wages, it still remains that this is one of the causes
that lead to overcrowding with all its accompanying insanitary
surroundings. As to the effects of overcrowding, the report is
instructive. In Glasgow the general death rate in overcrowded
tenements is nearly twice that of the whole city, and the death
rate from consumption increases with these conditions. Similar
results have been shown to obtain in Finsbury, and, of course, the
same effects are found in most, if not all, of our large towns. It
[19]

is also shown by experts that “as the proportion of people living
in overcrowded tenements increases, so does the infant death rate,
going from 180 to 196, and then to 193, and then going on to 210,
222 and 223” (per thousand). (Pages 55-56.)

When the degradation of labor reaches a certain point, the
people affected tend to accept their lot and adapt themselves to
the low standard of life. When the laborer cannot maintain him-
self at a reasonable standard of decency and comfort, the de-
cline in industrial efficiency is rapid. And this is not merely a
question of physical efficiency. All the distinctively human quali-
ties that are implied in hopefulness, freedom, self-respect and so-
cial ambition, and which are so valuable a national asset, are
deteriorated or lost; and thus we get men and women whose spirits
are broken, and who become inefficient casual laborers or worse.
For it must be remembered that unrestricted competition and sub-
stitution are economic forces that are always tending to keep this
class of labor down, if not to push it lower. Because they cannot
compete with the steadier or stronger laborers, they tend to become
a shifting irregular class who compete with each other and with
more regular and better paid workers just above them, and who
are ever ready to play into the hands of unscrupulous employers.
Thus we get the conditions and material out of which spring so
many social and industrial problems. (Page 64.)

The Prevention of Destitution. SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB. Long-
mans, Green & Co., London, 1911.

7 Any doctor who stops to think can tell us that the
actual loss of wages through ill-health in the wage-earning class
must run into many millions sterling every year—certainly a hun-
dred times as much as the loss by strikes and lockouts. What is
more serious is that it is just among the poorest section of the
wage earners that this loss of earnings through ill-health is great-
est, not only because the casual laborers and the sweated home-
workers have most ill-health, but also because, in the absence of
those more humane arrangements which are enjoyed by clerks, by:
domestic servants and sometimes by workmen employed at weekly
or monthly rates, it is just among the poorest: section that a day’s
absence from work most invariably means the loss of a day’s
wages. To the ten or twelve millions of the population existing
in the United Kingdom on earnings of less than a pound a week
for the whole family, the constant drain of sickness is a perpetual
menace to their economic independence. Let the sickness rise
above the normal and down goes the family into the morass of
destitution. (Pages 17-18.)
[ 20 ]

A large amount of the sickness in working class households is
due simply to the lack of food, to the over-crowding of the dwell-
ing, to the inability to take either adequate rest or precautions
against exposure, all this arising directly from want of money.
An enormous proportion of the child destitution that we have
described comes, not from any carelessness or cruelty of the
parents, but from sheer insufficiency of income to permit those
who are neither saints nor geniuses to obtain good nurture for
their children. It is quite true that, so far as concerns all the
sickness and child destitution arising solely from the parents’
insufficiency of earnings, by far the best method of prevention
is to insure to every willing worker regular employment at an
adequate wage. (Pages 86-87.)

The Church and Citizenship, by R. Latter. A. R. Mowbray & Co.,
London, 1918.

o 8 A man cannot do the best work if he is not in a state
of physical and mental efficiency. His work is worth to him the
exact amount of energy he has expended in doing it. The work
he does takes a certain amount of strength and a certain amount
of vitality from a man. He spends on it a certain amount of his
life. If he does not receive sufficient payment to enable him to
make up this expenditure by necessary rest and nourishment, he
spends a little more of his life than is restored to him. To be
perpetually over-tired and underfed means in the end physical
exhaustion, and not only are these people who work long hours for
small pay suffering distress now, but their lives are being short-
-ened—they will “wear out” the sooner. (Pages 20-21.)

The Living Wage. PuiLtip SNOWDEN, M. P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1913.

The inability of the working classes to command necessaries
is shown in no direction more pitifully than in the preventable
suffering they have to endure owing to their inability to obtain
adequate medical attention and skill. The workers have made
heroic efforts to provide for times of sickness and misfortune by
individual savings and by association in voluntary societies. But
for most of them it has been a futile struggle. (Page 52.)

The result has been a death rate among the poor far in excess
of that among those who could afford to obtain the best attention;
or lingering illness which has reduced the family to abject pov-
erty, bringing pauperism, physical inefficiency and disease. (Pages
52-53.)

The living wage is demanded on the ground of physical and
social necessity. Nature has imposed the necessity of an ade-
[ 21 ]

quate provision of food, shelter, clothing, and rest, if health and
life are to be maintained. (Page 165.)

The real purpose of social organization is to secure the better
satisfaction of individual needs, and by co-operation to make the
best possible use of all the resources at the service of humanity.
Social organization fails when out of its abundance it leaves indi-
viduals, through no fault of their own, without adequate food,
shelter, clothing and rest; and in a civilized community without a
share in the intellectual heritage of the race. The demand for a
living wage is a demand that by social organization there shall be
assured to every person who is able and willing to perform a
reasonable share of work such maintenance as Nature demands,
and such a share in our civilization as will make him a happy
and useful citizen. (Page 166.)

(2) BAD EFFECT ON THE NEXT GENERATION.

Health is the foundation of the state. When the health
of women has been injured in industrial work, not only is
the working efficiency of the community impaired, but
the deterioration is handed down to succeeding genera-
tions. The health of. the race is conditioned upon pre-
serving the health of women, the future mothers of the

Republic.

Report of the Social Survey Committee of the Consumers’ League
of Oregon on the Wages, Hours and Conditions of Work
and Cost and Standard of Living of Women Wage Earners
in Oregon With Special Reference to Portland. CAROLINE
J. GLEASON, Portland, Oregon, 1918.

The present conditions of labor for women in many industries
are shown by this report to be gravely detrimental to their health;
and since most women wage earners are potential mothers, the
future health of the race is menaced. (Page 6.)

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1884. Hygiene
of Occupations, by Dr. Rocer, 8. Tracy, Sanitary Inspector
of the Board of Health, New York.

As the physical condition of women has such an important
bearing on the welfare of the race, and on the health of future gen-
erations, it becomes fairly a question of government control. (Page
199.)
[ 22 ]

Report of the Massachisetts State Board of Health. 1878. EDWARD
JARvis, M. D.

All additions to the physical, moral, or intellectual power of
individuals in any individual are, to that extent, additions to the
energy and the productive force—the effectiveness of the State; and
on the contrary, all deductions from these forces, whether of mind
or body—every sickness, and injury or disability, every impair-
ment of energy—take so much from the mental force, the safe
administration of the body politic. 7

The State thus has an interest not only in the prosperity, but
also in the health and strength and effective power of each one
of its members. (Page 336.)

Report of the Ohio Inspector of Workshops and Factories. 1890.

a It must be remembered that these female factory em-
ployees will in all probability at some time become mothers, and
to be broken down in health when that important period of their
life arrives, would certainly be conducive to evil results, and a
condition we should strenuously endeavor to avoid. (Pages 37-38.)

*

American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. XXVII.
No. 8, 1906. Philadelphia. Physical and Medical Aspects
of Labor and Industry. FREDERICK L. HorrMANN, Statis-
tician Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Newark, N. J.

If the duration of life has, on the average considerable
economic value, then it manifestly must be to the advantage of the
state and the employers of labor that nothing within reason be
left undone to raise to the highest possible standard the level of
national physique and of health and industrial efficiency. ae
The interests of the nation, of wage earners as a class, and of
society as a whole, transcend the narrow and selfish interests of
the short-sighted employers of labor who, disregarding the teach-
ings of medical and other sciences, manage industry and permit
the existence of conditions contrary to a sound industrial economy
and a rational humanitarianism. There can be no question of
doubt but that at the present time the average life and industrial
efficiency of a workingman in the United States is not what it
should be, and it is manifestly the duty of the State, of employers
of labor, of labor associations, and of workingmen themselves to
take the facts of the problem into consideration and by intelligent
co-operation raise to the maximum the standard of life and health
in American industry. (Page 484.) _
[ 23 ]

Journal of Political Economy. Vol. XIV. 1906. Legislative Control
of Women’s Work. By 8. P. BRECKINRIDGE.

The assumption of control over the conditions under which
industrial women are employed is one of the most significant fea-
tures of recent legislative policy. In many of the advanced indus-
trial communities the State not only undertakes to prescribe a
minimum of decency, safety, and healthfulness, below which its
wage earners may not be asked to go, but takes cognizance in sev-
eral ways of sex differences and sex relationships.

In the third place, the State sometimes takes cognizance
of the peculiarly close relationship which exists between the health
of its women citizens and the physical vigor of future generations.

It has been declared a matter of public concern that no
group of its women workers should be allowed to unfit them-
selves . . . for the burden of motherhood which each of them
should be able to assume. (Page 107.)

The object of such control is the protection of the physical well-
being of the community by setting a limit to the exploitation of
the improvident, unworkmanlike, unorganized women who are yet
the mothers, actual or prospective, of the coming generation.
(Pages 108, 109.)

Report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor, Industries, and Com-
merce. 1907-1908.

In Europe, where large standing armies are maintained and
the physical condition of the race as a race is more minutely
noted, there has Jong been an appreciation of the importance of
maintaining the health of the mother. (Pages 243-244.)

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics.
Part III. 1907-1908. Industrial Hygiene and the Police Pow-
er; Being a Reprint of a Paper on the Legitimate Exercise
of the Police Power for the Protection of Health, by HENRY
BairD FAvILu, M. D.

In the industrial world, health is the foundation of productive-
ness and the bulwark of economy. That society and progress de-
pend utterly upon these factors can hardly be questioned. It is
hence only necessary to reach a conclusion as to the fundamental
importance of health as related to the product of any individual
or to have a comprehensive grasp of the elements of waste and
dissipation in social affairs to at once put the question of public
[24]

health as a thing apart to be dealt with as a social problem irre-
spective of its particular bearing upon any class of citizens. (Page
480.)

We must study the relation of health to labor. . . . It is
agreed that labor legislation must have its foundation in clear
economic advantage. It is perhaps not so well agreed, but the
idea is rapidly growing, that of all the factors of an economic
advantage, health is the most crucial. Upon this hypothesis, there-
fore, the conclusion may rest, that the logical primary step is the
establishment of broad and effective study of health as related to
laboring conditions. (Pages 485-486.)

Report of the Nebraska Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics.
1907-1908.

Scientists and thinkers have pointed out that health and vitality
are the capital of society. It follows, then, that any lessening or
weakening of the natural power of womanhood over the race will
be distinctly injurious. To lower the standard of bodily strength
will bring a disastrous reaction on society later. . . . Preven-
tion of these things is the object of about all of the laws passed in
recent years by progressive States and Nations. In too many
instances the laws are crude and give too wide a latitude for trans-
gressors. (Page 33.)

National Child Labor Committee. New York. Proceedings of the
Fifth Annual Conference. Chicago, Ill., 1909. The Federal
Children’s Bureau. Henry B. Favitt, M.D. Chicago, Iil.

Absolute control of the health of the individual can never be
the function of the State. Control of the conditions under which
the lives of the people shall be lived and their energies expended
is an inevitable necessity. The State will approach this problem
from the standpoint of self-preservation. Defective health is the
foundation of crime, pauperism, and degeneracy, as well as that
widespread inefficiency due to obvious disease.

All sociologie forces have come to recognize this fact. The
physical well-being of the people is the deepest interest of the
State. (Pages 37-38.)

Handbuch der Hygiene. Bd. 81. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 81.]
Edited by Dr. THEODORE WEYL. Hygienische Fuersorge fuer
Arbeiterinnen und deren Kinder. [Hygienic Care of Work-
ing Women and their children.) Dr. AGNES BLUHM. Jena,
1894.

Women bear the following generation whose health is essen-
[ 25 ]

tially influenced by that of the mothers, and the State has a vital
interest in securing for itself future generations capable of living
and maintaining it. (Page 83.)

Two leading reasons exist for the newly developing codes of
protective laws relating to woman in industry. She requires special
care because:

1. She is physically not as strong as man.

2. She is the bearer of the future race whose health and
vigor will be markedly influenced by hers, and the State
must therefore feel the keenest interest in securing a
vigorous and efficient posterity. (Page 83.)

Handbuch der Hygiene. Bd. 81. {Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 81.]
Edited by Dr. THEODORE WEYL. Allgemeine Gewerbehygiene
und Fabrikgesetegebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and
Factory Legislation] Dr. Emit RorH. Jena, 1894.

The preservation and vigor of the family are the first
essentials of all social reforms. . . . The protection of labor
is not only a postulate of humanity and of morals, but above all
else, of the national health.

The aim and purpose of our work is to benefit the whole race,
by bringing the egoistic desires of individuals into harmony with
the purposes of a unified society. (Pages 1-3.)

Schriften der Gesellschaft fuer Soziale Reform, Heft 7-8. [Publi-
cations of the Social Reform Society. Nos. 7 and 8.] Die
Herabsetzung der Arbeitszeit fur Frauen und die Erhohung
des Schutzalters fuer jugendliche Arbeiter in Fabriken. [The
Reduction of Women’s Working Hours and the Raising of
the Legal Working Age for Young Factory Employees.]
Dr. AuGusT PIEPER and HELENE SIMON. Jena, Fischer,
1903.

The protection of health takes precedence over everything else.
The health of women is more quickly undermined in wage-earning
occupations than that of men, partly because they are less strong
and resistant and partly because they are burdened with domestic
as well as industrial labor—more especially when, as married
women, they have to care for a family. (Page 4.)

Whether the working woman as such is less resistant to injur-
ious conditions than the working man is immaterial. What is
important to remember is that her sex doubles the claims made
[ 26 ]

upon her, and it is this that undermines her vital resistance. To
the physiological burdens and the overwork due to a combination
of housework and industrial toil, imperfect nutrition, and deficient
recreation are often to be added—she has, in short, distinctly, an
average standard of living that is inferior to that of men. (Page
91.)

Die Arbeitszeit der Fabrikarbeiterinnen. Nach Berichten der
Gewerbe-Aufsichtsbeamten bearbeitet im Reichsamt des In-
nern. [The Working Hours of Women in Factories. From
the Reports of the German Factory Inspectors. Compiled in
the Imperial Home Office.] Berlin, Decker, 1905.

The reports from Merseburg, Erfurt, Breslau, Hanover, Wurt-
temberg, and Offenbach dwell upon the dependence of future gener-
ations—-their total efficiency and value—upon the protection of
working women and girls. (Page 111.)

The report for Wurttemberg says, in regard to the injurious
effect of factory work: “The children of such mothers—according
to the unanimous testimony of nurses, physicians, and others who
were interrogated on this important subject—are mostly pale and
weakly; when these in turn, as usually happens, must enter upon
factory work immediately upon leaving school, to contribute to the
support of the family, it is impossible for a sound, sturdy, enduring
race to develop.” (Page 111.)

Grenzfragen des Nerven und Seelenlebens. Bd. VI. [Borderland
Problems of Nervous and Psychic Life. Vol. VI.] Edited by
LOEWENFELD and KURELLA. Ueber die geistige Arbeitskraft
und thre Hygiene. [On Mental Working Power and its Hy-
giene.] Dr. L. LOEWENFELD. Weisbaden, Bergmann, 1906.

The efficiency of the individual is a part of the national effi-
ciency. If one considers how rushing and incessant the commercial
rivalry of civilized states is today, and realizes how closely the
results of this struggle depend upon the intellectual capital which
the nations have at their command, one is obliged to admit what a
great significance for national welfare there is in the mental work-
ing capacity of the individual. But among those most concerned
there has been, as yet, by no means adequate recognition of this
fact. . . . Weare still far from being able to say that all is
done than can be done, by private initiative and by the state, to
preserve and develop the brain power of the nation. (Page 68.)
[27 ]

Revue @Hygiene et de Police Sanitaire. La Protection de la
Femme dans UIndustrie. [The Protection of Woman in
Industry.] Dr. Henri Napias. Paris, Masson et Cie. T.
XVIII. 20 Mars, 1896.

Everyone knows that there is still much to do, and that, if our
legislation has already bettered conditions, new ameliorations are
desirable, but they will come, I think, only through the pressure of
public opinion, . . . which will become exacting . . . when
doctors have made clear the utility of a protection which looks
not only to the woman, but, secondarily, the child to be born by
her; when it knows better that to protect the mother is an abso-
lute necessity for the future of the race. (Page 193.)

Revue d’Economie Politique. T. XVI. 1902. La Protection legale
des Travailleurs, est-elle Necessaire? [Is Legal Protection
for Working People Necessary?] M. RaouL Jay, Professor
of Law, University of Paris. :

The strength of the nation is the strength of the individuals
that compose it. No one contests the terrible consequences that a
nation must expect that subjects its children to labor which checks
their physical and mental development. . . . But to safeguard
the nation’s interest it does not suffice merely to regulate child
labor. ‘To protect the child and not to protect the mother is an
absurdity.”

The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. SIDNEY WEBB.
London, Richard, 1901.

It may be enough for the individual employer if his work-
people remain alive during the period for which he hires them.
But for the continued efficiency of the nation’s industry, it is
indispensable that its citizens should not merely continue to exist
for a few months or years, but Should be well brought up as chil-
dren, and maintained for their full normal life unimpaired in
health, strength, and character. The human beings of a commu-
nity form as truly a portion of its working capital as its land, its
machinery, or its cattle. If the employers in a particular trade are
able to take such advantage of the necessities of their workpeople
as to hire them for wages actually insufficient to provide enough
food, clothing, and shelter to maintain them and their children in
health; if they are able to work them for hours so long as to
deprive them of adequate rest and recreation; or if they subject
[ 28 ]

them to conditions so dangerous or insanitary as positively to
shorten their lives, that trade is clearly using up and destroying a
part of the nation’s working capital. (Pages 20-21.)

Industries yielding only a bare minimum of momentary
subsistence are therefore not really self-supporting. In deteriorat-
ing the ‘physique, intelligence, and character of their operatives,
they are drawing on the capital stock of the nation. And even if
the using up is not actually so rapid as to prevent the “sweated”
workers from producing a new generation to replace them, the
trade is none the less parasitic. In persistently deteriorating the
stock it employs, it is subtly draining away the vital energy of
the community. It is taking from these workers, week by week,
more than its wages can restore to them. A whole community
might conceivably thus become parasitic on itself, or, rather, upon
its future. (Page 22.)

History of Factory Legislation. B. L. HuTcHINS and AMY
HARRISON. Westminster, King, 1908.

Women are “not only much less free agents than men, but they
are physically incapable of bearing a continuance of work for the
same length of time as men, and a deterioration of their health is
attended with far more injurious consequences to society.” (Page
84.)

Labor Laws for Women in Australia and New Zealand. Women’s
Industrial Council. London, 1906.

The workers in these miserable trades deteriorate in health and
efficiency, and their children growing up ill-nourished and un-
healthy, continue the supply of cheap, inefficient, unorganized labor.
Labor of this class, though cheap to the employer, is by no means
cheap to the community. It continually helps to recruit the various
classes of weaklings and degenerates; paupers, invalids, criminals,
the mentally and morally deficient of various types. Employers
who pay wages or maintain conditions insufficient for the health
and efficiency of the employed are in reality accumulating a bur-
den of sickness, poverty and incapacity, which in the end has to
be borne by the taxpayer, and that is by no means the full extent
of the evil, for the population itself in so far as it is engaged in
or influenced by these industries tends to become deteriorated
from one generation to another, and thus the parasitic trades are
feeding on the very springs of national life and character. (Page
1.)
[ 29 ]

Women’s Work and Wages. A Phase of Life in an Industrial’
City. Epwarp CapBury, M. CECILE MATHESON and GEORGE
SHANN. T. Fisher Unwin. London, 1906.

How, then, does the present system of payment affect women?
There is first a waste of nerve and spirit, a continual temptation
to overwork in order to maintain a standard that ought to be
maintained, and hence much ill health and early deterioration of
physique; lower in the scale we find an acquiescence in condi-
tions which are, to say the least, not conducive to progress; and
lower still there is no possibility of escape from actual physical
deterioration. It is not a hopeful prospect for the mothers of the
coming generation. (Page 191.)

B. MORAL ASPECT.
(1) BAD EFFECT ON GENERAL STANDARDS OF LIVING.

Investigation proves that the standard of living is
fixed by the wages received. With insufficient wages,
expenditures for living must be curtailed below the re-
quirements of healthful existence. Overcrowding in hous-
ing with the consequent loss of all privacy, the struggle
to obtain necessary clothing, and the lack of all legitimate
recreation, have been found to result from under-
payment.

An investigation in Portland, Oregon, showed that
nearly three-fifths of the women employed in various
industries receive less than the minimum weekly wage
which has been found the least wage on which the aver-
age working girl can decently support herself.

Report of the Social Survey Committee of the Consumers’ League
of Oregon. CAROLINE J. GLEASON, Director, Portland, Ore-
gon, 1913.

The wages paid to women workers in most occupations are
miserably inadequate to meet the cost of living at the lowest
standards consistent with the maintenance of the health and
morals of the workers. Nearly three-fifths of the women em-
ployed in industries in Portland receive less than $10 a week,
which is the minimum weekly wage that ought to-be offered to
any self-supporting woman wage earner in this city. (Page 6.)
[30 ]

Many girls take a roommate and thus reduce their cost of living
at the same time that they reduce their opportunity of recupera-
tion. Sometimes they room three together, the better to econo-
mize. An example of this is that of three girls living with a
woman in a small, crowded flat. The three girls room together in
an inside court room and each pays $80 per month for the room,
breakfast and dinner. (Page 58.)

A frequent plan of living is that of a housekeeping system,
where the rooms are made to differ from ordinary sleeping rooms
by the addition of an oilcloth-covered table, a few cheap cups,
saucers and plates, linen, hardware, a gas plate, and once in a
while some silver. Sometimes the renter is required to furnish
both her silver and hardware. The opportunity to cook her own
meals and wash her own dishes may help to keep the domestic
feeling alive in the struggling worker, but it does not help her
to keep alive the physical strength and moral courage needed for
persistency in this same struggle. (Page 60.)

RECREATION AND VACATION.

Maximum average amounts spent for these items amount to
$36.62; the minimum amount recorded is $12.50. Of the four
specified trades, the three groups of women adrift spend more for
recreation and vacation than do the women living at home. This
would tend to show that the girl at home can get decent amuse.
ment cheaper or else has friends to rely on for her good times.
There is not the same temptation for the girl at home to seek fun
outside as there is for the girl adrift, whose lonesomeness in her
one room drives her innocently to seek diversion that eventually
ends disastrously for her.

TABLE 35.

Average Sum Spent Annually for Recreation and Vacation by
509 Wage-Earning Women in Portland, classified by occupation
and as to living “at home” or “adrift.”

No. Occupation. Average Annual Expense—At Home. Adrift.

 

 

 

 

36 Laundry en $18.25 | $ 12.50
100 Factory 12.91 16.60
116 Department Store. 21.48 36.62
88 (Office oe eee 20.14 85.78
169 Miscellaneous .........2.2..2::c:ceccecceceeeceoecereeeeee 22.02 20.83

EDUCATION AND READING.

Sums spent for this purpose indicate that mental recreation
or training of any kind is almost entirely lacking among the
wage-earning women. Several reasons may be given for this.
[31]

One is that the great majority of them have to leave school before
their education is half completed. A second reason is that when
they reach home at night they are too tired to read or study music.
A third is that they haven’t the money to use this way if they
wished to. (Pages 66-67.)

The Standard of Living Among Workingmen’s Families. ROBERT
CoIT CHAPIN, Professor of Economics and Finance, Beloit
College, Wisconsin. Russell Sage Foundation Publication.
New York, 1909.

If the family is able to make both ends meet out of its income,
it seems a fair inference that it is able to maintain such standard
of living as is represented by its expenditures. Still more prob-
able is this if the family has a surplus of income over expendi-
tures. This is not to say that the standard maintained is normal or
adequate, however. It may be so low that in the course of a few
years, if not sooner, the physique and morale of the family must
deteriorate, or the effects may be apparent only in the gradual
deterioration of a whole group of the population in the course of
one or two generations. This deterioration may be going on at
the same time that individual families are living as best they can
within their incomes. (Page 229.)

The under-fed, under-clothed, and over-crowded families, as has
already been shown, make a better showing in keeping expendi-
tures within income than do the families as a whole. This indi-
cates that on the lower incomes, where most of these cases with
sub-normal standard are found, an even balance or a surplus can
be attained only by curtailing expenditures for necessaries below
the point of meeting the requirements of healthy existence.
(Page 232.)

Taking the figures for what they are worth, nearly half of the
cases of borrowing reported (20 out of 42) are in the $600 in-
come group; one-quarter are in the $700 group. The pawning
reported is likewise nearly half of it in the $600 groups. This
corroborates the suggestion already made, that the task of making
both ends meet is too severe to be successfully accomplished in
ordinary circumstances, on all incomes under $800, without a lower-
ing of the standard of living below the normal demands of health,
working efficiency, and social decency. (Page 234.)

In regard to the second point, that the maintenance of the
standard depends more upon the wise use of the family income
than upon the mere amount received, the schedules returned in
[ 82 ]

this investigation afford much evidence in its support. But they
also furnish evidence that there are limits to what can be done
by thrift and economy. . . . A family cannot be brought up in
health and strength for work on bread and tea, even if these
can be supplied for a dollar a week. Coal will burn up, coats
and shoes will wear out, notwithstanding all that mending can do.
Further, to bring expenditures down to exact requirements of an
ideal economy, even supposing that all that is claimed could
thereby be saved, is not within the ability of the ordinary wage
earner’s wife. She cannot spend hours in bargain-hunting, in
experimenting with new food-combinations, in making and mend-
ing garments. She has not, and cannot be expected to have, the
training and ability to do all these things, even if she had the
time. She has to take the methods of -housekeeping that are
traditional in her environment and apply them as skillfully and
intelligently as her native and acquired powers of mind and body
permit. What the exceptional woman might do cannot be made
the measure of what the average woman may be expected to do,
and if the morale and efficiency of the population are to be kept
up, provision must be made for what the woman of. average
capacity must have to keep her family up to the prevailing stand-
ard. Only when education in a better economy is widely diffused,
will it be possible to maintain the existing standards of physique
and character on a lower absolute income.

In summary, therefore, the results of our investigation indi-
cate that, while the personal factor does operate in the case of
every family, both as regards the habits of the father and the
managing ability of the mother, the limits within which it may
affect the actual sum total of material comforts that make up
the living of the family are set by social forces. These social
forces find expression, on the one side, in the income which the
family receives—that is, in the rate of wages received by the
father and others who are at work; on the other side, they are
expressed in the prices that have to be paid to get housing, food,
and the other means of subsistence. The actual standard that
prevails is set primarily, therefore, by the wages paid and the
prices charged. (Pages 248-249 )

Homestead: The Household of a Mill Town. Manearer F.
3YINGTON. Pittsburg Survey. Russell Sage Foundution
-ublication. New York, 1910.

But while thus recognizing that racial standards modify rental
expenditures, an economic analysis of these same budgets shows
[ 33 ]

that the determining factor is wages. The two races spending the
smallest per cent. for rent are those with the lowest incomes.
They give too small a margin for the family to consider how desir-
able a better home would be. (Page 51.)

Rent in the 77 Homestead tenant families rises steadily from
the average of $2.15 per week paid by the laborer who works
for $1.65 per day to the $4.72 per week paid on an average by the
skilled steelworker. How far overcrowding decreases in propor-
tion to the extra expenditure can be summed up briefly. Of the
48 families in the group spending under $15 (including the house
owners), 26, or over one-half, were living with two or more persons
to the room; of the 42 families spending more than $15, only
14, or one-third, had two or more persons to the room; and of
the 19 families spending over $20, only five, or one-fourth. Of
the 21 budget families who lived in two rooms, over half has
less than $12 per week to spend; of the five who lived in one
room, none had over that sum. These figures do not sustain the
oft-repeated declaration that people would not live better if they
could. With the lowest paid workers spending a larger per cent.
of their weekly fund for rent than the better-to-do, and with
overcrowding nearly absent in the better paid groups, we have
tangible indications that overcrowding is ordinarily a result of
financial necessity, rather than of either hoarding or spendthrift
habits. (Pages 52-53.)

The Living Wage of Women Workers. A Study of Incomes and
Expenditures of 450 Women Workers in the City of Boston.
Lovuis—E M. BoswortH. Fellow, Women’s Educational and
Industrial Union. Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1911.

Roommates are another form of economy in rent. And hall
bedrooms, unheated rooms, rooms without light, all come cheap, and
reduce the ratio of rent to income. If a fair priced room is
divided among two or more occupants, the cost to the individual
immediately drops to an amount that would come far short of
paying for adequate living conditions by itself. But this is at a
cost of privacy and independence which make-it doubtful whether
a large room shared in this way is any more adequate than a
small unheated room held in sole possession. . . . Factory
girls report 17 out of 57 living in single rooms, 25 sharing with one,
15 with two.

A living wage can perhaps purchase nothing which is of
greater value than the luxury—which should really be considered
a necessity—of a room to one’s self. . . . (Page 52.)
[34]

5 Here, then, may be found the fundamental basis for
the lack of certain social proprieties and even moralities on the
part of our working girls. With cold rooms, with no opportunl-
ties to receive guests, and without the privacy even of a single
room, fully 35 per cent. of our working girls, if these proportions
may be considered typical, are in danger of overstepping social
and moral law. (Page 57.)

There is a widespread notion that the working girl spends her
money largely on clothes.

The results of this invesitgation certainly do not support the
common opinion regarding the working girl’s extravagance in the
matter of dress. On the contrary, it appears that, as a rule, in
the long year-in-year-out run, with the individual and with the
group, only so much of the weekly earnigns as is left after almost
everything else is bought goes for really necessary clothing. .
It is true that, with an increase in earnings, money which might
possibly be saved may often be spent on extending the wardrobe—
“improving the standard of dress.” (Pages 65-66.)

In general, the management of the clothing problem is, for
the low-paid woman, a severe tax on her physical or financial
resource. Either she must spend much ill-spared energy in hunting
marked-down goods that will serve her purpose and in making
them up, or she must resort to the extravagant method of buying
on the installment plan or the equally extravagant course of buy-
ing very cheap clothes which do not last. Of course, the woman
who is exceptionally clever in remodeling old clothes and making
them last, and the woman who is in a position that affords unusual
opportunities of buying goods at a reduction, find this problem
less troublesome. But the average working girl on low wages is
hard pressed to keep up appearances. (Page 71.)

Expenditure for recreation covers a wide range—theaters and
picture shows, excursions and outings, books and magazines, clubs
and societies, and innumerable forms of amusement and indul-
gence . . . The opportunities are there but the strength to
grasp them is not. Long hours and low wages do not supply the
surplus vitality demanded for the proper enjoyment of these
evening privileges. If the wages were sufficient to provide nour-
ishing food and generally comfortable living conditions, and if the
working day were short enough to allow more time for recupera-
tion the working girl might make good use of these chances for
intellectual, physical and social development. (Page 85.)
[35 ]

Report on Condition of Woman and Chill Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. V. Wage-Earning Women in Stores
and Factories. Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd
Session, 1911.

The younger women are still eager to enjoy anything that
comes their way and keen to gather in all the excitement that
they can. With their financial resources, however, the amount
which they can spend for amusement is very limited, as the mar-
gin left after paying for food, shelter, heat, light, and laundry
must furnish clothes before it can be drawn on for amusement or
recreation. (Page 71.)

If the average weekly earnings and cost of living for both
store and factory women in the seven cities, as shown in this
investigation, be combined, the results show the weekly average
earnings to be $6.67, and the average weekly cost of shelter, food,
heat, light, and Jaundry as $3.80. Inasmuch as the earnings shown
by the investigation conducted by the Women’s Educational and
Industrial Union were computed in the same way as the earnings
of the women covered by this investigation and the discrepancy
between the two results is but 46 cents for all the cities and only
89 cents in Boston, it is apparent that the two groups of women
are fairly comparable. Making use, therefore, of the earnings
and cost of living as shown by the results of this investigation
(representing the larger and therein more reliable body of infor-
mation) and the figures for the expenditure for clothes shown by
the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, the results may
be summarized in the following statement:

 

 

 

 

Weekly 6armings 22.2.4)... ce $6.67
Weekly cost of shelter, food, heat, light and laundry $3.80
Weekly cost of clothes. 1.38
5.18
Margin left for carfare, contributions to dependent
relatives, emergencies, and amusements................ 1.49
(Page 74.)

Deducting, then, from tne average earnings of all women, ex-
clusive of waitresses, the cost of living and cost of clothes, there
is left*a margin of $1.49. Out of this comes carfares, often 60
cents a week; contributions to relatives, which average 44 cents;
doctor bills, and all incidental expenses. When it comes to amuse-
ments, most of the women have nothing left to spend. Of the
1,568 women who reported on this question 62 per cent. said that
they spent no money for pleasure—that it took all their earnings

5
[ 36]

to meet their daily expenses. Thirty-eight per cent. reported that
they spent something, but only 450, or 22.3 per cent., gave a defi-
nite weekly amount. These sums varied from 5 cents to $2, but the
average for the 450 was 87 cents. (Pages 73-74.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. 16. Family Budgets of Typical Cotton-
Mill Workers. Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd
Session, 1911.

The prevailing standard of living among the majority of the
cotton-mill workers of the South is not high. From the facts
presented in the foregoing pages, it is plain that low wages are
the chief factor in determining the prevailing standards ‘of living.
Even in those cases where the incomes are fairly high the fact
that they fluctuate from week to week is not conducive to the
adoption of a standard as high as might be indicated by the total
income. (Page 36.)

American Economic Review, American Economic Association,
Cambridge, Mass., 1912. The Legal Minimum Wage in the
United States, by ARTHUR H. HOLCOMBE.

The most recent and probably the most satisfactory attempt to
determine the cost of maintaining the normal American standard of
living is that of Mr. Frank H. Streightoff. He places the minimum
family income adequate to the maintenance of normal living condi-
tions in the smaller cities of the North according to the generally
prevailing American notions of decent living at $650 a year. Dr.
Chapin places the figure at $800 or over in New York, but in order
to avoid appearance of exaggerations, let us take the figure of
$600. The most recent and probably the best evidence concerning
the number of households receiving less than this minimum family
income is contained in the reports of the Immigration Commission.
In the official abstract of the report on immigrants in manufac-
turing and mining the public is informed that the average annual
family income in sixteen leading industries in which a large num-
ber of typical households, representing all nationalities, native and
foreign, were intensively studied, is $721. The report does not
indicate what percentage of this number of households receive
an annual income of less than $600; but it is stated that no less
than 31.3 per cent. receive less than $500 a year and 7.6 per cent.
receive less than $300. The annual earnings of male heads of
families alone are lower. More than half earn less than $500 a
[ 37 ]

year and nearly ‘two-thirds earn less than $600 a year. If.we
examine the official abstract of the report on immigrants in
cities we find even more depressing conditions. Of 5,825 families
dwelling in the typical congested blocks in New York, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Buffalo and Milwaukee, the male
heads earned on an average only $475. No less than 72.2 per cent.
of the whole number earned less than $600 a year, and 41.2 per
cent. earned less than $400. The average annual earnings of the
3,609 females in the households studied and reported in the
abstract on immigrants in manufacturing and mining were $304.
No less than 26.4 per cent. of them earned less than $200 a year.
The average annual earnings of the 2,590 females 18 years of
age or over working for wages and reported in the abstract on
immigrants in cities were $239. No less than 67.9 per cent. of
these earned under $300 a year and 44.8 per cent. earned under
$200 a year. With these latest official figures in mind concerning
the extent and intensity of under-payment, we are prepared to
accept Mr. Streightoff’s estimate that at least five million adult
males receive less than $600 a year for their labor. . . . Mr.
Streightoff writes in no controversal spirit but he does not conceal
his belief that the current wage for unskilled labor is too low to
meet the requirements of a decent standard. He finds abundant
evidence of families deteriorating physically because of insuffi-
cient income, and even where the wage suffices for food, clothing
and shelter, little or nothing remains to meet the wants of intel-
lectual and spiritual life. In the light of these and other recent
investigations into the standard of living among the industrial
population of the United States, the fact that a very considerable
number of working people are now employed in the United States
at less than an American standard of living wage may be re-
garded as sufficiently established. (Pages 31 to 33.)

Women in the Bookbinding Trade. Mary VAN KLEECK. Russell
Sage Foundation Publication. New York, 1913.

Of all the complex factors to be considered in describing a
trade, the most vital is the relation of the wage scale to the main-
tenance of wholesome living conditions among the workers. To
discuss women’s wages merely as a phase of trade problems, unre-
lated to the life of the worker outside the workroom, is to miss the
real significance of the conditions of their work. (Page 72.)

Surprising, indeed, is the complacency with which many persons
regard the low wages of working women. They believe that the
problem concerns only the welfare of the individual girl, and that
[ 38 ]

if she can live at home, merely supplementing the family income,
her scanty earnings need cause no concern. Such easy-going think- |
ing ignores the fact that the low standard of remuneration of the
large proportion of the community’s workers which women now
represent must inevitably lower the industrial standards of the
whole community. Nor does it occur to them that the low wages
of women are a prime cause of poverty, preventing wholesome and
decent living in thousands of families which depend wholly or in
part upon women’s earnings. (Page 86.)

Poverty—A Study of Town Life. B. S. RowNTREE. Macmillan &
Co. London, 1901.

Particulars were obtained regarding 11,560 families. (Page
26.)

Low wages mean insufficient food, insufficient food unfitness
for labor, so that the vicious circle is complete. The children of
such parents have to share their privations, and even if healthy
when born, the lack of sufficient food soon tells upon them. Thus
they often grow up weak and diseased, and so tend to perpetuate
the race of the “unfit.” (Page 46.)

’ These unseen consequences of poverty have, however, to be
reckoned with—the high death-rate among the poor, the terribly
high infant mortality, the stunted stature and dulled intelligence
—all these and others are not seen unless we look beneath the sur-
face; and yet all are having their effect upon the poor, and con-
sequently upon the whole country. (Pages 135-136.)

The Labor Movement in Australia—A Study of Social Democracy,
by Victor 8. CiarK, Ph. D. Archibald Constable & Co.
London, 1907.

This authority of fixing wages was granted in order to remedy
a special evil—a wage so low that it threatened the common in-
terest of society in maintaining a standard of living among all
classes sufficient for healthy social progress. (Page 141.)

The Prevention of Destitution. SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB. Long-
mans, Green & Co. London, 1911.

“When the price of labor sinks below a certain point, the
worker infallibly falls into that condition which the French em-
phatically call la misere—a word for which I do not think there
is any exact English equivalent. It is a condition in which food,
warmth and clothing, which are necessary for the mere mainte-
[39 ]

nance of the functions of the body in their normal state, cannot
be obtained; in which men, women and children are forced to
crowd into dens where decency is abolished, and the most ordinary
conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in
which the pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and
drunkenness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest
in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development and moral
degradation; in which the prospect of even steady and honest
industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by
a pauper’s grave.” (Page 12.)

No sweated worker, for instance, can afford to buy fresh milk
for her child, still less to pay for medical treatment either for
herself or any member of the family, whilst the tenement of the
low-paid operative is chronically overcrowded, frequently to the
point of insanitary and indecent occupation below any civilized
standard. (Page 89.)

There is one black accompaniment of destitution—an accompa-
niment which has incalculable evil effects on home life, and yet
which is an inevitable corollary of insufficient earnings in a
crowded city—the indecent occupation of the overcrowded, insani-
tary tenement. The herding together, by day and by night, of
men and women, of young and old, of boys and girls, of all
degrees of relationship or no relationship, not only destroys health,
but makes, to the ordinary human being, the particular virtue upon
which the integrity of the family depends, wholly impracticable.
Can anyone who has lived in a slum, and has observed the day
by day and night by night circumstances of a one-roomed tene-
ment, lay the flattering unction to his soul that if he and his
family had been subject, from infancy upwards to this inevitable
corollary of urban destitution, they would have maintained any
decent standard of family life? Any person who, like the present
writers, has lived the life of the London streets or dwelt among the
denizens of the slums in a capacity that compelled a personal
acquaintance with the inside of every tenement, or worked for
wages in the “sweat-shops” or “sweating dens,” cannot fail to
have had brought home to him the existence of a stratum of
society, of no inconsiderable magnitude, in which children part
with their innocence long before puberty, in which personal chas-
tity is virtually unknown, and in which “to have a baby by your
father” is laughed at as a comic mishap. We have here perhaps
the biggest “moral failure” of all—and, as responsible citizens of a
nation which knowingly and deliberately permits such a state of
things to continue, this moral failure is our own. (Pages 306-
307.)
[ 40 ]

(2) BAD EFFECT ON MORALS.

Authorities agree in the opinion that while the under-
payment of women and the consequent struggle to live
may not be the primary cause for entering upon an im-
moral life, it is inevitably an important factor. When
wages are too low to supply nourishment and other hu-
man needs, temptation is more readily yielded to.

Women and the Trades. ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY BUTLER. The
Pittsburgh Survey. Russell Sage Foundation Publication.
New York, 1909.

The pressure of low wages combined with the opportunities
of a department store result in a social problem that cannot be
ignored. Some employers are generally reputed among salesgirls
to assume that their women employees secure financial backing
from outside relationships, and knowingly pay wages that are
supplementary rather than wages large enough to cover the cost
of a girl’s support. Questions asked of girls seeking employment
cannot be otherwise interpreted. In other cases, probably in the
majority, the rate of wages is fixed not by any reckoning on the
part of the employer with unsocial conduct, but by the tradition
of the occupation. It is assumed that shop girls are only partly
self-supporting and need only work for pin-money. (Page 306.)

Yet the fact remains that, for the vast bulk of salesgirls, the
wages paid are not sufficient for self-support; and where girls do
not have families to fall back on, some go under-nourished, some
sell themselves. And the store-employment which offers them this
two-horned dilemma is replete with opportunities which in gradual,
easy, attractive ways beckon to the second choice; a situation
which a few employers not only seem to tolerate, but to encourage.
(Page 307.)

Were women totally without means of supplementing their
pay envelopes, wages would of necessity be forced above a sub-
sistence level in order to keep a sufficient labor supply in the
local market. Otherwise the women would have to move away or
slowly starve. That wages are not so forced up indicates the
widespread, though sometimes unconscious, reliance of merchants
and manufacturers on the ability of women employees to find a
source of support in their families or friends. The family may at
times cease to give assistance; but the latter avenue for money-
making is never closed. It is a way of escape, both to the solitary
working woman who earns less than it costs her to live and to
[41]

the woman who is leading a barren existence on wages that just
meet expenses.

Few will hesitate to condemn the degradation that attends
the woman who chooses unsocial means of self-support. Yet one
form of subsidizing a wage-worker leads to another form of subsi-
dizing, and so long as custom or fact renders the payment of a
full living wage non-essential, economic needs impel many a girl
toward a personally degrading life. (Pages 348-9.)

The Social Evil in Chicago. A Study of Existing Conditions With
Recommendations by the Vice Commission of Chicago. Gun-
thorp-Warren Printing Company, Chicago, 1911.

The Economic Side of the Question. The life of an unpro-
tected girl who tries to make a living in a great city is full of
torturing temptations. First, she faces the problem of living on
an inadequate wage: Six dollars a week is the average in mer-
cantile establishments. <

The girl who has no home soon learns of “city poverty” all
the more cruel to her because of the artificial contrasts. She
quickly learns of the possibilities about her, of the joys of comfort,
good food, entertainment, attractive clothes. Poverty becomes a
menace and a snare. One who has not beheld the struggle or
come in personal contact with the tempted soul of the underpaid
girl can never realize what the poverty of the city means to her.
One who has never seen her bravely fighting against such fearful
odds will never understand. A day’s sickness or a week out of
work are tragedies in her life. They mean trips to the pawn bro-
ker’s, meagre dinners, a weakened will, often a plunge into the
abyss from which she so often never escapes.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of girls from country towns, and
those born in the city but who have been thrown on their own re-
sources, are compelled to live in cheap boarding or rooming houses
on the average wage of six dollars. How do they exist on this
sum? It is impossible to figure it out on a mathematical basis.
If the wage were eight dollars per week, and the girl paid two and
a half dollars for her room, one dollar for laundry, and sixty
cents for car fare, she would have less than fifty cents left at
the end of the week. That is provided she ate ten-cent breakfasts,
fifteen cent luncheons and twenty-five cent dinners. But there
is no doubt that many girls do live on even six dollars and do it
honestly, but we can affirm that they do not have nourishing
food, or comfortable shelter, or warm clothes, or any amusement,
except perhaps free public dances, without outside help, either
[42]

from charity in the shape of girls’ clubs, or friends in the country
home. How can she possibly exist, to say nothing of live?

Is it any wonder that a tempted girl who receives only six
dollars per week working with her hands sells her body for
twenty-five dollars per week when she learns there is a demand
for it and men are willing to pay the price? On the one hand her
employer demands honesty, faithfulness and a “clean and neat
appearance,” and for all this he contributes from his profits an
average of six dollars for every week. . . . In the sad life of
prostitution, on the other hand, we find that the employer demand-
ing the surrender of her virtue pays her an average of twenty-
five dollars per week. Which employer wins the half-starved
child to his’side in this unequal battle? It would be unjust, how-
ever, to cast any reflection upon those girls who are brave and
pure, by intimating that because they earn so small a wage they
must necessarily be in the same class with those other girls who,
unable to survive longer the heroic battle against poverty and
self-sacrifice, have succumbed and gone down.

Prostitution demands youth for its perpetuation. On the public
rests the mighty responsibility of seeing to it that the demand is
not supplied through the breaking down of the early education of
the young girl or her exploitation in the business world. What
show has she.in the competitive system which exists today? What-
ever her chances may be, to stand or to fall, she is here in hordes
in the business world as our problem. Let us do something to
give her at least a living wage. If she is not sufficiently skilled
to earn it let us mix some religious justice with our business and
do something to increase her efficiency which she has never been
able to develop through no fault of her own.

Are flesh and blood so cheap, mental qualifications so common
and honesty of so little value that the manager of one of our
big department stores feels justified in paying a high school girl,
who has served nearly one year as an inspector of sales, the beg-
garly wage of $4 per week? What is the natural result of such
an industrial. condition? Dishonesty and immorality, not from
choice, but necessity—-in order to live. . . . (Pages 42-44.)

After an exhaustive study of the whole field the Com-
mission feels that among the causes which influence girls and
women to enter upon a life of semi-professional and professional
prostitution are the following: First, lack of ethical teaching and
religious instruction; second, the economic stress of industrial life
on unskilled workers, with the enfeebling influences on the will
power; third, the large number of seasonal trades in which’ women
are especially engaged. (Page 45.)
[ 43 ]

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. V. Wage-Earning Women in Stores
and Factories. Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd
Session, 1911.

The story of the superintendent of employees who says to the
girl protesting against the small wage, “But haven’t you a man
friend to help support you?” is current in every city. Its very
prevalence is the best proof that there is some reason for it. De-
partment store officials quite generally and quite openly express
a preference for girls living at home. A number of them said to
the agents engaged in the investigation, with perfect frankness,
that the wage offered did not permit the girl to live elsewhere.
Three men said to the investigators that the wage did not permit
a girl to live honestly elsewhere. Do these admissions reveal a
motive for employing girls who supplement their wage immorally?
In short, is the effort to get girls who can work for less than
a living wage causing the majority of managers either to make a
bid for girls who have learned “to make easy money,” or to sug-
gest the method to innocent girl applicants? (Page 30.)

How much the wage of the rank and file has to do with the
moral plane and to what extent it is peculiar to the department
store are exceedingly difficult questions to answer. In nearly all
the cases which have come to. notice during the investigation the
first fall of the girl was either through her affection or her
desire for a good time, while her continuance in the way of evil
was beyond a reasonable doubt due to the large amount of money
made available thereby.

The average wage, determining so largely the measure of living
comforts within the reach of the girl, has a direct bearing upon
her moral welfare, particularly upon the moral welfare of the
woman adrift. (Page 35.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. V. Wage-Earning Women in Stores
and Factories. Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress,
2nd Session, 1911.

The attitude of many department store employers in itself
would indicate that the partially supported girl is the sole agent.
determining the wage level for herself as well as for her self-
supporting sister. Some of the employers advertise for sales-
women, “preferably those living at home.” Others have gone so
far as to state to applicants that without other sources of income,
unless they live at home, girls cannot live honestly on the wages
stores are accustomed to pay. (Page 22.)
[44 ]

The mental and moral development of a girl is also immediately
affected by the certainty or uncertainty which attaches to the ma-
terial provision for her future. The opportunity for this provi-
sion, if she does not marry, depends upon the possibility of increas-
ing her earnings, her promotion in rank, and her tenure in office.
(Page 36.)

In private families the girl may or may not mingle in the
social life of the family, but the chances are that she does, espe-
cially in the poorer homes. Here the close quarters often destroy
all privacy, and the lodger or boarder becomes practically a member
of the family. She uses all the rooms in common with the family,
almost always sharing a room with some member of the family
and, in some extreme cases, occupies a room with the landlady and
her husband. If there are men lodgers in the house the entrance
to their room is sometimes through the girl’s room or vice versa.
In one house visited the woman received the agent about 9 P. M.
in the room of a man lodger, who had already gone to bed. This
seemed to be the only available sitting room and disconcerted no
one save the agent. While such conditions through custom and long
usage lose the startling effect which they would have on one
unused to them, they cannot help but blunt a girl’s sense of
proper relations with the other sex and foster standards which are
not acceptable in this country. (Page 62.)

The boarding and lodging group is next in size to the private
family group. Five hundred and forty-two, or 33.7 per cent., of
all the women are living this way. (Page 62.)

Fifty-five per cent of the boarding and lodging women had no
house sitting room and no place other than their rooms in which
to receive friends. It is a rare thing for a landlady to object to a
girl entertaining her gentlemen friends in her bedroom, provided
they do not stay too late and are quiet and orderly, and by that
she means that they do not make such a noise as to disturb the
whole house. Frequently, too, the girls visit the men lodgers of
the house in their rooms, and the men return the calls. The only
alternative to entertaining callers in their bedrooms is to meet
them on the street. For these girls and women who live in
boarding and lodging houses it has become so much a matter of
course to receive men in their rooms that neither they nor their
friends think anything of it. It is the custom. If a woman has
no other home than her room, she feels that in that room she
must entertain her friends.

But even if the absence of a sitting room is not keenly felt, it
is none the less an evil. Unfortunately the “gentlemen friends”
are not always deserving of the name, the girls are often weak
[45 ]

and easily led astray, and the free and easy intercourse which is
nobody’s business may end most disastrously. (Pages 66-67.)

Report on Condition of Woman ani Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. XV. Relation Between Occupation and
Criminality of Women. Senate Document No. 645, 61st
Congress, 2nd Session, 1911.

Do low wages, then, play no part at all in this matter of moral
evil? The consensus of opinion was that as a direct and immediate
cause of going wrong they were almost a negligible factor, but
that indirectly their influence was marked and disastrous. In the
whole inquiry only one case was found in which the workers deal-
ing with the girl felt that she had been driven into wrong because
she could not live upon the wages she could earn. Four other
cases were found in which the fall was directly attributable to
poverty, but in these cases the difficulty was due not to low
wages, but to no wages, at all.

It must be observed that this relates only to the initial wrong
step, not to becoming a habitual wrongdoer after the first error
has been made. It was generally agreed that while it is the
rarest of things for a girl to enter upon an immoral life directly
through want, yet when she has once gone wrong through thought-
lessness or affection or from any other cause, then low wages or
irregular or insufficient wages are strongly effective in deciding
her to adopt a life of promiscuous immorality, or in impelling her
to drift into such a life without any definite decision.

When the question was shifted to the indirect effect of low
wages and poverty the answer was very different. The girls were
living at home in so many cases that the discussion necessarily dealt
rather with the family income than with the girl’s own imme-
diate wages. Poverty, whether it be the result of a low family
income, or of insufficient wages for a girl living by herself, touches
the question of immorality in many ways. It decides the girl’s
companionships, her amusements, her ability to ‘gratify without
danger her natural and reasonable tastes, her very capacity ‘for
resistance to temptation. Its physical effects open the way to
moral dangers. It means overcrowding and bad sanitary condi-
tions, and under-nutrition or mal-nutrition, and insufficient or
unsuitable clothing. A social worker with eight years’ experience
in one of the leading factory centers thus summarized the situa-
tion.

“Between the crowding and bad air, both at home and at their
work, and the kind of food they eat, and the long hours and
monotony of their employment, they are constantly in an abnormal
[ 46].

state. They are feverish and uncomfortable; they want some-
thing, but they don’t know what it is. They crave, with an inten-
sity we can hardly realize, something to make them forget their
discomfort, to divert their minds from the weariness of their lives.
That is why they flock to these cheap amusement places, which
are the only ones they can afford. There they find temptation on
every hand, but they are in poor condition to resist it. The great
wonder to me is that so few yield. It’s not only the girl’s wages
which must be taken into consideration; it’s the family income and
the whole way of working and living. Part of it could be improved
if the girls knew more about housekeeping and cooking, but much
of it couldn’t be unless the family income were considerably in-
creased. When the girls are not living at home, conditions are
apt to be even worse, for life on their wages means unceasing
struggle and privation. Practically, though, all the girls here live
at home with their relatives.”

This estimate applies with local variations to every place vis-
ited. There was practical agreement that low wages do not drive
girls wrong through want, but that indirectly they have consider-
able effect. (Pages 93-94,) :

The downward way is easy to enter, and financially its returns
are good. There she can find, for a time at least, ease, luxuries,
and excitement; if she has a child, she can support it much more
easily thus than by the work she can find elsewhere. Economic
pressure may not have led to her downfall, but it is a strong factor
in keeping her in the wrong path when once it has been entered.
(Page 110.)

Report of Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards.
1912.

It is remarkable that more saleswomen do not turn to Vice.
It is impossible to say how many do. No estimate whatever can
be made of the extent to which the workers are subsidized because
of illicit relations with one or two men. Only a few of the women
had the appearance of prostitutes. Women who were making a
brave fight against tremendous odds were many times more often
in evidence. (Page 90.)

Report on the Wage-Earning Women of Kansas City. Board of
Public Welfare of Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kansas City,
1918.

It would be unjust and incorrect to say that as a class those
girls who are not receiving living wages are immoral. But it is
clear that girls who receive insufficient wages to pay for the
[ 47 ]

bare necessities of life, especially those living in boarding and
lodging houses, are subjected to too great temptation, and that
one should occasionally fall in consequence of this inability to
secure not only the necessities of life, but also nice clothes and
amusements desired by every normal girl, is not a far-fetched
theory.

An investigation by the Board of Public Welfare of 300 in-
mates of houses of ill fame in Kansas City showed that 154, or
51 per cent., received $6 a week or less when engaged in honorable
pursuits, while only 10 per cent received as much as $10 a week.
Although 154 inmates in Kansas City’s houses of ill fame received
$6 a week or less prior to their downfall, the low wage received
prior to their downfall cannot be taken as the sole cause. Poor
home environment, unwholesome amusements, ignorance, etc., are
all contributing factors to the vice problems and a girl’s downfall
may be due to a combination of these causes. However, the fact
that there are a large number of girls in boarding and lodging
houses who do not receive sufficient wages to cover their barest
needs is evidence itself that there is an economic pressure that is
likely, and no doubt does occasionally, influence the morality of
many. Seventy of the 300 inmates of houses of ill fame in Kansas
City stated the cause of their downfall was low wages. (Pages
80-81.)

Women’s Work and Wages. A Phase of Life in an Industrial City.
EDWARD CapBuRY, M. CECILE MATHESON and GEORGE SHANN.
T. Fisher Unwin. London, 1906.

To ali who have gone in and out among them it must be a
matter of continual marvel that so many of them are so good.
There is a heroism rarely seen or recognized in the lives of these
thousands who “keep respectable.” For the rest, “There is one
ghastly investigation still waiting on the economist.” It is the
aid to wages which is got from “the oldest trade in the world.”
That this is an economic element in the wage question is beyond
all doubt. All of us know it. None of us has yet had the courage
to measure it. Not till we do so will the world know the true cost
of “cheap labor.” (Pages 189-190.)

The Economic Review, Vol. 18, London, 1908. The Remuneration
of Women’s Work. HAMILTON W. FYFE.

They work very long hours and live under conditions which are
physically, mentally and morally unhealthy. This is an evil which
affects women even more than men, both in health and character,
[ 48 ]

since women are by economic pressure and even by personal per-
suasion continually brought under the temptation of supplementing
their income by the sacrifice of their virtue. It is high time we
recognized that immorality is largely an economic product. (Pages
136-137.) &

The Church and Citizenship. R. Latrer. A. R. ee & Co.
London, 1918.

But who will dare to say that none of these, whose lives are
ruined, are in this plight because we refuse to consider it is in any
way incumbent on us to try to get a living wage paid to every
worker? If the temptation caused by hunger and by overcrowded
dwellings were removed there would surely be fewer in need of
our rescue work. (Pages 40-41.)

The Living Wage. PHItip SNowDEN, M.P. Hodder & Stoughton.
London, 1918.

Low wages are largely responsible for the material waste, for
the physical loss and the industrial inefficiency described in this
chapter; but the most serious of all the loss which is inflicted
upon the community by low wages is that it destroys the intellects
of the very poor and numbs their moral aspirations. Poverty is
an opiate which produces a feeling of contentment with or resig-
nation to conditions which ought to excite a righteous discontent.
The heaviest price which is paid by the community for low wages
is the loss of a rational ambition for better conditions. (Page 55.)

C. ECONOMIC ASPECT.
(1) NO PRESENT STANDARDS FOR WOMEN’S WAGES.

Investigation has proved that the wages of women are
fixed at present only by supply and demand. Earnings
for the same work in*a given industry vary from estab-
lishment to establishment. The wage is fixed neither by
the value of service rendered nor by what the industry
can afford. By establishing a minimum legal wage the
state protects women from the exploitation which has
been found existing in many occupations.

Report of the Social Survey Committee of the Consumers’ League
of Oregon. CAROLINE J. GLEASON, Portland, Oregon, 1918.

Owing to the lack of organization among women workers and
the secrecy with which their wage schedules are guarded, there are
[49 ]

‘absolutely no standards of wages among them. Their wages are
determined for the most part by the will of the employer without
reference to efficiency or length of service on the part of the
worker. This condition is radically unjust. (Page 6.)

During the investigation, several phases of the female labor
problem have been brought out constantly. One of these is in
regard to the efficiency of the workers. One fact that was clearly
demonstrated is that efficiency is certainly not the standard accord-
ing to which the majority of workers are paid. This was evi-
denced (1) by the dismissal of highly paid, experienced employees
and the employment of young, inexperienced substitutes; (2) by
the reduction of rates on piecework when employees had reached
a certain earning capacity; (3) by the fact brought out again and
again, that though employees were retained for years of service,
though their efficiency increased with time, they found it an im-
possibility to keep their position and bring their wages above a
certain low figure. (Pages 23-24.)

RETAIL STORES.

One of the greatest complaints to be found with the large
department store management is that as far as anyone can find
out, they have no system of advancement of employees. Amount
of sales, increase or decrease, is watched, to be sure, but appar-
ently only to dismiss the employee if he or she does not come up
to a certain standard. When the regulation of wages is left to
the head of each department, the demand that the returns from
the department be kept at a certain figure is likely to result (for
men and women alike) in the dismissal of competent, high-paid
clerks, or reduction of their wages. The basis of advance seems
to be personal aggressiveness, and this is testified to over and
over again by the girls.

A rule existing, written or unwritten, in all the larger stores,
is that the girls must not tell others what wage they are getting.
Divulging this information has resulted in instant dismissal. One
firm goes so far as to require a signed promise from the girl that
she will not tell any other employee her wage. (Page 26.)

Women in Industry. EpitH ABBOTT, Ph.D. Assistant Director
Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. Appleton, New
York, 1910.

Today there is a group wage in so far as various classes are
paid “supplementary wages,” but these are determined not by the
bargaining power of the man, but often by the helplessness of
[50 ]

the woman and of the minor children who have become the appar-
ent collectors of their own wages. (Page IX.)

From this helplessness which characterizes women workers in
bargaining spring many difficult problems. There is the question
of their inability to secure right conditions under which to do
their work, to limit the amount and duration of their work, so
as to maintain their own health and that of their children. From
this weakness arises the necessity on the part of the community
of assuming control over the wage contract so as to protect women
wage earners from undue exploitation and to safeguard its own
future. (Page X.)

(From the introductory note by Sophonista P. Breckinridge,
Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. II. Men’s Ready-Made Clothing. Sen-
ate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd Session, 1911.
Government Printing Office, Washington, 1911.

In a study of earnings by occupations in the manufacture of
clothing it is well to call attention to one feature—the absence
of what might be called a standard wage in the industry. This
is true of both men and women, and of both piece and time work-
ers. Examining the weekly rates in the same occupation, the
workers in a given employment are found distributed according
to their earnings over a wide range in the wage scale. Examining
the earnings of piece workers, their earnings are found to be
similarly differentiated. Wages where paid by the week are
fixed in the trade either according to the efficiency or capacity
for bargaining of the worker, or by an arbitrary determination,
and not according to a particular time rate. Piece rates similarly
allow for very considerable variation in earnings.

A few illustrations may be given of the earnings of women.
There are available data for 32 female edge basters 21 years and
over working by the week in coat shops; their average computed
earnings for a full week are $9.17. Of these the largest number,
11, earn $9 to $10, 5 earn $7 to $8, 5 others $7 to $9, and 4 earn
$11 to $12. The earnings of those 18 to 20 years of age are simi-
larly distributed over a range of $4.

Thirty-five female buttonhole makers at 18 to 20 years of age,
working by the piece, average in a full week $10.34. Seven earn
between $7 and $8, 5 between $8 and $9, 6 between $9 and $10,
3 between $10 and $11, and 3 between $11 and $12. These illus-
trations are chosen because the work done is similar. (Page 194.)
[51]

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. III. Glass Industry. Senate Document
No. 645, 6ist Congress, 2nd Session, 1911. Government
Printing Office, Washington, 1911.

The first, and possibly the most important, factor to be noted
as influencing wage variations among women glassworkers is
that of factory location, using the word in a narrow sense, to mean
the immediate community, in which one or more factories are
established. In the discussion of boys’ wages in the furnace room
the fact was noted that wages often showed marked variations
among factories at no great distance from each other. With the
women glassworkers this local variation is even more marked
than it is among the boys.

Women glassworkers are so far from being a completely mobile
labor force that even moderate mobility is rather uncommon. The
reason is clear. Such persons, in the great majority of cases, are
not independent laborers capable of taking advantage of better
opportunities. For the most part they are active members of
families, the male adults of which are usually not in the same
industry, or if so, rarely in the same occupations or even in the
same division of the work, and in consequence, not subject to the
same wage influences. Usually the woman is not the most impor-
tant contributor to the family income and, as a result, has her
residence, which determines her labor market, prescribed by those
who would lose’ more than they would gain by moving the family
residence to best meet the opportunities of the woman member in
the glass industry. (Pages 406-7.)

The variations in the wage rates paid by different factories
for the same work are frequent and great. In each occupation
listed, except that of washing, the highest wage paid by the
establishments at one extreme is at least double that paid by the
establishment at the other extreme, and in the excepted occupa-
tion of washing the variation is little short of 100 per cent. In
grinding the variation is particularly great, the difference between
6.2 cents an hour and 15 cents an hour being, on a 58-hour per
week basis, the difference between $3.60 a week and $8.70 a week.

(Page 408.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. 18. Employment of Women and Chil-
dren in Selected Industries. Senate Document No. 645, 61st
Congress, 2nd Session, 1911.

Apparently the wages of women in factory industries
are very largely unstandardized. In general they are low, but the

6
[52]

degree of their lowness seems not to vary so much with the char-
acter of the work done as with the custom of a given industry, or,
more accurately, of a given employer, for earnings within a given
industry varied widely from one establishment to another. (Page
24.)

And when it comes to the question of earnings, the lack of
standardization seems to reach its height. In the main the women
were wholly unorganized and seemed to have no idea in regard to
wages beyond taking what they could get. The determining factor
seemed not so much what their services were worth or what the
industry could afford as the individual employer’s attitude upon
the matter. In one and the same industry employers would be
found who so graded their rates that the average employee would
be able to earn fair wages, the unusual employee, of course, under
such a system earning very good wages; employers who took
foreign women because they could get them for lower wages than
American women, and employers who sought girls under 16 for
all the occupations they could fill on the admitted ground that
“they could do as much as a woman and would work for less.”
With some employers the lowest wages a woman or girl could be
induced to work for decided what she could get. In many cases
there was an evident intention to treat the employees justly and
considerately, but nowhere was there any generally accepted
standard of what constituted a fair or reasonable wage. What a
woman could earn by a week’s work seemed to depend fully as
much upon extrinsic factors over which she had no possible con-
trol as upon her own ability or her own efforts, (Pages 35-36.)

CONFECTIONERY.

The variations in the wage level for the same age groups in
various states are suggestive. In general it seems safe to assume
that by the time a woman is 18 years of age she has gained what-
ever industrial value she is likely to have in such mechanical
processes as those in which she is engaged in a candy factory.
And since the work done by women in candy factories does not
differ greatly in character from state to state, it also seems a
reasonable assumption that the value of a woman aged 18 years
and over would be approximately the same to her employer whether
she worked in Massachusetts or in Maryland, in Georgia, or in
Wisconsin. Yet, as the following table shows, the difference in
the proportion earning even so moderate a wage as $6 is marked.
[53 ]

PER CENT OF FEMALE WORKERS AGED 18 YEARS AND OVER IN
SPECIFIED EARNINGS GROUPS, BY STATES—CONFECTIONERY

Female ee a so of age

Per cent wlth 3 areekie., ‘earnings of
Number. bad bee are $10 and

   

over.
Massachusetts _...0.000..0..... 506 25.5 54,2 86.4 3.8
New York.......... ..-. 370 30.5 56.5 84.3 3.5
Pennsylvania .. ---- 248 41.5 61.7 91.1 8
Ohio ............... .... 156 41.7 65.4 89.1 1.3
Indiana ..... --- 63 65.1 19.4 90.5 1.6
Wisconsin . .--- 186 70.6 85.3 97.1 1.5
Maryland ~....000. 13 71.2 83.6 94.5 41

(Pages 135-186.)

Such wide variations indicate a total lack of standardi-
zation in wages. There seems to be no recognized wage level
which a worker of given age and ability may hope to attain.
What she gets appears to depend partly upon her own bargaining
powers, partly upon the prevailing sentiment of the community as
to what wages should prevail, and most of all upon the attitude of
her individual employer.

The female workers in the confectionery industry are largely
unskilled, they are usually young, to a considerable extent they
are foreigners, and they are unorganized. Consequently they are
peculiarly unable to have any effective voice in fixing their wages.
They take what they can get and, at least in the establishments
covered by this investigation, the majority were plainly getting
less than a living wage. (Page 136.)

TOBACCO AND SNUFF.

s The lack of any standard of wages in the industry.
In one factory an employer declares he does not want and will
not keep a woman who after a reasonable novitiate cannot make
herself worth at least $6 a week; in another, the woman who earns
$6 is a decided exception. The wages paid are practically a factory
matter, and vary as widely as the sanitary and hygienic conditions
under which the work is carried on. (Page 321.)

Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage
Boards. January, 1912. House No. 1697.

Examination of the findings of our own investigators, how-
ever, shows that the lowest range of wages is less uniformly dis-
tributed within an industry than the statement of an average would
suggest. For instance, in the candy industry, with its 41 per cent.
of adult women receiving less than $5 a week, a comparison of wage
rates in 11 different establishments shows that the lowest wages
are confined to four factories, in one of which, indeed, 53.3 per
[ 54 ]

cent. of the employees received less than $5, while the other seven
factories paid not one single employee of 18 or over so low a
wage. The difference between these factories in the kind and
the grade of their product cannot account for the differences in
the wage scale, as both the higher and the lower wage scale pre-
vailed in the factories manufacturing the cheaper line of confec-
tionery.

Similar differences between different establishments were
found in the stores and the laundries. In the stores, indeed, the
large and presumably prosperous establishments of Boston in many
cases paid a lower wage than was paid in some of the small sub-
urban establishments, and lower wages than were paid in Brockton
or Springfield. (Pages 11-12.)

The need of work is so great and.the workers are so numerous
that the employers may dictate their own terms, limited only by
their sense of social responsibility and by the restricted competi-
tion of other employment opportunities. The constant and even
increasing tide of immigration is an important element in the
situation, The wage value of most of the labor of women is not
fixed by any other economic law than that of supply and demand.
(Page 16.)

There is a common and widespread but erroneous view that
such legislation is an attempt to provide by government that low-
paid workers shall receive more than they earn; that it runs
counter to an economic law which, by some mysterious but certain
process, correlates earnings and wages. There is no such law; in
fact, in many industries the wages paid bear little or no relation to
the value or even to the selling price of the workers’ output.
Wages among the unorganized and lower grades of labor are
mainly the result of tradition and of slight competition. (Page
18.)

A comparison of the first six factories shows that a manu-
facturer can pay for unskilled adult woman labor about what he
chooses to offer. These factories are competing in practically the
same labor market. They are making more or less the same grade
of goods. (Page 58.)

Comparisons, moreover, between individual factories whose
wholesaling prices are nearly the same show a very marked con-
trast in wage scales. The wage scale, apparently, does not differ
with the grade of goods made, but with the policy of the manu-
facturer in hiring labor. The undercutting of wages by the un-
scrupulous manufacturer at the expense of the defenseless work-
ing woman is evidently as common here as it was in Australia
before the establishment of minimum wage boards.

It is a question whether the manufacturers, either those who
[55]

undereut or those who do not, deliberately adopted their wage
scale. The majority had vague ideas about the general scale or
the earnings of their individual employees. Probably the under-
cutting manufacturers had simply put pressure on their superin-
tendents to hold down the payroll, without knowing how it was
done or its effect on the efficiency of the force or on the indi-
vidual. (Pages 58-59.)

The worker in the large establishment is dealt with by the
owner through his superintendent: an order goes out to decrease
the amount spent, for wages and the latter puts it into effect.

This is an admission that workers are not paid less in
one place than in another because they are worth less or need
less, but simply because the employer, engrossed in financing his
business and extending it, in buying materials advantageously, and
in keeping to the front in methods of manufacture forgets that his
payroll represents individual men and women who can be devel-
oped so that they will become, by their efficiency and health, in-
creasingly profitable or who can be sucked of their value and
thrown on the junk heap to be cared for by society. It is a ques-
tion whether the State, for self-preservation in this period of large
scale industries, should not insist on a substitute for the old time
personal relation between man and master, to secure to all workers
at least what the well-intentioned manufacturer, close to his work-
man, feels that he should and can pay. (Page 60.)

By economic law rent and the price of commodities are deter-
mined by the value of the highest priced parts that are used.
Surely if the economic laws of supply and demand and of profit
worked the same way with labor, the women entirely dependent
on their own earnings, the women who had no male earners to
help them in the care of their broken families, and the women at
home and in large families with few wage earners, make a suffi-
cient part of all the women workers to set the price of wages at
the cost of living that maintains health. But with labor exactly
the opposite is true. Here the price of the whole is fixed by that
part which is produced the cheapest, i. e., which is subsidized, or
which exists at the lowest level. The woman supported by her
father or husband, or who herds in the cheapest quarters and
lives on bread and tea, sets the price offered to the woman who
must be self-sustaining and who must live at a decent standard
if she would preserve her efficiency and health. Were labor really
a commodity which could be withheld from the market at will, it
would be the more expensively maintained labor that would set the
price, and the more cheaply or more advantageously maintained
labor would enjoy a margin similar to the margin now enjoyed as
[56 ]

profit and rent. As it is, instead of a lower price for labor de-
creasing the supply it actually increases it. (Pages 84-85.)

The Minimum Wage. Mrs. ELizABeTH G. Evans, Member First
Massachusetts Convention on Minimum Wage Boards. City
Club Bulletin. Chicago, 1912.

WAGES IN THE CANDY INDUSTRY.

There is often a great difference in the conditions of employ-
ment in a given industry, which the trade itself does not realize.
In Massachusetts, in the candy industry, interstate in its scope,
we found that in eleven factories, in Boston and the surrounding
towns, where the industry is for the most part located, there
existed a condition affecting wages that was not at all realized
by the men engaged in that industry. Out of those eleven fac-
tories, four were paying much lower wages than the rest. More
than half of the employees of those four factories, the adult
women, were receiving less than five dollars a week. The other
seven factories had not a single employee of eighteen or over
receiving so low a wage. One of the employers was paying 56 per
cent. a week less than another employer. The women, whom the
stronger sex are supposed to protect, were paying the bill for his
profits. There is evidently room for a wage board in that in-
dustry. . . . It would not affect the prices or the range of
profit. The employers are all making handsome profits. They
told us that the industry was growing fast, that they could sell
more than they could manufacture. They distinctly told us that
the difficulty was in getting enough labor. If one of these con-
cerns should shut down, the help could be absorbed in a day by
its competitors. (Page 29.)

Artificial Flower Makers. Mary VAN K.igeck. Russell Sage
Foundation Survey Associates, New York, 1918.

The fixing of the wage seems indeed to be a matter of chance.
It was described by a forewoman, who said that although a definite
percentage of the price of the flower was always allowed for
salesmen’s pay and firm’s profits, the wage rate was determined
by the forewoman’s guess. She made it as low as possible without
causing a spontaneous uprising in the workroom. As no trade
union has been developed to force flower manufacturers to adopt
a definite wage scale it is inevitable that variety and fluctuation
should characterize the earnings of flower makers. (Page 67.)

Economic pressure is recognized as an important factor in the
wage bargain, and signs are not lacking to indicate that the wage
[57]

received is in inverse ratio to the pressure. It is the worker
nearest starvation who is most likely to accept starvation wages.
If this be true, then the worker’s standard of life will determine
in part the wage received. In a trade where there is no collective
bargaining but the arranging of terms of employment is left to
individuals, the poverty of applicants for positions will occasion a
constant downward pull on wage standards. (Pages 72-73.)

We have seen, too, that chance seems to control the wage scale.
Processes vary and piece-work earnings must be readjusted with
each change in the product. The workers, unstable as they are
likely to be and heterogeneous in nationalty, have never succeeded
in organizing a trade union to compel forewomen or employers to
consider their interests in the wage bargain. Furthermore, for
every worker in the shop at least one woman or child is working
at home, members of a scattered industrial group without the least
sense of common interests or power to ask for higher pay. All
these uncertain elements influence wages and prevent the estab-
lishment of a standard. Until wage standards of some kind are
recognized, personal efficiency will not be properly rewarded.
Until conditions in the trade are so changed that adequate payment

will be made for work well done, skill will be increasingly rare.
(Page 218.)

Problem of Poverty. JOHN A. Hopson. Methuen & Co, London,
1891.

As the wages of women are lower than those of men, so they
suffer more from irregularity of employment. There are two
special reasons for this:

(a) Many trades in which women are employed depend largely
upon the element of Season. The confectionery trade, one of the
most important, employs twice as many hands in the busy season
as in the slack season. ,

(b) Fluctuations in fashion affect many women’s trades; in
particular, the “ornamental” clothing trades, e. g. furs, feathers,
trimmings, etc.

‘Employers in these slack times prefer generally to keep on the
better hands (on lower wages), and to dismiss the inferior hands.
(Pages 152-153.)

Report of Conference on a Minimum Wage. National Anti-Sweat-
ing League, London, 1907.

In examining the rates of sweating wages one is often struck

by the wide divergence in rates paid in the same locality for the
[58 ]

same sort of work, The difference is not infrequently as much
as 50%. Now, if the higher rate leaves the employer or the middle
man a sufficient margin of profit, as it must be held to do, there
evidently emerges a surplus profit in the cases where the lower
rates prevail. A legal minimum wage can absorb this surplus in a
rise of wages. (Page 55.)

(2) WAGES AND IRREGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT.

Regularity or irregularity of work determines the
earnings of the workers. Irregularity of work with
consequent loss of wages is found in varying degree in
almost all industries. Investigation has shown that such
unemployment is mainly due to industrial causes, such
as shut-downs in dull seasons, slack trade, incompetent
management, etc. The loss of earnings from irregularity
of work is obviously most detrimental to the lowest paid
workers. The establishment of a legal minimum wage
tends to encourage the regularization of work in the
interest of efficiency. It also enables the workers to
maintain themselves during slack seasons.

Report of the Social Survey Committee of the Consumers’ League
of Oregon on the Wages, Hours and Conditions of Work and
Cost and Standard of Living of Women Wage Earners in
Oregon with Special Reference to Portland.. CAROLINE J.
GLEASON, Portland, Oregon, 1913.

Periodic rush seasons come in the Christmas holidays and in
the before-Easter and spring season. After Christmas a large
percentage of the force in the large stores is laid off. As a general
rule, the clerks expect dismissal to be on the basis of length of
service, but they claim that they can never be certain of their
positions even though employed for two years. One concrete
instance was that of a girl in service for a year. A friend of the
head of a department was put on for the Christmas rush; at the
end of the holidays the new girl was given a permanent position,
the old one laid off, the reason assigned being that she would not
be needed in the dull season. Her mother was ill and dependent
on her, and the girl was in hard straits for work. A friend, hearing
of this, interceded and after a month’s unemployment, she was
taken back. (Page 29.)

The rush season for bag and paper box, candy and fur factories
comes just before Christmas. Paper box and candy establishments
[59 ]

are busy again from February to Easter, when the clothing season
begins to “swing in full.” Canneries maintain only a six months’
season—from June until December.

The problem of unemployment which is suggested by the men-
tion of “rush” and “dull” seasons is a serious one to the workers.
Practically three-fourths of the wage-earning women of the State
have to reckon on a period of unemployment which must be pre-
pared for “somehow or other.” (Page 34.)

In such trades as the clothing, shoe, candy and can making
industries, which run all year, the applicant is always hoping for
an opportunity to “make good” to the extent that she will be kept
on when the dull season arrives. To her unemployment means a
serious evil. Her wages during employment do not keep her well
housed and clothed. How can she save for the day when she will
be out of work? Figures of the number employed in the two sea-
sons in a few of the trades show the extent of the problem. Clothing
factories hiring 300 and 150 dismiss 200 and 100 respectively in the
dull season. Three other factories of different work employing
150, 80 and 20 respectively in the busy season dismiss 115, 60 and
15 in the dull season. Unemployment in other trades will be noted
when they are described. (Pages 34-35.)

Like the factories and department stores, the laundries lay off
a large percentage of their help during the dull season. The
experienced ironers may find it possible to do family washing by
the day, but for the more unskilled workers the problem of being
out of work in the winter time is a serious one. (Page 36.)

The Clothing Industry in New York. Jesse E. Pope. University
of Missouri Studies, 1905.

The regularity with which the laborer is employed must exert
a profound influence upon his well being. The clothing industry
belongs to those industries in which the irregularity is marked.
Each year brings its busy season and its dull season; sometimes
the work is plentiful, causing a rush, and there are times when
scarcely any work is to be had. And as we have already pointed
out, subsidiary employment is the exception and not the rule.

The evils of this irregularity may be put under three heads:
first, it reduces the size of the yearly income; second, workmen
become demoralized through idleness; and third, they suffer for
lack of money to tide over the dull season. (Page 186.)
[ 60 ]

Women Workers in Milwaukee. IRENE Oscoop, Special Agent. 13th
Biennial Report, Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics,
Wisconsin, 1907-1908.

Except from the standpoint of health, undertime is as great
an evil as overtime. It is the great factor in reducing wages.
During the thirteen days ending February 15, 1906, there was no
overtime. Out of sixty-eight women on day rate, only sixteen
worked full time. Twenty-six lost less than one day; eighteen lost
more than one day, but less than two; and six lost three days or
more. The total number of hours worked by the sixty-eight girls
was 6,056. If each girl had worked her full time, that is 180 hours,
it would have required only sixty-three girls to furnish the same
output, and they would have received a full week’s pay. With the
prevailing conditions of undertime, the average work time for each
of the sixty-eight girls was only 119 hours instead of 130. This
represents a serious loss to the women.

During the ten working days ending February 28, sixty-six
girls were employed, but only seventeen were on full time. The
total number of hours worked was 5,910. If each girl had been
able to work full time, it would have required only fifty-nine girls
to furnish the same output, and each would have earned her full
week’s wages. The average number of hours for each girl was
eighty-eight instead of.one hundred.

These illustrations are sufficient to indicate the importance of
considering irregularity of employment, overtime and undertime,
in any study of wages. It affects the wages, habits and morals
of employes more than any factor in the industry. (Pages 1059-
1060.)

Women and the Trades. ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY BUTLER. The
Pittsburgh Survey—Russell Sage Foundation Publication,
New York, 1909.

The obverse side of the fall rush.is the summer depression. In
January and February there is a slack season in the hard-candy
trade, but in most of the factories the dull time comes during the
warm months, beginning sometimes in May and lasting well through
August. (Page 55.)

This long slack season brings up questions of wages. Is a
candy maker’s skill so slight that the girl will fit readily into some
other equally unskilled occupation when the dull season comes?
And does the dull season come at a time when other trades are
[61 ]

busy? Or, if the opportunity for subsidiary occupation is small,
are the wages received during the year sufficient to carry a wrapper
or dipper through a possible two months of unemployment?

We need not touch on the girls in the packing departments,
because very evidently they are a less dexterous and less charac-
teristic element in the trade. But the dippers have a specialized
dexterity which does not fit them to enter other occupations, such
as canneries, on an equal level. Furthermore, their dull season
comes at a time when most other trades are also dull. Some few
find employment selling candy in the parks or at places of amuse-
ment near the city; the majority have to count most of the summer
as lost time.

This relation of wages to the slack season becomes acute in
view of the proportion of girls in the trade who are obliged to be
self-supporting. In the smaller factories the girls come from homes
in the neighborhood, but a majority of the girls in the larger plants
come from towns nearby to learn the trade, and are paying board
in the city. For instance, one forewoman who directs about 100
chocolate dippers states that most of them are from homes outside
of Pittsburgh, and that at least a third board with strangers. Yet
less than one-fourth of the dippers (one-thirteenth of all the
women in the trade) are earning wages that give them even a
slight margin over living expenses. Even if we were to suppose
that this slight margin is sufficient to carry a girl who is laid
off through her season of unemployment, we could scarely take it
for granted that it is the more fortunate or able girl who is laid off.
On the contrary, when forces are reduced, it is the girls -with less
ability, less accuracy, and a smaller output per day who go. It is
the $7.00 girls, and the girls whose earnings are below $7.00. In
part, of course, the girls return to their homes, and their families
bear the loss due to seasonal unemployment. But in part the cost,
in under-nutrition, in unsocial employment, is borne, as ultimately
every individual human loss is borne, by the community of which
the chocolate dippers are a part. (Pages 55-56.)

Saleswomen are laid off for from two to six weeks, and often
for much longer in the cloak and suit departments. The total
yearly income is therefore lower than the income estimated from
what is paid by the week. Then, too, the shop girl must dress better
than the factory girl. A clean shirtwaist and a trim skirt are part
of her stock in trade, and her expenses for clothing and laundry are
correspondingly high.

Shop girls without-friends or family ties are few. Shop girls
to whom the family tie means an additional burden are many; and
[ 62 ]

there are many more who, with family ties and friends, are yet
dependent upon themselves for support. (Pages 304-305.)

The Living Wage of Women Workers. [A Study of Incomes and
Expenditures of 450 Women Workers in the City of Boston.]
LovIsE M Boswortu, Fellow, Women’s Educational & Indus-
trial Union. Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1911.

The woman worker in planning her expenses must
take into account the shrinkage of her income before it comes
into her hand by reason of fines, trade expenses, docking for
holidays and vacations, seasons of short time and no work. It
is the girl on the low wage who has this loss to bear in greatest
measure. The actual amount of money loss increases up to the
income of $10 per week, and beyond that decreases with the
increasing wage. While the girl on starvation wages, who earns
$8, $4 or $5 per week, does not actually get more than 84.37 per
cent. of this amount, the more prosperous woman earning $15
and over, gets 94.84 per cent. of her supposed wages.

(Page 33.)

The high percentage of loss of income among factory girls
is due in part to the long periods of short hours and lay-offs on
account of slack trade. Among sales girls the 4.50 per cent loss
through illness is a large factor in the high rate. But the
greatest source of loss for all classes is unemployment. The
factory girls pay the highest penalty here, having an out-of-
work loss of 7.14 per cent. followed closely by the waitresses, with
-6.89 per cent. The latter probably increase their out-of-work
time considerably by changing places between seasons, working
summers at the beach and winters in the cities. Salesgirls have
6.66 per cent. loss from out-of-work; clerical workers, 5.75 per
cent.; kitchen, 5.43 per cent.; professional, 3.85 per cent. (Pages
33-34.)

It appears that the heaviest loss for all occupations comes
from no work, that salesgirls pay the highest amount for illness,
professional workers for vacations, factory employees for holidays
and laid-off times, waitresses for fines and trade expenses, and
that in general the low-wage groups pay a higher proportion back
to the firm than the high-wage groups. (Pages 34-35.)
[ 63 ]

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. II. Men’s Ready-Made Clothing. Sen-
ate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd Session, 1911.

The investigation of the Bureau of Labor into the employment
of women and children in the men’s clothing industry was carried
on in the five cities of New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia
and Rochester. In these cities 244 factories were investigated
with a total labor force of 23,683 wage earners. Of these estab-
lishments 88 were in New York, 70 in Chicago, 22 in Baltimore, 39
in Philadelphia, and 25 in Rochester. (Page 13.)

In Chicago the clothing industry is divided into two branches—
the “special-order” trade and the regular “ready-made” trade.
From this point of view of labor, the chief characteristic of the
former as compared with the latter is its irregular and seasonal
character. This involves much rush work and overtime, and
again unemployment. (Page 109.)

The table following presents the figures for the industry as
a whole; that is, for both the “special-order” and “ready-made”
branches. (Page 109.)

In Chicago in a representative week, over 50 per cent. of the
women employed are reported to have worked full time; 7.5 per
cent. overtime, and 11.7 per cent five days or more, but less than
full time. Thus, 70 per cent. of the women are reported as
having worked approximately a full week; 30 per cent. of the force
are shown to have worked less than five days; 11.4 per cent. be
tween four and five days; 9.5 per cent. between three and four
days; 7 per cent. between two and three days, and 2.1 per cent.
less than two days. (Page 110.)

In Chicago, in the “ready-made” trade, it is found that 59 per
cent. of the women work full time; 3.4 per cent. overtime, and 13.8
per cent. five days or more, but less than full time; 76.2 per
cent. thus work approximately a full week. In the “special-
order” trade only 11.3 per cent. are reported working a full
week, 27.1 per cent. overtime, and 2.2 per cent. five days or over,
but less than full time; 40.6 per cent. or less than half of the
force work approximately a full week. On the other hand, 18
per cent. are found working between three and four days in the
“special-order” trade and 26.4 per cent. between two and three
days, 4.9 per cent. less than two days; that is, 49.3 per cent. of
the force work less than four days, as against 12.4 per cent. in
the “ready-made” trade. (Page 113.)
[ 64]

Baltimore data showed that only one-fifth of the force (22.1)
worked overtime; one-fifth more worked between five days and full
time; one-tenth worked between four and five days; over one-

fourth worked only between three and four days; one-seventh =

between two and three days and 5 per cent. two days or less.
(Page 113.)

In order to determine how far the earnings of the employees
as shown by the payrolls of a single week were representative of
earnings throughout the period of employment during a year, and
in order to secure accurate information of the extent of employ-
ment and the earnings for a full year, a study was made of the
payrolls for an entire year in a considerable number of estab-
lishments in Chicago, Rochester, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The
enormous amount of work involved in the examination of the pay-
rolls for an entire year made it impossible to carry out this part
of the work for the full number of establishments included in the
investigation.

An examination of the payrolls for a year disclosed the fact
that a comparatively small per cent. of the total number of
employees continued to appear throughout the payrolls for the
year. In no city were more than 35 per cent. of the total number
at work in the course of the year found on 50 or more weekly pay-
rolls. In Baltimore the proportion was less than 10 per cent.
(Pages 165-166.)

In Chicago work during 1907 was found to be fairly even
throughout the year. The maximum number of employees, found
in January, is only 103.6 per cent. of the average. The minimum
number, found in April, is 95.8 per cent. of the average. The
smallest numbers employed were in April, May and June, and
again in November. The largest payroll, in March, is 116.8 per
cent. of the average, the lowest in September, 85.9 per cent.
The highest earnings of employees in March are 112.5 per cent.
of the average; the lowest, in September, 85 per cent. The rush
season seems to be January to April and June to August. Sep-
tember, October, and November are below the average.

In Rochester the variations are even slighter than in Chicago.
The highest number employed, in May, was 109.9 per cent. of the
average; the lowest, in March, was 93.8 per cent. The largest
payroll, in June, was 112.2 per cent. of the average; the smallest,
in March, 92.3 per cent. The highest earnings per employee, in
June, are 104.2 per cent. of the average; the lowest, in March,
98.4 per cent. (Page 175.)
[ 65 ]

In Philadelphia the highest number of employees was found
in June—108.4 per cent. of the average; the lowest number in
December—79.1 per cent. The highest payroll was 125.2 per cent.
of the average, in January; the lowest payroll 47.2 per cent., in
September. The highest weekly earnings per employee were 117.6
per cent., in January; the lowest 54.3 per cent., in September.
January to June were busy months; July to December were con-
siderably below the average except for the month of August.

In Baltimore the seasonal variations are marked. The highest
number of employees was found in March, 126.6 per cent. of the
average; the lowest in September, 72.1 per cent. The largest
payroll was in February, 131.3 per cent. of the average; the
lowest in September, 55.6 per cent. The highest earnings per
employee were in February, 118.6 per cent. of the average; the
lowest in April, 63.4 per cent. The busy season was in May and
June, and again in November to March. August, September, and
October were dull. (Page 175.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the
United States. Vol. III. Glass Industry. Senate Document

No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd Session, 1911.
Number and per cent. of women and children in the finishing

department who worked full time and less, by number of days
worked per week.

Females 16 Femalesun- Males under
Days worked per week. yrs. and over der 16 yrs. 16 yrs.

 

No. Pet. No. Pet. No. Pct.

 

Full time, 6 days.............. 1,886 50.00 2388 49.5 | 63 | 54.8

5 days and less than 6.... 627' 226, 97 201 17 146

4 days and less than 5..../ 358° 12.9| 62 12.9: 22 19.0

3 days and less than 4... 239! 86. 62 129: 9: 78

Less than 3 days..........------ 164' 5.9' 22; 46! 5 4.3
( |

Totallisegectcccceessccczeceess 2,774 100.0 | 481 ' 100.0 116 100.0

Using the percentage columns of this table as guides, it
appears that almost exactly one-half of the women and girls and
slightly less than one-half of the boys failed to work a full week.
The degree of failure varied in the three classes, but there were
comparatively few in any class who worked less than a half
week. (Page 404.)

The standard of living of an individual during a given period
depends upon actual earnings, not upon possible earnings. Thus,
[ 66 ]

it is of much significance to note that of the 2,774 women glass-
workers 388, 12.2 per cent. of the total, received at the end of a
given week less than $3; 1,567, 56.5 per cent, less than $5 a
week; and less than 12 per cent. as much as $7 a week. (Pages
404 and 405.)

The point to be here developed is that among all the families
concerned, and especially among those of the lower income groups,
a very considerable degree of unemployment existed. Classing
together all male adults in families with per capita weekly incomes
of less than $2, barely one-tenth (13.1 per cent.) worked a full
year of 300 days, only one-third (33.3 per cent.) worked as much
as 250 days, and some did not work as much as 200 days. From
this it would follow that the fact of low income in such cases
was due in considerable part to failure to work regularly through-
out the year. (Page 577.)

The maximum working year is commonly placed at 300 days,
this being the maximum number of working days. In a number
of trades, however, 300 days, while a maximum, is rarely a pos-
sible full year. A mason, for instance, is arbitrarily limited by
the weather; a coal miner can seldom work every day in the year,
because the mine is almost certain to be closed a day or two
now and then; a bottle blower in most factories does not have
employment at his trade during the months of July and August,
and even if he needs and seeks other summer employment several
days’ lost time is almost certain to result. A glassworker in a
glass district may well find it impossible to obtain much tempo-
rary employment unless he travels a considerable distance, for
if the glass industry is important in the community and all the
factories close for the summer season there is necessarily a surplus
of idle laborers. (Page 578.)

Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage
Boards. January, 1912. House No. 1697.

No study of wages is complete without a parallel study of the
steadiness of employment and the expectation of time to be lost
on account of sickness. Every industry that is not essentially
seasonal should pay enough to its workers to maintain them
through the slack season and through short periods of sickness.
This investigation throws some light on these points, but a more
intensive study is necessary to show exactly how much time is
lost and for what causes. (Page 63.)

The flat rate of wages gives only an approximate idea of the
[ 67]

actual earnings of the candyworker. She gains over her rate by
payment for overtime and bonus; she loses by fines and the
irregularity of her employment. (Page 50.)

It is simple to generalize about the number of women who
are working at the rate of $4, $5, and $6, etc., a week in any
given factory, but the actual earnings for the year, or at least
for a number of weeks, are essential to a real knowledge of the
situation. (Page 50.)

The average annual earnings of the 469 women who worked
through the year for the same firm was $277.16 or $5.33 for each
of the fifty-two weeks, including the weeks when they were out
of work because of a temporary shutdown, illness or absence for
personal reasons. The average for weeks worked taken alone was
$5.97. The average loss, then, that the worker bore each week,
largely because of industrial reasons, as will be shown later,
was 64 cents. Anyone on a salary of $60 a week may bear the
loss of $6 with equanimity, but to the wage earner the loss of
10 per cent. of her income is a serious concern, and added to the
uncertainty of employment, a drain on her resources of mind and
body. (Pages 51-52.)

The question of irregularity of employment is a very vital one
to the woman earning wages which barely maintain her even
when she has steady work. There is no margin left over the
necessities of life, against the out-of-work period whether it is
due to lack of employment, sickness or the effort to find more
satisfactory work. Not only do the idle periods seriously affect
the worker’s purse, but irregularity and uncertainty inevitably
cause deterioration in her ability to make the most of herself and
her slender pay. She cannot develop foresight. She cannot plan
the wisest expenditures, while indubitably recurring idleness, with
its attendant anxiety, tends to impair efficiency. More appealing
to some minds, because the relation of cause and effect is more
clear, is the moral downfall of many women during this period
of no work, no money, the discouragement of fruitless search for
work, and a surfeit of time. (Pages 62-3.)

The great cause for the loss of time is industrial: 74.1 per
cent. of the days lost was due to this cause. Only 4.8 per cent.
or 23 of the 479 candyworkers, lost no time for industrial rea-
sons. é
The average loss of time to each of the 479 was three weeks
and 2.7 days, although the average for the woman who earned
less than $6 was seven days greater than for the woman who
earned $6 and over, and was better able to bear it. The longest
[ 68 ]

‘time any worker who was counted as having worked throughout
the year was out in the aggregate for industrial reasons was
eleven weeks. (Page 70.)

The pith of the matter is that the most shifting class of the
workers, who averaged about 38 weeks’ employment, for the fac-
tories where the investigators saw them, were absent three to five
times as much for reasons more or less within their own control
as were the steadier class of workers. These figures are based
on too few reports to be considered more than suggestive.

There was not sufficient time to investigate further, although
it was recognized that the question of the duration of employment,
the ease with which new employment is found, and the loss due
to sickness stands second to the rate of wages in the consideration
of women’s earnings. (Pages 73-74.)

Artificial Flower Makers. Mary VAN KLEECK. Russell Sage
Foundation Publication, New York, 1918.

That flower makers face the problem of the seasons is shown
first of all by the fluctuations in the numbers employed during the
course of a year. Of 114 firms investigated, 101 reported the
comparative numbers employed in their workrooms in busy and
dull months. The maximum force of women in these shops was
4,470. In slack season only 873 of these 4,470 workers were still
to be found in the workrooms, and of that number 385 were not
flower makers only but worked on feathers also, according to the
orders received. It was found that 46 firms employed no flower
makers in their slack seasons, 15 employed less than five, and 13
employed between five and ten. (Page 40.)

It will thus be seen that in more than half the shops the
workers must expect a dull period of three or four months every
year. During that time, as is shown by the figures indicating
fluctuations in numbers employed, about one girl in every group
of five will have work. The remaining four must look for other
employment or else be idle. (Page 43.)

Part time is another phase of the problem. Firms may report
that they keep their employees “all year round,” and yet the
workers may suffer the disadvantages of irregularity by a reduc-
tion in pay in dull weeks. For instance, a rose maker who earned
$9 a week in the busy season was employed through the dull sum-
mer months, but she worked only three days a week with half
pay, except for an occasional week when more orders were re-
ceived. Even then she was paid $2 less than in the winter for a
[ 69 ]

full week’s work, a premium to the firm for not “laying her off.”
(Pages 43-44.)

At any rate it is true that not only is the year divided into
dull and busy seasons, but within the busy season employment
fluctuates in a way which cannot be foreseen. As an example of
variations from season to season, one employer in a small shop
showed his payroll for corresponding weeks in two successive
years. In 1909 the total wages paid out in the second week in
May amounted to $113.42, while in the same week in 1910 the
total fell to $15. (Page 48.)

In spite of this versatility in combining trades, steady employ-
ment the year round is very unusual among the girls who are
flower makers in the busy months in that trade. In every inter-
view the visitor discussed with the girl the amount of time lost
in the preceding twelve months. The reports of 105 appear in
Tables 11 and 12.

TABLE 11—TIME LOST IN THE YEAR PRECEDING THE DATE OF
INTERVIEW FROM ALL CAUSES BY WOMEN EMPLOYED
IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKING

Time lost. ‘Women losing the time specified.
“No time” 15
Less than 1 month 82
1 month and less than 3 months 35
3 months and less than 6 months 21
6 months and over 2
Total reporting 105

TABLE 12—TIME LOST IN THE YEAR PRECEDING THE DATE OF
INTERVIEW BECAUSE OF SLACK SEASON BY WOMEN
EMPLOYED IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKING.

Time lost. Women losing the time specified.
“No time” 29
Less than 1 month 31
1 month and less than 3 months 31
3 months and less than 6 months 13
6 months and over 1
Total reporting 105

These figures are a record of the time actually lost, in spite
of employment in other occupations when the season of flower
making was over. Thus they do not show the total time out of work
in the flower trade. (Pages 50-51.)

It may be roughly estimated here, however, that after workers
have followed several different occupations in the course of a year
only about one girl in seven will have received wages for fifty-two
weeks. (Page 52.)
[70 ]

That the short and irregular season is a calamity for flower
makers becomes more evident when the facts about wages in this
trade are known. Furthermore, information about the home con-
ditions and family responsibilities of these workers shows that
low earnings and unemployment affect not only the individual
wage earner but serve constantly to undermine the standard of
living of the family group. (Page 58.)

Statistics of weekly wages cannot give a just impression of the
real income of flower makers unless some effort be made to esti-
mate the effect of irregular employment on yearly earnings.
(Page 70.)

The average weekly wage of all the women investigated who
had had a year or more of experience was $7.76. If employment
were steady throughout the year this average weekly wage would
amount to an average yearly income of about $400. Nevertheless,
half the workers whose earnings in twelve months could be esti-
mated received less than $300. A rough comparison of these last
two statements would indicate that the tax made by irregular
employment on the income of flower makers amounts to about two
dollars a week, a sum by no means insignificant. (Page 72.)

Paris.

As an illustration of the irregularity of employment of shop
and home workers alike government investigators cited the fact
that of 170 home workers, 111 were unemployed at some time
during the year. Of 87 reporting definitely on the subject of loss
of time, 31 lost from one to two months; 35, from three to five
months; and 21, six months or more. (Page 161.)

Women in the Bookbinding Trade. Mary VAN KLEECK. Russell
Sage Foundation Publication, New York, 1918.

Most serious of all losses is the cut in yearly income due to
lack of work in dull season, or loss of time for other reasons.
(Page 84.)

If work were steady the average weekly wage of $7.22, which
is recorded for the girls interviewed, would amount to a yearly in-
come of about $375. But the estimate of yearly earnings shows
that even though bindery girls find other work in dull season the
medium yearly income from their occupations is about $808, indi-
cating a loss of more than $50 in twelve months. This is not a
small loss when the fact is realized that very few bindery girls
earn $500 or more in a year. (Pages 85-86.)
[71]

A girl sometimes prefers to accept a lower wage than is paid
elsewhere, if she is reasonably sure of continued employment.

It would have been better to have had $6 a week steadily instead
of earning $8 so irregularly, one girl said. (Page 123.)

Their earnings are reduced still lower by reason of irregular
work. Only about a third work in establishments reporting steady
employment. Nearly three-fourths of the workers interviewed had
frequently lost time in slack seasons. Only one in eight reported
no time lost for any cause, while nearly a third reported a loss
of one to three months during the year, and more than a fourth
lost three months or more. (Page. 220.)

Report of Special Commission to Investigate the Conditions of
Wage-Earning Women and Minors in the State of Connec-
ticut, 1918.

CONDITIONS IN DEPARTMENT STORES.

The seasonal nature of the work is one of its worst evils. For
about three months in the spring and fall there is a very busy
season which is followed by a three months slack period. On the
part of the employers there are various ways of meeting this
situation. Two firms lay off a majority of workers for all of
the slack time, keeping only two older experienced workers
throughout the year. One of the women questioned as to the
hardships of this, said that she was forced to take in plain sewing
or anything at hand at this time, but during the time she is em-
ployed in the stores she loses so many of her customers it is quite
impossible to get a sufficient amount of work for a living income.
One employer explained that for this reason he preferred married
women with some source of income or dressmakers with an estab-
lished business, but such discrimination is by no means always
evident. (Page 237.)

The most common method is that of asking the worker to take
a vacation. Whether they desire it or not the benefit of resting
without earning is forced on them from four to eight weeks a
year. This factor quite counterbalances high wages. Invariably
the employees look forward with apprehension to the expense of
enforced vacations. (Page 238.)

Considering the seasonal character of the work which forces
from four to eight weeks vacation on all but a few of the most
highly skilled and highly paid women, the question of decent exis-
tence must unavoidably be a pressing one to the girl thrown on
her own resources. (Page 240.)
[72]

Report of Conference on a Minimum Wage. National Anti-Sweat-
ing League, London, 1907.

With the curse of want of regulation goes also.that of irregu-
larity of employment.

It is obvious that the existence of the low and fluctuating pay
for a class of labor in any trade must have an acute effect on the
labor in the same trade which aims at fixing a standard rate.
(Page 34.)

The Prevention of Destitution. SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB. Long-
mans, Green & Co., London, 1911.

To the workman, “unemployment” is not the attribute of a
special class, or indeed, of any particular period or place, but the
invariable accompaniment of the wage-earner’s life in the present
organization of industry.

He realizes, perhaps more clearly than any other class, how
incessantly the volume of his particular service that is demanded
by the world, waxes and wanes—through the cyclical fluctuations
of national trade, the yearly succession of the seasons, the unac-
countable changes in taste or habit or fashion, the invention of
new machines, the discovery of new materials, the adoption of new
processes, the shifting of industry or population from one locality
to another, the bankruptcy of this particular employer, or the
death of another. He is, therefore, keenly alive to the fact that
the one thing certain about every wage-earning employment is
its perpetual insecurity, and the one assurance is that’ the number
of the dismissals, at any one moment, at any particular season, or
during any given year, can never be predicted in advance. This
chronic insecurity and this incessant liability to change seems to
him to be becoming more and more characteristic of industrial
life. (Page 95.)

It is so difficult for those who do not belong to the wage-
earning class to realize the position of the household dependent on
weekly wages that we must, at the risk of wearisome iteration,
once more insist that the evil with which we are dealing is not
any abstract “state of the labor market,” but the dismissal of a
workman from his situation, the breach of continuity in his em-
ployment involving, as this does, so serious a dislocation of his
own life, and of all the conditions of his family existence.

(Page
110.)
[73]

Seasonal Trades. Edited by SIDNEY WEBB and ARNOLD FREEMAN.
Constable & Co., London, 1912.

We may realize from the variety of industries dealt with in
this volume—a selection which is but a sample of many others,
that practically all trades are “seasonal” to a greater or less ex-
tent.

But every student of the problems of the poor, and every
philanthropic worker, knows what difficulties and dangers, how
many tragic family breakdowns and degradations of the Standard
of Life, these recurrent periods of “slackness” are responsible for.
(Page VI.)

: Investigation indicates that there are practically no
trades which are not subject to seasonal as well as to cyclical fluc-
tuations. (Page 4.)

It is with the manual worker living at the margin of sustenance
and paid a bare existence wage, and that only for the time he
is actually working, that the phenomenon assumes a vital and
overwhelming importance. The manual worker could undoubtedly
contemplate the cessation of his none too agreeable labors with as
much complacence as the stock-broker starting for his summer
vacation if it were not for the fact that his income and with it
clothing, food, and shelter for himself and his family, cease with
cessation of employment. The hope, often uncertain, that his trade
will revive in a few months and reabsorb him is small comfort in
the immediate necessity. His small savings quickly vanish, and
every possession above the margin of necessity finds its way to
the pawn-broker—clothing and furniture, home itself, taking home
to mean something more than four bare walls. The skilled worker
is often protected to a certain extent by a meagre insurance allow-
ance, and the unskilled worker by the occasional possibility of an
alternative occupation, but irregular employment brings in its train
at its best uncertainty of income and the lowering of the standard
of life, and at its worst demoralization and the break-up of the
family. (Pages 5-6.)

Thus to Adam Smith, as to many economists after him even
down to the present day, the question of irregular employment is
mainly a question of wages. (Page 9.)

It is evident from a list of 110 irregular occupations, together
with the daily wages and average amount of unemployment during
the year in each, which he gives in his “Organization of Labor,”
that Louis Blanc appreciated the evil of seasonal irregularity as
well as the more general aspect of unemployment. The figures
[74]

were collected by himself from 1,500 workpeople in 830 workshops
in Paris. This list is interesting as the first attempt at a statis-
tical statement with regard to seasonal trades.

   
  
 
   
   
   
    
   
  

Daily wage Mos. out of employ-
Francs. ment during year.
FEMALE LABOR
Washerwomen ....... ae, 2 4
Shoebinders ................-----:2:0--0 0.75 3
Knitters: js. cao 0.75 3
Embroiderers .......... ze 1.50 4or5
Polishers of metals ................-- 2.25 5
Polishers of china ...... ez 1.75 5
Card makers ....00...........0ce--eee 1.50 3
Cardboard makers ................-.-- 1.50 3
Bonnet makers ..............-..-----00- 4.25 4
Candle makers .. 1.00 4or5
Shoemakers .... TOG eee
Colorists ...............-.--- ore 2 4or5
Straw-bonnet makers .............. 2 6
Milliners -...............2.... eas 1.25 4
Coverlet makers ........0.......-.--- 1.25 4
Veil makers .00...00..2...s:eceeeceee 1.25 5
Gilders on wWo0d ....0.......-..2:0-0-- 1.50 5
Encarteuses  ........2..02-:::ceecceceseees 1.25 5
Button makers ......0......222.:.0-.-. 1.25 4
Flower makers ...........---....00-0+ 1.75 5
Fringe makers ...........00.::::cc 0.75 3
Glove makers —............-.seesseee0 1.25 4
Waistcoat makers _.................. 1.50 4
Trousers makers ...................... fT eee
Shirt makers for shops ............ 2 4
Dressmakers ~..0.2..0....--eesceesceeeeee 1.50 4
Painters on glass ...........2...... 1.50 4
Lace women. .............ccceccceesee 1 3
Cotton winders .........00...0000..2.. 2.50 6
Gold workers ............ 1.50 4
Boot-hole workers .. . 1.50 7)
Feather dressers ..................-- 1.50 4
Instrument polishers ................ 2 4
Silver & enamel polishers ........ 2.25 6
Cotton joiners 0.00... 0.90 3
PatehHe@rs snc: ccecccesecseecstescecseweesteesse 1.25 3
TPOWMGTS: 22d hxcccictichsccleeeeerig sates 2 3
DY CPs) gescedisyeneineesueseessyseteeeeees. 225 ec sessees
Vermillion makers _.................. 1.50 4
MALE LABOR
Straw hat makers _.......0.0....... 4 7
Silversmiths .....0..20.00000cceee 3 3
AYMOULEYS oo. eeeee ee eee 4 4
Gold beaters 2...2...2.0.20cccceee ee 8.50 8
Jewellers in gold .........0000.0. 8.75 5
[75]

Butchers ....
Bakers ...............-
Harness makers ...
Button makers ..... —
Hatters: is.eicoeseossie cece occas
Sausage makers (food given)
Carpenters s.cacestseeneses
Cartwrights .
Carvers .......
Compositors -...
Confectioners
Boot makers .....
Curriers ..........

Cutlers .....
Tilers) ses-2-2:.i2.25

Gilders on wood ...
Gilders on copper .
Cabinet makers .....
Embossers __.........

Compass makers ....
Spectacle makers ....
Umbrella makers ..
Piano makers _......02.22220......-.

(Page 13.)

Among those living under great economic pressure there is a
tendency for the standard of life to expand as far as possible
within its narrow confines, like a gas under high pressure. The
worker spends the larger part of whatever wages he gets. This
holds true even when the wage becomes quite high. In America
the iron-worker on the great skyscrapers finds ways to spend
most of the high wage he earns for half the year, and often lives
in great straits for the other half. Irregularity of income appar-
ently encourages improvidence. Systematic arrangement of a fam-
ily budget is possible only on the basis of a definite and regular
income. In fact, the actual money value of the wage decreases
with its irregularity. (Page 50.)

The waste due to the impossibility of systematic planning of
expenditure and the higher prices paid because of credit make the
wage quite inadequate even where the average throughout the year
is normal. (Page 51.)

For women workers the evils of seasonal employment are even
more conspicuous than in the case of men, and its effects more
disastrous. (Page 53.)

The inadequacy of their wages quite precludes the idea of
saving enough for slack times—even that “retrospective” form of
saving which consists. in pawning household belongings. Living
with the greatest difficulty on the margin of sustenance, the ces-

 
  

   
 
   
    
 
 
 

wuanon wana
ROSSSS Sanna

On
o

ao sl
o ow

WB 09 C0 WB 99 09 99 CO Hd Go Ha DD G9 99 99 G9 A RA GD DO NY 99 00
C9 He Oe COR CO RO fe 09 OT C0 He OTR HR OT CO 09 CO CO
[76 ]

sation of their meagre income leaves them absolutely helpless and
face to face with starvation. In this weak position it is often
difficult for them not to follow the only road which seems to lead
away from pauperism. (Pages 53-54.)

The Economic. Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage. SIDNEY WEBB.
The Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago
Press, December, 1912.

7 The abandonment of that irregularity of employment
which so disastrously affects the New York outworkers and the
London dock-laborers, and indeed most other occupations, would
result in the enrollment of a new permanent staff. All these
changes would bring into regular work, at or above the Legal
Minimum, whole classes of operatives, selected from among those
now only partially or fitfully employed. Thus, all the most cap-
able and best conducted would certainly obtain regular situations.
(Page 19.)

The Living Wage. PuHitie SNOWDEN, M.P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1918.

The amount of the living wage must bear some relation to the
growing civilization and expanding aspirations of the people.
It must recognize that the workers must share in the benefits of
increasing wealth and the advantages which come from science
and invention. It must be something more than a wage which
will keep the workman’s head above the water when in employ-
ment, leaving him to sink'when out of work. (Page 133.)

(3) ‘THE “PIN-MONEY” FALLACY—CONTRIBUTIONS OF
WORKING WOMEN TO THE FAMILY INCOME.

Investigation has proved that only a neglible propor-
tion of wage-earning women are working for “pin-
money.” In the main they are working to support them-
selves, or they are assisting substantially in the support of
their families. A large proportion give up all their earn-
ings to the family needs. The wage-earning daughter
who lives at home often pays not only for her own sup-
port but she contributes towards the expenses of the non-
wage-earning members of the family.
[77]

Report of the Social Survey Committee of the Consumers’ League
of Oregon on the Wages, Hours and Conditions of Work and
Cost and Standard of Living of Women Wage-Earners in
Oregon With Special Reference to Portland. CaROLINE J.
GLEASON, Portland, Oregon, 1918.

A fallacy maintained by the managers and used as an excuse
for their low wage scales is that girls who live at home do not
need as much money as girls who are boarding. Many go so far
as to require that a girl be living at home before they will employ
her. The argument against this is that the girl at home surely eats
three meals a day, as the girl adrift is supposed to do, and food
for the former costs as much as for the latter. If she is receiving
only enough to pay for her clothing, who pays for her food and
laundry? If her parents or her guardians do, are they not con-
tributing just that much toward the revenues of the store? and
if she is a “charity girl’? who pays for her lunches with the loss
of her virtue, can she not hold the department store more heavily
her debtor than do the parents of the virtuous girl? Table 2 on
page 21 shows that the average wage of the girl adrift is $21
a year more than the average wage of the girl living at home, but
the same table also shows that the girl adrift has an annual
deficit of $91.85 and no home to rely upon for payment of it;
$145.86 is the annual deficit the department store girl at home
would have to face, did she pay room and board fees, as does the

girl adrift. (Page 27.)

Wage-Earners’ Budgets. A Study of Standards and Cost of Liv-
ing in New York City. Louise B. More. Henry Holt &

Co., New York, 1907.

It is the general custom for all boys and girls between 14 and
18 to bring their pay envelopes to the mother unopened, and she
has the entire disbursement of their wages, giving them from
25 cents to $1 a week spending money, according to the pros-
perity of the family. After they are 18, the boys usually pay
boards of $4 to $8 a week, according to their wages. They are
considered in this study, “boarders,” and are no more expense to
the family than the usual boarder. The girls are not usually
boarders until] they are over 21, and then they pay from $3 to
$6 a week to their mothers. In some cases they continue to give
all their wages to their mother, who supports them until they are
married. (Page 87.)

.
[78 ]

Women and the Trades. EizapetH B, Butter. The Pittsburg
Survey—Russell Sage Foundation Publication, New York,
1909.

Clearly, however, the tradition that a girl’s father and brothers
always help toward her support has become, in the Pittsburgh dis-
trict at least, in many cases illusory.

That a girl is one of a family group is quite as likely to indi-
cate that she is chief breadwinner, as that her family is her chief
bulwark against the world. One quick, pale-faced American girl
is a decorator in a glass factory. She gets $8 a week. Her little
brother is a messenger at $4. For five months in the winter of
1907-08, they were the only ones in the family of seven who were
earning anything. One plump little German girl whose soft brown
hair and pink cheeks contrast pleasantly with the less attractive
types about her, is a salesgirl in a mercantile house. With a wage
of $6 a week, she is responsible for the support of a mother and
two younger sisters. Accidents to workmen in the mills have often
thrown such heavy responsibilities on the young daughters. A
girl whose father was killed by an electric crane was the only one
of the family old enough to work. Forced by financial needs to
accept a wage fixed by custom at a point below her own cost of
subsistence, much more below the cost of helping to maintain a
family of dependents, she drifted into occasional prostitution. An-
other Pittsburgh girl was induced by the bitter need of her younger
brothers and sisters to raise her wages from $6 a week to $10 by
concessions to her employer, and finally to choose prostitution as
a means of support. A comrade of hers came long ago from a
country town to work in a cigar factory, but after an unsuccessful
struggle with the city, drifted into this same way of life. Without
a home to supplement her wages, she caught at what seemed to
her the only way of making them meet her needs. In such cases,
searcely typical, but far from uncommon, cause and effect are
glaring in their directness. (Pages 347-8.)

The Living Wage of Women Workers. [A Study of Incomes and
Expenditures of 450 Women Workers in the City of Bos-
_ ton.] Louis—E M. Boswortu, Fellow, Women’s Educational
and Industrial Union. Longmans, Green & Co., New York,

1911.

The causes of the recent influx of women into all fields of
employment are easily discernible. The main cause is not, as is

often assumed, the desire to earn “pin-money.” A recent inves-
[79 ]

tigator declares that the girls working for pin-money are neglig-
ible factors. “The women were working from economic compul-
sion.” That is unquestionably the principal motive of the eco-
nomic activity of women. It is supplemented in some cases by
higher and finer motives of personal ambition, or the determination
to make an independent career, to realize the possibilities of per-
sonal development and social service, which in the past have been
reserved largely for men. The pressure of economic necessity, it
should be noted, has been increased greatly in recent years by the
advance in the cost of living, which has forced women into the
trades to supplement inadequate family incomes. (Page 5.)

Proposed Minimum Wage Law for Wisconsin Prepared Under the
Direction of JoHN R. CoMMONS, Wisconsin Consumer’s
League, Madison, 1911.

The industries employing the largest number of women and
girls were selected as the basis for this investigation and a few
typical factories in several of these industries were visited. There
were fifteen in all, including candy factories, shoe, paper box, glove
and envelope factories, clothing establishments, and a few depart-
ment store schedules were obtained. Schedules were taken from
1,189 girls; . . . (Page 9.)

Only 78 of the 1,189 girls are boarding away from home; 1,078
are living with parents or near relatives; 875 of these contribute
their entire earnings to the family income and 203 pay board at
home. This board is usually most of the earnings, the girls saving
only enough for car fare and a small sum for clothes and amuse-
ments. Six girls constitute the entire sum, of the popularly sup-
posed majority, who work for pin-money and contribute nothing
to the family support. There are undoubtedly many of these young
girls who are often temporarily the sole support of their families
—and several cases were noted where they were the only perma-
nent income. One little girl of 15 is the only wage-earner in a
family, consisting of a paralyzed father and a mother slowly losing
her sight, and several small children. (Pages 10-11.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the
United States. Vol. II. Men’s Ready-Made Clothing. Sen-
ate Document No. 645, Gist Congress, 2nd Session, 1911.
Government Printing Office, Washington, 1911.

Of women who work and live at home 87.7 per cent. of the
females of all cities give all of their earnings to the family. (Page
393.)
[80]

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the
United States. Vol. V. Wage-Earning Women in Stores
and Factories. Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress,

2nd Session, 1911.
St. Louis.

Only 75 per cent. of the home store girls and 53 per cent. of
the home factory girls visited have both parents living. The lar-
gest number of the remaining 25 per cent. and 45 per cent. are
living with mothers only, of whom they are the chief support. This
is not in accordance with the general impression that most women
work only for “pin-money.” A few live with sisters, and 1 per
cent. of the store and 8 per cent. of the factory women live with
husbands. (Page 186.)

It is doubted if anything in the whole report is more significant
than the large percentage of the women wage-earners living at
home who were turning into the family fund all their earnings. Of
the women reported in New York stores 84.3 per cent. and of those
in factories 88.1 per cent. contributed all their earnings; and in
Chicago and St. Louis the percents were only slightly smaller.

It is true that there may enter into the large percentage for
the factory workers the tendency among foreign-born families to
regard children as an investment, to whose earnings the parents
have a proprietary right so long as the children are under the
parental roof. But in this connection it is significant that among
the women in department and other retail stores, where the foreign
element enters but slightly, the per cent. turning their entire
earnings into the family fund is not much smaller than among the
factory and mill workers. This is shown to be the case in each
city investigated except St. Louis, where a larger proportion of
store women than of factory women contribute their entire earn-
ings to the family fund. (Pages 18-19.)

What has this condition to do with the faith current among
so many employers and accepted by the public that the girls who
have homes work only for “pin-money”? It should be noted, of
course, that manifestly the home girl must get back all the neces-
saries which the woman adrift must herself purchase, including
the clothes, car fare, and incidental expenses for emergencies or
amusements. (Page 21.)

In this keeping-house group also are found the largest number
and per cent. (37.8) of women having others partially dependent
on them for support, 101 women having a total of 183 persons
[81]

whom they must assist, an average of nearly two per person.
There is, of course, a wide range of the term “partially dependent,”
but most of the cases to which it has been applied, especially in
this group, are those of two women, perhaps a mother and daugh-
ter or two sisters, supporting the other members of the family,
who are thus classed as partially dependent on each of the work-
ing women. (Page 57.)

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the
United States. Vol. V. Wage-Earning Women in Stores
and Factories. Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress,
2nd Session, 1911.

Number and per cent. of female wage-earners in department
and other retail stores, factories, etc., living at home, who did or

did not contribute to the family fund.

BOSTON
No. reporting as Percent contributing
to contributions All Part None
Stores—Total .......... 239 55.6 38.9 5.5
Factories—Total ...... 478 61.7 36.4 1.9
CHICAGO
No. reporting as Percent contributing
to contributions All Part None
Stores—Total .......... 178 73.7 17.4 3.9
Factories—Total ...... 268 81.3 17.2 1.5

MINNEAPOLIS AND ST. PAUL

No. reporting as Percent contributing

to contributions All Part
Stores—Total .........- 94 47.9 44.7 TA
Factories—Total ...... 129 53.5 44.2 2.3

NEW YORK

No. reporting as Percent contributing

to contributions All Part None
Stores—Total .......... 344 84.3 11.9 3.8
Factories—Total ...... 1,532 88.1 11.3 6

PHILADELPHIA

No. reporting as Percent contributing

to contributions All Part Non
Stores—Total .......... 264 56.8 39.0 4,2
Factories—Total ...... 732 67.9 30.6 1.5
[ 82 ]

ST. LOUIS
No. reporting as Percent contributing
to contributions All ar ne
Stores—Total .......... 95 77.9 17.9 4.2
Factories—Total ...... 231 74.9 21.2 3.9

(Summarized from tables on pages 19-21.)

‘Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage
Boards. January, 1912. No. 1697.

In the opinion of the commission the number who are working
in order simply to add to their comforts or luxuries is insignifi-
cant. Women in general are working because of dire necessity,
and in most cases the combined income of the family is not more
than adequate to meet the family’s cost of living. In these cases
it is not optional with the woman to decline low-paid employment.
Every dollar added to the family income is needed to lighten the
burden which the rest are carrying. (Page 17.)

The girl who lives at home and works for “pin-money” is the
rare exception. One and two-tenths per cent. of the candyworkers
gave none of their wages to the home, and 78.5 per cent. gave all
they earned; 20.3 per cent. gave a part. In the 1910 federal
investigation of one-half as many workers in the factories of all
description in Boston, 1.9 per cent. gave none of their earnings to
the home, 61.7 per cent. all and 36.4 per cent. a part. (Page 79.)

Both investigations dispose conclusively of the pin-money argu-
ment. The manufacturers questioned on this point agreed that
the candyworkers living at home needed all their wages and were
dependent upon them. No one at all conversant with the facts
believes that any proportion of the women workers do not need
every cent they earn. (Pages 79-80.)

The pin-money theory is even more conclusively disposed of in
the case of the store girls than of the candyworkers. There were
not enough foreigners to give ground to the argument that the
custom of handing over the pay envelope accounted even in part
for the 61.7 per cent. who did so. The greater age of the store
employees explains why a large proportion, 34.9 per cent., turned
over only a part of their earnings. The remainder, beyond the
share for board and lodging, they managed for themselves. The
pin-money workers were only 3.3 per cent. of the 2,276 workers
who reported. (Page 140.)

It has been frequently stated that the girl ‘or woman who
lives at home does not need the same wage as a woman who is
entirely self-dependent. It is true that co-operative living is
[ 83 ]

cheaper than living alone, but it is fair to question how great that
difference is. The woman at home has the same expenditure as
the woman adrift, for clothing, car fares, dentistry, doctor’s fees,
medicine, church, recreation, and for savings for old age and burial,
and for savings against sickness and shutdown of employment. Her
family will care for her when she is sick or laid off, but she too
must bear in turn her share of the expense of the sickness and
lack of employment of the other members of the family. Her
outlay for this is larger even than that of the girl adrift, for she
must bear, in addition to her own share, her proportion due to the
illness of the mother and sometimes of a grown-up brother or
sister, and of the children who are not wage-earners. Time and
again in the investigation girls were met who were helping to
support a comparatively young father industrially disabled by
rheumatism or some chronic trouble.

The saving of co-operative living comes in the items of rent
and food. (Pages 78-79.)

The cost of management, preparation and service in the home
lies in the maintenance, clothing and general expenses of the
mother, of which the adult daughter must bear her share. (Page
79.)

The adult daughter living at home needs the same wage as
her sister who is adrift. She ought not to have to live on her
father, who for so many years has supported her or supplemented
her earnings. It is reasonable for her to pay in full measure for
the cost of her board and lodging including some of the mother’s
expenses. It is only the mother’s labor that enables the cost of
the household to be brought so low. She cannot lean on her over-
burdened father for clothing, car fares, recreation, church, doctors
and medicine, dental care and insurance. (Page 84.)

In general, one fact stands clear: throughout the cities of the
state about one-quarter of the women workers in stores are de-
pendent on their own resources. Again the question arises as to
the economy to society of a scale of wages that is fixed on the
basis of the need of women living with their fathers in disregard
of one-quarter of the workers. Moreover, those who decrease their
expenses by co-operative living at home have to bear, as the table
on page 138 shows, more than their share of the whole cost of the
family group, for in all but 5 per cent. of the families there were
one or more persons who were not contributing to the family
income, and who had to be carried by the wage-earners. (Page 134.)

The preceding tables show, as with the candyworkers, the folly
of the idea that the 397 women who lived at home in a broken

8
[ 84 ]

family, and carried the absent man’s burden, economized by co-
operative living. That was true for only 61 women, or 15.3 per
cent. These women were living with relatives, who were also
wage-earners. The large majority, 336, or 84.6 per cent., offset
the economy of co-operative living by their effort to support, with
the help of one or more other women workers, a family of varying
size. Seventy of them or 17.6 per cent. of all the women of this
class, did not economize at all by co-operative living, as they were
the sole dependence, save for charity, of from two to nine persons.

The uneven proportion of the number of workers to the number
to be supported in the normal home is the same as among the
candyworkers, except that there are a large proportion of families
supported by one man with the help of one woman. (Page 140.)

Second Report of the New York Factory Investigating Commission,
1913. Appendix IX. Mercantile Establishments.

The Massachusetts report, together with the reports of the
Federal Government on women in stores (Report on Woman and
Child Wage-earners) disposes of the long-lived fallacy that the
department store employees are working for pin-money, and hence
wages may safely be very low because they are not needed for
actual self-support. Many store managers acknowledge that they
prefer to engage girls who are living at home. The supposition
is that they are then not dependent on their earnings.

Both of these official reports, after intensive study, prove that
even when a girl lives at home her pay is, in an overwhelming
majority of cases, not pin-money for herself, but an indispensable
part of the family income. The chief bread-winner is ill or dis-
abled or is unable to support his wife and children by his own
earnings. In many cases women employed in department, stores
are themselves the chief or sole wage-earners of the family. Ac-
cording to the Massachusetts report, “throughout the cities of the
state about one-quarter of the women workers in stores are depen-
dent on their own resources.”

And in Boston, for example, of the 2,276 women and girls
employed in retail stores, only 3.3 per cent. were working for pin-
money. All the rest gave their pay envelopes to their families
as a necessary part of the family income, or supported themselves
entirely upon their own earnings. The United States Government
report gives approximately the same figures in New York City,
namely, 3.7 per cent., pin-money workers. (Pages 1261-62.)
[ 85 ]

Artificial Flower Makers. Mary VAN KLEECK. Kussell Sage
Foundation Publication, New York, 1918.

For the remaining 169, or 97 per cent. of the group, who lived
with their families (including the 10 married women), the pro-
tection given them by the home brought with it a more or less
heavy share of responsibility for maintaining the household. In
the 128 families under discussion were 807 members, and 545 of
these contributed in some way to the family budget. In only 93
of the 128 families was the father living and at home, and even
in those cases he was not always a wage-earner; in 29 cases the
father was dead; in six he was not living with his family; and
in eight he was ill or too old to work. (Pages 74-75.)

No one who wishes to understand the causes of poverty can
safely neglect consideration of the wages of working girls who
“live at home,” and whose low wages because they do so are
regarded complacently by men and women who lack a comprehend-
ing knowledge of the responsibilities of daughters in such homes.
(Page 80.)

The contribution of girls to their families is not limited to
their wages, for in the evenings they are obliged to help with
the housework, to sew, and to wash their clothes. “Men don’t
have to work as hard as women,” said a married woman who
after a nine-hour day in a shop makes her children’s dresses at
home at night. Two young Russian flower makers, refugees from
Odessa, whose mother was dead, did almost all the housework in
the evening for a household of six, including their father, who was
a painter, their grandmother, a younger sister of school age, and
a boarder. (Pages 84-85.)

Practically all these flower makers who live at home turn
their entire earnings into the family purse. The mother or the
head of the household then uses it for living expenses, giving the
girls the money which they must have for car fare and lunches.
Rent is the first item to be paid. The remainder is stretched as
far as possible over food, clothing, insurance, and other important
items, and an occasional expenditure for a trip to Coney Island or
a ticket to a moving picture show. We found no flower maker
living at home who did not give the bulk of her earnings to the
household. In other words, we found no “pin-money workers.”
Low wages paid to these women who live at home have far more
serious consequences for the community than the loss of the
finery for which working girls are sometimes supposed to be
spending their strength in factories. (Pages 86-87.)
[ 86 ]

Report on the Wage-Earning Women of Kansas City. Board of
Public Welfare of Bureau of Labor Statistics, Kansas City,
1918.

Information was obtained from 912 of the girls living at home
or with relatives, showing the per cent. of their wage contributed
to the family; 206 or 22 per cent. contributed all of their wages
to the family, 249 or 27 per cent. stated that they paid part of
their wages into the family but were unwilling to state what part.
Three hundred and fifty-eight paid less than their total earnings
into the family, the average amount paid in being from $3 to $4
per week, while their average wage was from $6 to $7 per week.
Eighty-four, or 9 per cent., paid nothing into the family. These
figures explode any notions that many girls living at home go
into the shops in order to earn “pin-money”; a majority of them
pay as much or more into the family as they would have to pay
if. they were boarding out, but there may be enough “pin-money”
girls to help depress the wages of necessitous workers. (Pages
62-3.)

Report of Special Commission to Investigate the Conditions of
Wage-Earning Women and Minors in the State of Connec-
ticut, 1918.

.

The amount of their contribution to the family income of their
earnings was asked of 770 women in the metal industry who lived
at home and who were personally interviewed. Of the total num-
ber reporting, 66.24 per cent. contributed all of their earnings,
33.11 per cent. contributed a part of their earnings and .65 per
cent. or five out of 770 women kept their wages entirely for their
own use. (Page 201.)

The amount of the contribution to the family income of their
earnings was asked of 307 women in the rubber industry who lived
at home and who were personally interviewed. Of the total num-
ber reporting 65.15 per cent. contributed all of their earnings,
34.53 per cent. contributed a part of their earnings and one out
of 307 women kept her wages entirely for her own use. (Page 216.)

The amount of their contribution to the family income was
asked of 923 women in the corset industry who lived at home and
who were personally interviewed. Of the total number reporting
74 per cent. contributed all of their earnings, 24.27 per cent. con-
tributed a part and 1.73 or 16 out of 923 women kept their wages
entirely for their own use. (Page 129.)
[ 87 ]

The Economic Review, Vol. 18, London, 1908. The Remuneration
of Women’s Work. HAMILTON W. FYFE.

Except in certain well-established and organized fields, women’s
wages are still reckoned on the assumption that all women are
partially supported by husbands or parents, and that no woman
need be regarded as a real economic unit. This assumption is,
of course, far more false than true, and from it confusion and
distress result in three ways. Those women who support them-
selves upon their own earnings are stunted and harassed by an
insufficient income, based upon a false assumption. Those who
are partially supported by husbands or parents keep wages low
by competing in the open market. And those who have no such
support and, owing to this competition, cannot earn a living wage,
are forced to eke out an indescribably miserable existence by the
aid of State relief, charitable subsidy, or prostitution.

Statisticians relentlessly remind us that, in our present society,
women largely outnumber men, while the laws against polygamy
are still enforced. Thus a large number of women do not marry,
and of these all who have no independent means must support
themselves, while many have to support others as well. (Page 135.)

The preliminaries to a remedy are these: we must face the
fact that of women who work a majority have no support except
their earnings, and a large number are bread-winners for many
other mouths; we must prevent wages being depressed by the
competition of the partially supported. (Page 137.)

(4) UNDER-PAYING INDUSTRIES ARE SUBSIDIZED.

Wages are a legitimate charge on any industry like
other fixed charges. An industry paying less than a
living wage to its workers is receiving a subsidy from
some source. The workers in such a trade are supported
partly by the earnings of some other class. The under-
paying industries are therefore parasitic or dependent
upon a bounty. This is paid either by the families of the
underpaid workers, and so indirectly by the better paying
industries which employ them, or it is paid by Society as
a whole. The physical and moral deterioration of under-
paid workers entails on the community charges for hos-
pital care, charities and reformatory work.

Investigation in Oregon shows that except for 31 girls
[ 88 ]

employed in offices, the average wage of 509 working
women was found inadequate for support without assis-
tance.

A—By the Families of the Workers.

Report of the Social Survey Committee of the Consumers’ League
of Oregon. CAROLINE J. GLEASON, Portland, Oregon, 1918.

Each industry should provide for the livelihood of the workers
employed in it. An industry which does not do so is parasitic.
The well-being of society demands that wage-earning women shall
not be required to subsidize from their earnings the industry in
which they are employed. (Page 6.)

Table 2 below gives the average annual wage and expense of
the 509 women interviewed in Portland, classified according to
industry and whether they were living at home or adrift. The
saving or deficit is also indicated, showing the amount of outside
help required for the girl’s support.

It will be observed that the average girl in every occupation,
except office work, receives wages which are inadequate for her
support, and consequently would face the end of the year in debt
if she does not receive assistance from her family-or some outside
source. This shows the extent to which industries employing
women are parasitic in character.

TABLE 2.

Average Annual Wage and Expense of 509 Women Wage Harners in
Portland, classified by occupation and as to living at Home or Adrift:

LAUNDRY—

No. Average Annual Wage Expense Deficit Saving

9 At Home ...... $423.00 $474.45 $ 51.45

27 Adrift ......... 464.00 475.05 11.05
FAcTORY—

82 At Home ...... 416.92 426.98 10.06

18 Adrift .......... 395.00 438.88 43.88
OFFICE—

57 At Home ...... 542.14 599.50 57.36

81 Adrift ......... 692.90 617.07 $ 75.88
DEPARTMENT STORES—

81 At Home ...... 459.50 605.36 145.86

85 Adrift .......... 480.57 572.42 91.85
MISCELLANEOUS—

99 At Home ...... 440.24 539.29 99.05

70 Adrift ......... 458.71 526.68 67.97

Out of 127 persons who offered information, other than the
schedules called for, 70 stated that they could not live on their
[89 ]

salaries if they did not receive outside help; 22 had to help support
families that ranged from four to nine persons; 15 others said
they had children to support; 62 claimed to receive assistance from
home. The wage ranged from $2.50 to $12 per week. (Pages 21
and 22.)

Women and the Trades. ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY BuTLER. The
Pittsburgh Survey—Russell Sage Foundation Publication,
New York, 1909.

Although the lower wages of women may represent a lower
standard of responsibilities to be met by earnings, $3 or $4 a
week does not cover the individual cost of living, however extreme
the degree of restraint and limitation. The difference between her
wage and the cost of living, however met, represents the extent to
which she is subsidized from some quarter.

That women workers are thus usually subsidized tends to keep
their wages low, not only in Pittsburgh, but wherever they enter
the industrial field. Only here and there a powerful women’s
union, or the personality of an exceptional woman, has counter-
acted this tendency. Being in fact a recognition that wages must
approximate cost of living, it affects the determination of rates
paid by nearly every firm employing women. If the cost of living
is met in part by the woman’s father or husband, or if she takes
the way that is always open to her for self-support, her employer
needs to pay only a supplementary wage fixed in part by custom,
and in part by the purchasing power in the district of the wages
paid to men. “We try to employ girls who are members of fam-
ilies,” a box manufacturer said to me, “for we don’t pay the girls
a living wage in this trade.” The social fact of woman’s customary
position in the household, the position of a dependent who receives
no wages for her work, thus lies behind the economic fact of her
insufficient wage in the industrial field. It is expected that she
has men to support her. (Pages 345-6.)

The Theory of the Minimum Wage. H. R. Seacer. New York.
American Labor Legislation Review, February, 19138.

In many cases the difference between the wages received and
the necessary cost of maintenance is made up from the surplus
incomes of other members of the family. To make more probable
this result, some department store managers make a point of em-
ploying only girls who live at home. In some cases they are
recipients of charity, as when they patronize girls’ boarding houses
or lunchrooms conducted at a loss. Finally in some cases they
[90]

supplement their wages by occasional or regular prostitution, or
resisting the temptation to do so, actually die of under-nutrition
and worry.

The places of girls who marry, who are advanced to more
remunerative positions, who turn to other employments or who die
prematurely in consequence of under-nutrition and the excessive
nervous strain of trying to live on an inadequate income, are con-
stantly taken by other girls, so that department store managers
rarely have any difficulty in securing all the new hands they
require at whatever wages they are accustomed to pay.

Under these circumstances, as under the somewhat different
circumstances affecting the lot of tenement house workers, starva-
tion wages continue to be paid to young girls in department stores
year after year and the free play of economic forces offers no
promise of improvement. (Pages 83-84.)

What Is a Fair Wage? By CLEMENTINA BLack. New Review,
Vol. 8, London, 1898.

Every person who in any department of labor is receiving
less than a subsistence wage is helping to make a non-subsistence
wage the rule in that department and thereby rendering it impos-
sible for any man or woman to live by that sort of labor. More-
over, it may fairly be pointed out that every person who is not
living solely upon the payment for his own work is living partly
upon the payment for somebody’s else, and thereby reducing that
somebody’s income. (Page 589.)

Women’s Work and Wages. A Phase of Life in an Industrial
City. EDWARD CapDBuRY, M. CECILE MATHESON, and GEORGE

SHANN. T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1906.

It is said that girls live at home, that they spend their holidays
with their friends, that they go home when they are ill, ete. This
is all true in the majority of cases, but we are not therefore justi-
fied in taking women’s lives and getting our work done partly at
the expense of their relations because we pay them less than enough
to live in accord with the standard to which they have been brought
up. Few men would like to think that they were educating their
daughters at the expense, rather on the charity, of other men;
that their office expenses were kept down by the kindness of men
whom they would hardly know in society; and yet this is only too
often the case. (Page 188.)
[91]

The Practical Case for a Legal Minimum Wage, by R. C. K. ENSor.
Nineteenth Century. London, 1912.

What happens, when wages are paid too low to sustain physical
efficiency, at least after the minimum demands of civilized custom
have been satisfied? One of two things happens: either’ physical
efficiency is not sustained and the under-paying industry is actually
eating into the capital value of the worker; or else it is sustained,
but only because to make up the deficiency in the wages of the
under-paid worker part of the wages paid by some other industry
is brought in (as when an under-paid tailoress is housed for noth-
ing by her parents, or an under-paid carman relies upon the earn-
ings of his daughters in a cotton-mill), or relatives are diverted
from non-industrial duties to wage-earning (as when the under-
paid carman’s wife neglects her children to go out laundering, or
his children of school age sell newspapers in the streets). In
either .case the under-paying industry is in the strict economic
sense parasitic. In the first and last cases it levies a tax on the
community at large; in the second case it levies one on some
special industry or industries. Neither way is it any less a
bounty-fed, unfairly advantaged industry than one to which State

‘ bounties are paid over in hard cash, as to the beet sugar industry
of the Continent. Indeed, a system of State bounties is far less
objectionable; for the amount of the bounty is definite and visible,
and it comes from a general taxation, whose burdens may be dis-
tributed as equitably as the nation chooses; whereas the bounty
received by an industry which pays less than subsistence wages
is indefinite and elusive, its burdens are laid at random, largely
on the weakest shoulders, and the nation foots the bill, not in
money only, but in physical deterioration, moral degradation and
social catastrophe. (Page 265.)

B—By Society.
Women and the Trades. EizaABeTH B. BuTLER. The Pittsburgh

Survey—Russell Sage Foundation Publication, New York,
1909.

The problem of women’s work and wages cannot be adequately
solved without reckoning with the family and the home. We may
be suze, however, that the practice of industries, whether in
Pittsburgh or elsewhere, of not paying women employees enough to
live on, is economically unsound. Every manufactured article in
such case is paid for only in part by the consumer and in part
by someone else who partially supports the women. And we may
be sure that where women, thrown on their own resources, are
[92 ]

paid less than subsistence wages, ill social consequences result.
Beyond that, we may further question whether a community does
well to have any of its workers, however supported,-paid less than
subsistence wages. (Page 349.)

Report of Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards,
1912.

Wherever the wages of such a woman are less than the cost of
living and the reasonable provision for maintaining the worker in
health, the industry, employing her is in receipt of the working
energy of a human being at less than its cost, and to that extent is
parasitic. The balance must be made up in some way. It is
generally paid by the industry employing the father. It is some-
times paid in part by future inefficiency of the worker herself and
by her children, and perhaps in part ultimately by charity and
the State. The commission believes that our industries in general
are not dependent upon such underpaid labor and that by gradual
adjustment of wage scales the present unfortunate condition in a
number of employments could be improved without injury to the
employing interests. If an industry is permanently dependent for
its existence on underpaid labor, its value to the Commonwealth is
questionable. (Page 17.)

Through the co-operation of several of the charitable agencies
of Boston, facts were obtained concerning the average weekly
earnings of all the women workers, exclusive of those in restaur-
ants and at domestic service and cleaning by the day, who were
members of families which were being assisted on September 1,
1911.

Of these 468 recipients of charitable assistance one-half worked
for a wage of less than $6 a week. Only 13.7 per cent. had $8 or
more. On these wages charity was necessary. They are very
little less than the earnings of the laundry hands and more than
those of the candyworkers. It may be judged that when wages
are so low the question as to whether a family may be spared from
seeking charity depends on other circmustances. The healthy
family, with a fair proportion of wage-earners to persons to be
supported, and whose wage-earners have steady work may get
on without help; so may the family that has one well-paid member
to subsidize the others. Again, families may be privately assisted
by generous friends, neighbors and relatives who are somewhat
better off; others may eke out by vice. But however it is done,
such wages are supplemented by society to the extent of the cost
of living of the wage-earners and their families minus what is
[ 93 ]

skimped out of their health and strength and energy. (Page 236.)
The Minimum Wage Problem. The Independent, New York, 1912.

The report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum
Wage Boards presents supporting evidence not lightly to be set
aside. The investigations recorded indicate that the number of
wage-earning women in that commonwealth who are working
merely to add to their comforts or luxuries is “insignificant.” In
general, women’s wage in Massachusetts is less than a “living
wage.” At the same time, it is shown that in the same industry,
good wages are paid in certain establishments, while in competing
establishments the low wages prevail which bring down the general
average. The commission rightly argues that these facts prove
exploitation by the low wage establishments, or incompetent man-
agement and that in any case, the industry that does not on the
whole pay a living wage is parasitic and of questionable social
value. In the long run its costs fall on other industries and on the
community. That enlightened employers admit the soundness of
this reasoning is shown by the fact that in Australia and in Eng-
land competent employers do not object to the minimum wage
laws and usually welcome the “determinations” made by the mini-
mum wage boards.

Persistent and powerful opposition to the proposed legislation
will of course be made in Massachusetts and in other States which
may take up the idea. It will be as futile as opposition to child
labor legislation, industrial insurance legislation, sanitary and
tenement house legislation, and other policies, which an enlightened
public opinion and a sturdier social conscience are bound to stand
for. In the political economy of today there is no more funda-
mental principle than that every industry must meet its own costs,
including the cost of maintaining its labor force in unimpaired
health and efficiency. (Pages 584 and 585.)

A Minimum Wage for Workers. Addresses by H. LA RUE BROWN,
Chairman of Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission,
and Mrs. GLENDOWER EvANS, Member First Massachusetts
Minimum Wage Commission. City Club Bulletin of Phila-
delphia, January 27, 1913.

The law of the conservation of energy, of human energy, if you
like, is as true in social dynamics as it is anywhere else. That
difference between what that girl gets, and what she must spend
is going to come from somewhere. Where is it’ going to come
from?

There are several places. Father Ryan, out in Minnesota, has
[94 ]

said in some well considered articles, that the chief cause of
dependency and delinquency is the evil of insufficient wages.
Without following out his argument, I think I may state it as an
assertion that he makes out a case at least for saying that it is a
very large cause. No doubt your own experience and observation
would confirm that. We found that in Massachusetts we were
paying over five million dollars ($5,000,000) a year for dependents
and delinquents in public institutions, and that takes no account
whatever of the millions that are spent in private charities. That
is where the business side of a decent wage begins to come into
play, because that five million dollars ($5,000,000) and the other
millions spent in private charities come from taxes, from the
pockets of you and me. There is no use in arguing about it; it is
not sentimentalism at all. There is the money spent, and it is our
money, and that is the beginning of the business side. (Pages
199-200.)

The Wage-Earner and His Problem. JoHN MitTcHELL. P. S.
Ridsdale, Washington, D. C., 1918.

Can any special reasons be offered by government for inter-
fering in the rates of wages? To this, the reply may in part be
arrived at by contemplating the effects upon the state (society
organized for the purposes of government) in the case of wages
insufficient to maintain wage-earners independently of public
assistance. Surely, if society is continuously to be called in to
piece out the cost of the majntenance of a class of its members, it
has a just and serious concern in all the conditions of the labor
of that class. It might be better—at times assuredly would be
better—to support entirely non-self-sustaining persons rather than
to permit them, through their unpaid labor, at once to semi-
pauperize themselves and to put in jeopardy, through their
destructive competition, the wage-rates and, consequently, the well-
being of their fellow-workers in general, who usually obtain a
higher scale. Here, regarding its special wards, the state, mindful
above all of a defense of its own future, might prescribe extraordi-
nary protective measures. (Page 99.)

Women’s Work and Wages. [A Phase of Life in an Industrial
City.] EDwarp CapBury, M. CECcILE MATHESON, and GEORGE
SHANN. T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1906.

Any advantage gained by employers in a particular trade by
obtaining the use of labour not included in their wages bill is
analogous to a subsidy or bounty, which under a Protectionist
regime enables “the endowed manufacturers to bribe the public to
[95 ]

consume their articles by ceding to them what they have not paid
for.” This comes about in two distinct ways: “First, the case of
labour partially subsidized from the incomes of persons uncon-
nected with the industry in question.” Trades employing boy and
girl labour often come under this heading. The employer of adult
women is in the same case when he pays wages insufficient to
sustain the efficiency of his workers, who are subsidized by
others.

There is a more vicious form of parasitism in the case where
employers use workers and pay them a wage insufficient to main-
tain health and vigour.

“In thus deteriorating the physique, intelligence, and character
of their operatives, they are drawing on the capital stock of the
nation.” Such a trade is a parasite on the present and the future.
Nor is there anything peculiar in the products of the sweated
trades to justify this parasitism. It merely means that the em-
ployers take the line of least resistance and instead of cheapening
cost by the latest improved machinery and up-to-date business
methods, look to low-paid labour for this end. Unfortunately there
is no chance of the parasitic trades raising themselves by any
sectional action of their own. (Pages 283-284.)

Sweated Industry and the Minimum Wage. CLEMENTINA BLACK.
Duckworth & Co., London, 1907.

5 - The underpaid worker who fails to be wholly supported
by the proceeds of his own labor is inevitably supported in part
out of the pocket of some other person or persons. Moreover, both
the health and the work of the underpaid worker presently deter-
iorates. He contributes less than he might and ought to the
general wealth, and, by and by, when his health fails sufficiently,
he becomes a charge upon the public. (Page 170.)

“A trade which can only live by means of inadequate wages and
cheap, squalid, unhealthy buildings is doomed.” Such a trade,
while it still endures, is not really a source of national profit. The
workers whose lives it drains, not being supported by the price for
their labor, must come eventually to be partly or wholly supported
by other people. They are, in fact, a national burden, whether
the charge is nominally born by the State, or by private citizens.
Poverty, dirt and disease are very costly to the country in which
they prevail; and they are inevitable results of under-payment.
(Pages 266-67.)
[96 ]

Economic Theory and Proposal for a Legal Minimum Wage. LEES
SmitH. Economic Journal, London, 1907.

If the community were to give an annual bounty to all the
employers in a certain industry it would be enabled to outstrip its
rivals. The employers would gain an advantage analogous to a
bounty if they obtained labor without being required to pay for it.
Now, whenever employers hire men or women at a wage below full
subsistence level they do obtain such a supply of unpaid labor
force. Hence the trade is “parasitic” in the same sense as a trade
dependent upon a bounty. If, therefore, in the one case it would
be for the benefit of the community to cut off the bounty, we
ought, in the other case, by enacting a minimum wage, to cut
off the employment of the unpaid labor. (Page 508.)

Sweating, by EDWARD CADBURY and GEORGE SHANN. Headley Bros.,
London, 1907.

Large sums of money are spent yearly in charity and Poor Law
relief, out of which these underpaid workers are subsidized. This
is a fact known to all who have reflected on the matter at all and
who have the slightest acquaintance with the life of the very poor.
For example, Miss Irwin reports that “the returns of the inspectors
of the poor show that many outworkers, who are in receipt of
wages too small to support them though working full time, are
helped from the rates. Moreover, although to an extent which it
is impossible to ascertain, many of the outworkers on low wages
are assisted by the churches and by charities. Here evidently part
of the wages is paid by outsiders, and in such cases it has gener-
ally been recognized that there is no natural economic limit to the
possible reduction of wages except the resources of the Poor Law
authorities and the charitable. The cheapness of goods made in
such circumstances is balanced by the increase in Poor Rates and
in the demands on the benevolent.” (Pages 58-59.)

Charity and poor-relief that is given to this class has little, if
any, permanently good effect. It merely helps to perpetuate the
evil conditions, and becomes a rate in aid of inadequate wages.
The effect of charity is almost always demoralizing. When once it
has been accepted the tendency is for the recipient to depend on
it in the future. This is a great danger at the present time, and
reformers realize that something more radical than charity is
needed; that soup-kitchens and even doles by municipalities in
the shape of rate-aided work, are not sufficient. We must start
at the other end and recognize that any trade that does not pay
a living wage to its workers is a parasite on the community. The
[ 97°]

employer in such a trade obtains labor for which he does not pay
in his wages bill, and so is enabled to compete unfairly with those
trades in which better conditions prevail. He deteriorates the
health, vigour, intelligence and character of his employees, and
in so doing his trade is a parasite on the present and future of
the nation.

It is because of this present cost of sweating to the nation that,
even from the purely economic or money point of view, it behooves
us to remove these evils from our midst no matter how drastic
the required remedy may be. (Pages 64-65.)

As already pointed out wages are at or below subsistence level.
Even when spent with the utmost efficiency and wisdom they do
not suffice to keep the laborer and to produce an average supply
of labor of the same grade. The laborer and his family have to be
subsidized in many ways, or they remain ignorant and physically
inefficient. As we pointed out in another place, in the worst
sweated trades where the rate of wages is even below this custom-
ary rate, it always means that the worker is slowly deteriorated
as a worker, or else is subsidized by poor law and charity, or, in
the case of women, finds money in a way that is far more common
than many people think. (Page 75.)

There is also direct competition in another way between low-
paid and better-paid industries. A sweated trade is analogous
to a bounty-fed industry, and therefore persists when, under free
competition, it would have to give way. When a trade is built
up by means of bounties paid by the Government, it is clear that,
other things being equal, if the bounty were withdrawn some at
least of the firms engaged in the trade would be unable to success-
fully carry on their business. But it is agreed by economists that
such bounties do not increase the total amount of the trade of
the country, for the money paid in bounties is withdrawn from
other trades, which presumably work under more economic con-
ditions. Any decline in the bounty-fed trade due to a withdrawal
of the bounties must tend to a-redistribution of capital in favor
of the trades which are not subsidized.

And so it is in regard to sweated trades and their competition
with other trades in which fair conditions prevail. The subsidized
sweated trade has a distinct advantage in the market, and un-
doubtedly affects to their disadvantage those trades which work
under conditions and restrictions imposed by trade unions and legis-
lation. (Pages 88-89.)
[ 98 ]

Report of Conference on a Minimum Wage. National Anti-Sweating
League. London, 1907.

It is obvious that the competition of the sweated branches of
trades with those which are organized, and demand a standard
rate, is disastrous. The existence of this mass of labor on which
employers can fall back for the purpose of introducing competitors
in a trade struggle is serious enough, but at all times the fact
that the cheapest labor is in many instances doing practically the
same work as the better paid and regulated is a constant menace
to “wages.” The direct effect of this competition in affected
trades is the most obvious, but it must not be forgotten that its
effect on the whole trade of a country is, though less obvious,
quite as serious. The position occupied by the lowest strata
of labor must affect the whole, and the fact that there are thou-
sands of persons unable to obtain a remuneration sufficient for
more than bare existence affects also the position of the most
highly organized and skilled trades, such as the textile operatives,
the miners, or the engineers.

From the chaotic mass springs evil in every form—hospitals
and workhouses are recruited by the under-fed, overworked men
and women; instances are given in H. M. Chief Inspector’s report
for 1895 of the deterioration in health of girl workers rendered
unemployable by overwork; stunted, untrained children are turned
into the labor market, and the overwork of women and the compe-
tition of children meets with its necessary corollary in the great
army of the unemployed. (Pages 35-36.)

Report from the Select Committee on Home Work to House of
Commons, London, 1908.

If “sweating” is understood to mean that work is paid for at
a rate which, in the conditions under which many of the workers
do it, yields to them an income which is quite insufficient to
enable an adult person to obtain anything like proper food, cloth-
ing and house accommodation, there is no doubt that sweating
does prevail extensively.

The consequence is that, whe those earnings are their sole
source of income, the conditions under which they live are often
not only crowded and unsanitary, but altogether pitiable and
distressing, and we have evidence that’ many are compelled to
have recourses to poor-law or charitable “relief.” (Page 111.)

Is there any prospect that these people, with the aid of such
voluntary and philanthropic assistance and co-operation as is,
or would be, available, will materially improve their own condi-
tion, and, to any appreciable extent, extricate themselves from the
[99]

quagmire of endless toil and almost ceaseless misery in which
some of them are involved? On the other hand, can legislation
help them? Your committee are of the opinion that unless Par-
liament steps in and gives them the protection and support which
legislation alone can supply, the prospects of any real and sub-
stantial improvement in their position and condition being brought
about are very small and remote. We are further of the opinion
that carefully considered legislation would aid them materially;
and, that being so, we cannot doubt that it is desirable that an
attempt should be made, and an experiment be tried. (Page XIII.)

If a trade will not yield such an income to average indus-
trious workers engaged in it, it is a parasite industry, and it
is contrary to the general well-being that it should continue.
Experience, however, teaches that the usual result of legislation
of the nature referred to is not to kill the industry, but to reform
it. (Page XIV.)

Woman in Industry. Chapter 1, Regulation of Women’s Work.
GERTRUDE M. TUCKWELL. Duckworth & Co., London, 1908.

So the worst paid labor is assisted by a rate-in-aid of wages,
and this vicious system of under-payment is kept alive and fos-
tered by precarious Charities. (Page 12.)

There are thousands of depressed and apathetic. . . . Such
workers form a danger to the State, which must suffer while
our industrial structure rests on a basis of starving, struggling
women and children. The principle on which our developing
industrial legislation is based is one of State intervention where
evil to the State is likely to arise. (Pages 17-18.)

State Regulation of Wages. Epwarp R. Pease. International
Magazine, London, 1909.

Many a trade is parasitic; it lives on other industries; its
workers are not paid enough to keep body and soul together and
of course far too little to bring up a new generation; earnings are
supplemented by outdoor relief, or are mere pocket money to girls
living at home; and those luckless ones who have no other
resources are being slowly starved to death. (Page 99.)

The Prevention of Destitution. SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB. Long-
mans, Green & Co., London, 1911.

The Poor Law relief of the destitution caused by sweating
acted as a sort of “bounty” to those trades and those employers
not paying full subsistence wages, and led to a constant exten-
sion of the system. What was happening was an ousting of the
self-supporting by the parasitic industries. ‘Whole branches of

9
[ 100 ]

manufacture,” eloquently summed up the Poor Law Commission-
ers of 1834, “may thus follow the course, not of coal mines, or of
streams, but of pauperism; may flourish like the fungi that
spring from corruption, in consequence of the abuses which are
ruining all the other interests of the places in which they are
established, and cease to exist in the better administered districts,
in consequence of that better administration.” (Page 90, 22nd
annual report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70.)

“One of the most recognized principles in our Poor Law is,
that relief should be given only to the actually destitute, and not
in aid of wages. In the case of widows with families where it
is often manifestly impossible that the earnings of the woman can
support the family, the rule is frequently departed from, but, as a
general principle, it lies at the root of the present system of
relief. In innumerable cases its application appears to be harsh
for the moment, and it might also be held to be an aggravation
of an existing difficulty to insist that, so long as a person is in
employment, and wages are earned, though such wages may be
insufficient, the Poor Law authorities ought to hold aloof and
refuse to supplement the receipts of the family, actually offering
in preference to take upon themselves the entire cost of their
maintenance. Still it is certain that no system could be more
dangerous, both to the working classes and to the rate-payers,
than to supplement insufficiency of wages by the expenditure of
public money.” (Page 262.)

The wage-earners have never yet objected to a general limita-
tion of the hours of labor, or to the enforcement of a standard
rate, so long as it did not entail ousting them from their means
of subsistence. In fact, this whole conception of a joint responsi-
bility to the individual and the community for the universal main-
tenance of a prescribed standard of civilized life, is extraordinarily
sympathetic to the English manual working class, for the simple
reason that the evil with which they are confronted in practical
life, is not any over-regulation of their conduct and impulses, but
the disaster of periodically being deprived of the opportunity of
maintaining themselves and their children at any standard at
all. (Pages 322-323.)

National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution. P. S. King
& Son, London, 1912. Section Unemployment and Industrial
Regulation. Mr. Water T. LayvtoN—Discussion.

In his experience as a guardian of the poor, he was constantly
meeting with revelations of low wages paid to women—widows
and deserted wives, who had to support. families, and they had in
[101 ]

many cases to subsidize these women. He remembered on one
occasion at a relief committee meeting, a local Government Board
inspector was present, and when they granted relief to a woman
who earned about 10s a week and had several children to support
the inspector told the committee that they were subsidizing low
wages.

Wages. A. J. CARYLYLE, D.litt. A. R. Mowbray & Co., London,
1912.

. ‘Owing to the complexity of the economic situation,
the employer may pay a wage which is inadequate to the main-
tenance of the laborer, because the laborer is maintained from
other sources. The evidence given to the select committee of
the House of Commons on Home Work in 1908 made it clear that
many women in the sweated trades were not living upon their
earnings. We may ask, how can this be? In the first place, if
we examine the industries of women we shall discover that in a
great many places the women who are employed in these sweated
trades are living with their families, so that the wages which
they are getting are of the nature of a supplement to a family
wage. But in many other cases the woman is dependent on her
wages. What does actually then happen? Women in such cases
are constantly receiving from the public at large, in one way or
another, an immense amount of assistance of various kinds. In
some cases the evidence given to the House of Commons Com.
mittee, to which we have already referred, showed that women
of this kind were actually being. partially maintained by the Poor
Law. But no doubt the more normal result of sweated wages is
this, that even if the worker does just manage to live at ordinary
times on these wages, when anything happens, if the woman is
ill, or work is slack, she is immediately thrown on the public, is
dependent on the public, and is maintained by the public by means
of the Poor Law or of charity.

Wages which are inadequate to the maintenance of the laborer
are constantly supplemented in one way or another by the com-
munity. We can therefore see that the stupidity of the sweating
employer does not actually represent the only reason why he pays
these inadequate wages. The action of the employer arises also
from this fact, that he is able to get wages paid by other people,
that a considerable part of the maintenance of a sweated laborer
comes out of the pockets of the community as a whole, either
through the laborer’s family, or from the public by way of Poor
Law relief, or by way of charitable assistance. A considerable
amount of the burden of maintaining the laborer can be, and
[ 102 ]

actually is, without any deliberate intention on the employer’s
part, thrown on to the community. (Pages 87-88.)

It is obvious enough that the laborer who has to have recourse
to the community at large for assistance, by way of supplementing
her wages, is almost certain to be living below the standard of
such a reasonable condition of life as will normally make for
efficiency. But still it is true that one fact which explains the
action of the sweating employer is that he can transfer the bur-
den of maintaining the laborer from his own shoulders to those
of the community at large. (Page 89.)

The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage. SIDNEY WEBB.
The Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago
Press, December, 1912.

When an employer, without imparting any adequate instruction
in a skilled craft, gets his work done by boys and girls who live
with their parents and work practically for pocket money, he is
clearly receiving’ a subsidy or bounty, which gives his process an
economic advantage over those worked by fully paid labor.

The employer of adult women is in the same case, where, as is
usual, he pays them a wage insufficient to keep them in full
efficiency, irrespective of what they receive from their parents,
husbands, or lovers. In all these instances the efficiency of the
services rendered by the young persons or women is being kept
up out of the earnings of some other class. These trades are
therefore as clearly receiving a subsidy as if the workers in them
were being given a “rate in aid of wages.” The employer of par-
tially subsidized woman or child labor gains actually a double
advantage over the self-supporting trades; he gets, without cost to
himself, the extra energy due to the extra food for which his wages
do not pay, and he abstracts—possibly from the workers at a rival
process, or in a competing industry—some of the income which
might have increased the energy put into the other trade. (Page 15.)

The Case for the National Minimum. Printed for the National
Committee for the Prevention of Destitution. London, 1918.

Any industry which is so comparatively unproductive that it
cannot afford a living wage to all who are engaged in it must be
socially parasitic and had much better cease to exist. But many
industries which are today parasitic in this sense are quite capable
of becoming self-supporting trades if the spur of progress is firmly
but gradually applied. (Page 12.)
[ 103 ]

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNOWDEN, M. P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1913.

The expense of maintaining these people, and the loss of their
usefulness and wealth-producing power can only be vaguely imag-
ined, but it is many millions of the very many millions which low
wages cost the community every year.

The fifteen millions a year which is spent upon the maintenance
of paupers represents only a part of the sum which is drained for
the support of the victims of low wages. The maintenance of hos-
pitals and private charitable institutions for the relief of the poor
is said to cost as much as the expenditure through the Poor Law.
Private help is extensively and generously given to assist distress,
and this is only a subsidy of low wages. (Pages 53-54.)

The community does not gain by keeping any section of its
people on low wages. There is a social economy in good living
conditions, as there is an industrial economy in good industrial
conditions.

By good wages, and by an education which will teach people to
spend their wages wisely and well, every problem which is troubling
social reformers and the consciences of the sympathetic now, would
be made far more easy of treatment. (Page 54.)

Sweated Labour and the Trade Boards Act. Catholic Studies in

Social Reform—Manual II, Edited by the Rev. THOMAS
Wright. P. S. King & Son, London, 1913.

Thousands of families can and do subsist, in apparent comfort,
on much Jess than the wage suggested above. They do, but at what
ultimate cost to the nation in infant mortality, in impaired effi-
ciency, in diminished power of resistance to disease, in desperate
resort to bodily pleasures, in crime, and finally in pauperism, is
but partly shown by the national expenditure on the Poor Law, the
prisons, the reformatories, the hospitals and the asylums, and by
the statistics of child mortality, of illegitimacy and of drunkenness.
The payment of less than a living wage is, even from a merely
commercial point of view, too costly in the long run to the nation
that permits it. (Pages 39-40.)

Though the Trade Boards Act is a legislative experiment, it
marks a noteworthy growth in our laws for the betterment of the
conditions of labour. (Page 46.)

By securing a minimum wage, it aspires to raise from that
moral degradation no less than to stay the physical deterioration
into which many oppressed victims of our labour system have
fallen, and thus it tends to remedy evils with which the Factory
Acts have been unable to cope. (Page 46.)
[ 104 ]

The methods of subsidizing parasitic trades are two—the sup-
plementing of the incomes of the workers from some source outside
the trade in which they are employed, and the using up of the
vital energy of the workers by forcing them to live and work upon
a wage which is insufficient to afford them the means of living in
normal health. Of these two the latter is by far the more injurious,
whether viewed from the physical or the moral standpoint. (Page
52.)

The second form of parasitism is by far the more noxious. It
is the case of trades in which workers do not draw any portion
of their incomes from outside sources, but continue in a state of
abject poverty and misery as long as their energy and stamina

_last and then sink beneath the burden for their places to be taken
by others. This is nothing less than subsidizing the trade at the
expense of the health and lives of the workers. Under this system
the health, physique, intelligence and moral character of the
workers deteriorate. The vital energy of the whole community is
being slowly but surely drained away. (Page 53.)

(5) UNDERPAYMENT THE ROOT OF POVERTY.

Authorities agree in the opinion that low wages are
the root factor in poverty and in the consequent lowering
of the standards of living.

Wage Earners’ Budgets. A Study of Standard and Cost of Living
in New York City. LOUISE B. More. Henry Holt & Co., New
York, 1907.

From an economic standpoint, however, the amount of income
is the most important factor in determining the standard of com-
fort attainable in an average workingman’s family. (Page 270.)

Homestead: The Household of a Mill Town. Marcarer F, ByInc-
TON. Russell Sage Foundation Publication, New York, 1910.

As a permanent basis for American life, we must look to a
larger budget. (Page 182.)

Proposed Minimum Wage Law for Wisconsin. Prepared under
the direction of JoHN R. Commons, Wisconsin Consumers’
League. KATHERINE LENROOT. Madison, 1911.

All the protection afforded to the laborer as debtor, creditor,
wage-earner, and wage-bargainer in the matter of hours of labor,
sanitation, and methods of payment do not avail unless he receives
wages sufficient to maintain himself and those dependent upon
him in the necessary comforts of life. This is partly the result
[ 105 ]

of new burdens on labor on account of compulsory education,
housing and sanitation, pure food laws, industrial accidents, etc.
The cost of living to the laborer has been greatly increased by
these measures. (Page 17.)

Poverty—A Study of Town Life. B. S. ROWNTREE. Macmillan
& Co., London, 1901.
Particulars were obtained regarding 11,560 families. (Page 26.)
On analyzing the cases of “primary” poverty in York, we find
that they are immediately due to:

No. of Households Immediate Causes of Percent of Total Pop-
Affected. Primary Poverty. ulation Living under
Primary Poverty Line.

38 Chief wage earner out of work 2.31

51 Irregularity of work 2.83

640 In regular work but at low wages 51.96
(Page 120.)

Report from the Select Committee on Home Work to House of
Commons. London, 1908.

It is doubtful whether there is any more important condition
of individual and general well-being than the possibility of obtain-
ing an income sufficient to enable those who earn it to secure, at
any rate, the necessaries of life. (Page XIV.)

Women in Industry from Seven Points of View. Duckworth & Co.,
London, 1908. Legislative Proposals. CLEMENTINA BLACK.
Underpayment, indeed, is the root of the whole industrial prob-
lem. It is really a more pressing and vital question than that of
unemployment. We could succeed in grappling with the really
unemployed if we were not embarassed by the half-employed and
the inadequately paid. . . The cause is not in the least mys-
terious. Underpayment is a direct and quite inevitable result of
unrestricted competition in the buying and selling of labour. Wher-
ever that unrestricted competition prevails, the ultimate price of
any industrial process comes to be the lowest rate at which any
worker will consent to perform that process. Whenever all workers
are receiving a higher rate, it is because competition has somewhere
and somehow been arrested in its course. (Pages 190-191.)

State Regulation of Wages. Epw. R. Pease. International Maga-
zine, London, 1909.

The demand for state regulation of wages is based on the some-
what obvious truth that the best way to mitigate the evils produced
by poverty, which all deplore and all desire to remedy, is to prevent
poverty. The poor are poor because they are paid low wages for
their work, and the squalor of their lives, their insufficient food
[ 106 ]

and abominable clothing, the excessive mortality of their infants,
the diseases and dirt of their children, are all due, primarily,
secondarily, and simply to their poverty—that is, their insufficient
wages. (Page 96.)

The Women’s Industrial News. London, July, 1912. Women’s
Wages. DoRoTHY ZIMMERN.

A very considerable proportion of our women, and by far the
greater number of our working women, pass through wage-earning
occupations between the ages of 14 to 20 or 25. Now this period is
a very critical one for their development in every direction, and
lays a permanent foundation of good or ill in the future; therefore,
the amount of money which is at the disposal of girls at this time
of their lives for the satisfaction not only of their physical, but
also of their intellectual and moral needs, is of the utmost import-
ance to their own well-being and to that of the next generation,
and is worthy of the most careful consideration. (Page-49.)

National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution, 1912. Sec-
tion—Unemployment and Industrial Regulation. Miss Con-
STANCE SMITH.

Those who had most strenuously supported industrial regulation
had long felt, she believed, that industrial regulation must go for-
ward to secure a legal minimum subsistence because it was the
attainment of a living wage which lay at the root of our future
industrial well-being. (Page 401.)

The Work of the Trade Boards. J. J. MALOoN.

It is unnecessary to show the ultimate dependence of social
reform upon the reasonable remuneration of the worker. Except
insofar as they raise the wages of the very poor, schemes of public
improvement are destined to fail, and justice and expediency are
alike served by their failure. We are driven, therefore, necessarily
to consider the question of low wages. (Page 402.)

Sweated Labour and the Trade Boards Act. Catholic Studies in
Social Reform—Manual II, Edited by the Rev. THomAsS
Wricut. P. S. King & Son, London, 1918.

The question of sweating is a question of wages, and to trouble
about an amelioration of sanitary conditions and excessive hours
of work so long as the wage question remained unanswered is akin
[ 107 J

to worrying about the trimming of the beard when the face of
society is bruised and gashed. (Page 12.)
The Case for the National Minimum. Printed for the National
Committee for the Prevention of Destitution. London, 1913.
THE LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE.

The problem of wages is the most live and important issue in
social politics today. Old Age Pensions, Labor Exchanges, State
Assistance for the Sick and Unemployed, Housing Schemes, School
Feeding, and other forms of provision for special sections of the
wage-earning class are desirable, even imperative, but the root
factor in destitution is the factor of low wages, and until that is
dealt with no substantial improvement in social conditions can be
expected. In every department of social progress, public health,
housing, education, and child nurture, the path of immediate
advancement is found to be blocked by the prevalence of low wages.
(Page 1.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNOWDEN, M. P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1918.

The cost to the individual and to the community of the poverty
which is caused by inadequate wages cannot be estimated. We
pay for it in infantile deaths, in the crippled and damaged bodies
of the children who survive, in the inadequate return we get from
the expenditure on education, in the creation of unemployables, in
sickness and loss of work, in consumption and other diseases, in
pauperism, in the cost of public and charitable institutions for the
support of the sick, the poor, and the insane, and in the incalculable
loss of industrial and mental efficiency. (Page 49.)
[ 108 ]

Il. BENEFITS OF AN ADEQUATE WAGE

(1) BENEFITS TO EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTION.

The establishment of a legal minimum wage has been
found an important incentive to increasing efficiency on
the part of both employers and employees. It stimulates
the employer to reduce costs by improvements in organ-
ization and new inventions, and also to develop and to
keep the most efficient workers. On the other hand, the
establishment of the legal minimum wage stimulates the
workers to prove themselves the most efficient.

A.—On the Part of Employers.

Work and Wages. Sir Tuomas Brassey. G. P. Putman’s Sons.
New York, 1888.

High wages do not necessarily imply dear labor, just as, on the
other hand, low wages do not, of necessity, make labor cheap.
(Pages 74-75.)

Doubtless the dearness of labor in England has stimulated inven-
tive genius and administrative skill. (Page 13.)

Or again, when the superior qualities of the operatives do not
fully make up for the difference in wages, the high price of labor
will generally lead to the use of labor-saving machinery, which
would not have been adopted had labor been cheap. (Page 76.)
State Arbitration and the Minimum Wage in Australia. H. W.

Macrosty. Pol. Science Quarterly, V. 18, Boston, 1908.

The protection which the acts in Victoria have been to the
workers is seen in the case of dungaree trousers, where the price
paid by the wholesale houses to the manufacturers fell from 13s
per dozen before 1897 to 7s 6d in 1899. Under free competition
this loss would have fallen entirely on the workers; under the acts
the manufacturers recoup themselves by better organization and
improved methods, and where they raise the price to the warehouses
the latter still retain an ample margin of profit without raising
prices to the consumer. In the underclothing trade, that special
home of sweating, it is worth noting that the lady factory
inspector reports that the home workers as well as the factory
workers have “greatly benefitted” by the act. (Page 132.)

The New Industrial Day. A Book for Men Who Employ Men.
Wm. C. REDFIELD. Century Co., New York, 1912.

The industrial manager of today must take a different attitude
[ 109 ]

toward labor from that which has been common in the past. The
day when the largest output was asked for the smallest wage is
passing, not to return, for that theory of production is being proved
false and expensive. It has been coincident with such waste in
other ways, and provocative of such expense in many forms, that
with increasing knowledge it has been outgrown and is being
discarded.

The keen and careful manager of a modern plant will rather
follow the law of the greatest output and the greatest wage. His
thought will go to the reduction of his burden charges, to removing
the cost for repairs, to keeping his producing machines moving
through the largest possible percentage of the working day, to
stopping the production of “seconds,” to providing the uninterrupted
flow of material, to cutting out the waste of time and effort; and
in these productive ways he will find his time so profitably occupied
that the payroll may be, forgotten, save that he will, to the extent
that he is wise, see that it is commensurate with the productiveness
of his operatives. We may even hope that ere long he will come
to say with true pride: “We pay the largest wages, and we have,
therefore, the lowest labor cost.” (Pages 39-40.)

He will not crowd the soul and life out of his workmen, but will
recognize that their prosperity and his are bound in one, and that
if his product is to be brought low in cost it must be by furnishing
them the very best tools and equipment and the most favorable
working conditions; because only when that is done and liberal
pay with continuous employment is added to it can one get that
self-discipline enforced which is the life of a high-grade modern
shop. No watchfulness of foreman or superintendent and no pres-
sure from above can take the place of the willing brain, added to
the zealous hand of a happy, well-paid, well-placed, well-equipped,
and contented workman. Physical or nervous overstrain is unprofit-
able in the shop or mill, as well as in the office. So, side by side,
with a broad outlook into the world, must go a broad outlook into
his own shop. Such a manufacturer will look closely and cease-
lessly at his rate and quality of product, and at its sure and steady
flow. He will watch his wastes and his unproductive expenses, but
the last thing that will worry him will be the rate of wage. If his
goods come out with few or no seconds, if his ratio of repairs and
“returns” is small, if his waste of time and material is kept to a
low limit, if his shop is well balanced, if the spirit in his works
is that of earnest, steady, quiet enthusiasm, if he is a leader to his
men and not a tyrant over them, he will be content if his men earn
high wages for his cost sheets will be right. (Pages 58-59.)

We must learn that efficiency means three things that always
[ 110 ]

go together and can not be separated: the increase in our output
and its improved quality, the increase in what we pay our workers,
and, because of these, the decrease both in.the direct and indirect
cost of what we make. (Pages 71-72.)

We must deal with inefficient labor by teaching it and by
paying it enough to stimulate it into efficiency. (Page 74.)

Now, however, that scientific manufacturing as a profession
has begun and is growing, the fact is found that we can and often
do produce as cheaply here as abroad, not in spite of, but because
of, the higher rates of wages here, which are but a partial measure-
ment of the higher efficiency and character of the American work-
man and of the fine equipment put at his disposal. (Page 132.)

Not long ago the superintendent of a Southern cotton mill said
to his employer: “I cut down our labor cost last month.”

“Did you reduce the wages?” he was asked.

“No. I raised them but I got more done.” .

During the progress of a railway construction contract in Vir-
ginia, the negro laborers were paid more than was usual in such
work, and care was given to providing them with the right tool at
the right time and they were well fed and housed. Not only did
the contractor find discipline easy to enforce, but his work went
faster than he had expected and cost less. (Page 183.)

Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards.
January, 1912. No. 1697.

It is the opinion of this commission, however, that in all these
industries the wage scales will stand a readjustment of rates that
will raise the lowest wages to something nearer the living wage,
and that such changes will result in a proper demand for more
efficiency in the labor, which will be met not only by giving prefer-
ence to the better class of laborers, but by making the same women
more serviceable because of more adequate living conditions. (Page
24.)

If it is true that in some cases where time rates alone prevail
employers are purposely employing less competent women at lower
wages rather than more competent women at higher rates, the
latter will certainly be engaged if the minimum wage is raised, and
the less competent will be forced into other employments or will
fail to secure any employment whatever. Even if this result should
occur, the commission holds that it is better for society to meet
this responsibility than to allow the far greater burden of under-
payment to fall on the large number of employees who are now
‘suffering. The duty of making our young women more efficient
[111]

is one already recognized by our educational boards, as is evidenced
in the important movements in industrial education. (Page 25.)

Three employers interviewed stated that they have established in
their factories, on their own initiative, a minimum wage, and this
in the face of their competitors, who are paying the lowest wage
they can. They all lay great stress on the added efficiency of the
work, the advantage of permanency in the working force and the
increased esprit de corps. These men have given constructive con-
sideration to their labor problem. (Page 61.)

It (the legal minimum wage) would stimulate employers to
develop the capacity and efficiency of the less competent workers
in order that the wages might not be incommensurate with the
services rendered.

It would accordingly tend to induce employers to keep together
their trained workers and to avoid so far as possible seasonal
fluctuations. (Page 25.)

The Theory of the Minimum Wage. H. R. SEAGER. New York,

American Labor Legislation Review, February, 1918.
Improvements in shop organization and machinery might be
expected soon to bring the expense of production down to the old
level, as employers would be forced to concentrate their thought
on these details, since they would no longer be permitted to reduce

expenses by beating down the pay of home workers. (Page 86.)

Since some department store managers already pay living wages,
as a matter of principle, to all of their employees, it is clear that
all who deserve to survive in competition might do so. The first
effects of such a policy would be a more rigid selection of employees
from the larger number of applicants for work and a reduction of
the working force, since the higher average of ability would enable

a smaller number to do the work formerly performed by a larger

number. In all probability, the better paid smaller force would

prove nearly as economical to the management as the underpaid
larger force which it would displace, so that the prices asked for
goods would be little, if at all, affected by the change. Finally, the
deflection of some would-be shopgirls to other employments would
probably have little or no effect on wages in those employments,
because the total number thrown out of employment in any city
would be small and their competition would be spread over the

whole remaining field of woman’s work. (Page 86.)

A Minimum Wage for Workers. H. La RUE Brown, Chairman of
Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission. Mrs. GLEN-
DOWER EvaANs, Member First Massachusetts Minimum Wage
Commission. City Club Bulletin of Philadelphia, Jan. 27,1913.

If employers can so organize their business that work is con-
[112]

tinuous through the year, the efficiency of the labor is thereby
increased and the well-being of the worker is increased in due
proportion. Minimum wage requirements may well work out in
that way. For if workers must be paid more, it becomes necessary
to develop their skill to make them worth their added cost, and
workers whom an employer has taken the trouble to train, it is
worth his while to hold. Most striking and most lamentable in
ill-paid labor is the way it shifts from establishment to establish-
ment and often from trade to trade, with weeks or months of
idleness between one and another job. Thus a low wage is both a
cause and a result of low efficiency. In England, already, I am
told that wage boards have doubled the wage of some of the lowest-
paid workers, and employers find that they amply earn their
increased price. (Page 205.)

We would not have to have an enforced monopoly in order to
have the minimum wage, for the reason that if the manufacturers
are forced to live up to a certain minimum, then it becomes a
question of still better organizing their production. No man is
going to stay in a business if he cannot make his expenses. In
other words, if everyone is compelled to live up to a minimum wage
competitive conditions continue. (Mr. Raymond W. Crauch, page
210.)

Contemporary Review. A Living Wage—WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM,
Vol. 65, pp. 16-28. London, 1894.

There is one important point, however, on which it is necessary
to insist: the really important thing is the maintenance of a
standard of comfort—and of real wages. It is only in this sense
that high wages promote efficiency.

The conviction that abundant remuneration and efficient work
are correlative is so firmly held by the great mass of intelligent
English employers as to give the proposition an axiomatic charat-
ter. Lancashire cotton manufacturers, for example, rejoice in, and
are proud of, the high earnings of their work people, and in every
town there is a certain spirit of emulation among them in the
endeavour, by the provision of good machinery and good material,
to place their establishments in the front rank as places where the
weekly wages stand highest. This principle that abundant earnings
and industrial success go together, has been learned by experience,
by observation, and by the interchange of idea which is always
going on in every department of trade. Manchester Chamber of
Commerce Record, page 19.

Economic Theory and Proposal for a Legal Minimum Wage. LEES
SMITH. Economic Journal, London, 1907.
‘In the long run, what will be the effect on the demand for the
[ 113 ]

more highly skilled labor? We have to take into account the
“Law of Substitution.” When the same results can be obtained
by different methods, the methods most likely to survive are those
which are most efficient in proportion to their cost. It seems
probable, therefore, that an increase in the cost of the less skilled
labor will stimulate the use of machinery and of more highly skilled
labor.

We will follow out later the results of the increase in the demand
for machinery. At present we are only concerned to point out
that the increased demand for the more highly skilled labor will
tend to raise and not to lower its wages. There is, therefore, no
reason to suppose that any rise in the wages of those who may
benefit from a minimum wage is likely to come from the wages
of those more highly paid. (Page 505.)

Report of Conference on a Minimum Wage. National Anti-Sweat-
ing League. London, 1907.

What about those trades exposed to the full force of cut-throat
competition where profits are pared down to a minimum, and the
employer earns a small, precarious livelihood? Does a rise of
wages necessarily cause a rise of prices and a shrinkage of trade
and of employment here? On this point one may legitimately
appeal to the general tenor of labor legislation in this country,
the Factory and Workshops Acts, Public Health, Employers’ Lia-
bility, and other laws, all of which have had as one of their eco-
nomic consequences a tendency to raise the cost of production in
the trades with which they are concerned.

The unenlightened employers who have opposed these measures
persistently asserted that the new restrictions or expenses imposed
upon their business would destroy their profits, cripple their com-
petition with foreigners and close their mills. The laws were
passed, the burdens were imposed, no such disaster as was pre-
dicted actually occurred. Why not? Well, partly because the
improved safety and sanitation, the shorter hours, and other better-
ment in the condition of the employes raised the efficiency of labor,
but partly also because the fear of reduced profits operated upon
the employers as a stimulus to improved economy in the conduct
of their business. A rise in the wage-bill or in other expenses led
to the invention or adoption of improved machinery, the utilization
of hitherto wasted products, or other improvements either in the
technique or in the administration of the business. A trade depend-
[114 ]

ent for its economy upon abundance of cheap, low-grade labor is
notoriously an unprogressive trade; an enforced rise of wages will
commonly be a spur to progress. (Page 55.)

Report from the Select Committee on Home Work to House of Com-
mons. London, 1908.

Low-priced labour is a great obstacle to improvement. It dis-
courages invention, and removes or prevents the growth of a great
stimulus to progress and efficiency. The direct and early result
of prohibiting unsatisfactory conditions in industrial life is almost
invariably to direct the attention of the most competent minds in
and about the trade to the production and introduction of such
improvements in machinery, methods and processes as will enable
the industry to continue under greatly’improved conditions, and be
carried on with greater success than before. In our judgment
there is no reason to doubt that similar beneficial results to all
concerned—employers, workpeople, and the general public—to those
which have followed the establishing of minimum conditions of
other kinds in various departments of industrial life, would follow
the establishing by law of minimum rates of payment for such
classes of workers as experience has shown are unable to secure
for themselves rates of payment for work which may reasonably be
regarded as even the lowest upon which an average worker can
exist. (Page XIV.)

National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution. P. S. King
& Son, London, 1912. Section—Unemployment and Indus-
trial Regulation.

Mr. Sidney Webb:

Many people thought that an increase in price must follow a
rise in wages. Well, in Melbourne the trade boards had raised
wages, sometimes by 50% and 70% beyond what the women had
been getting before, and he had satisfied himself that there was
no increase in the price of the furnished article at all as a con-
sequence of the rise in prices. Yet the employers were not bank-
rupt. The explanation was that when the higher wages had to be
paid the industry was carried on in a more efficient way than when
the employer paid low wages. For the increased wages they paid
they saw to it that they got more efficient work. Thus the labor

was not more expensive to the employer, although the workers
received more. (Page 425.)
[115]

The Practical Case for a Legal Minimum Wage, by R. C. K. ENsor.
Nineteenth Century, London, 1912.

Let no one suppose that in these cases, or in cases where exces-
sively low wages affect a trade, the appeal for state intervention
is an appeal solely for the unemployed against the employer. Largely
it is an appeal for the good employer against the bad. Many an
employer, whose low-wage rates are an injury to the community,
knows and deplores it, but is helpless in the grip of competition.
(Page 272.)

On the side of trade efficiency, it seems certain that the pro-
hibition of the worst underpayment has stimulated manufacturers
to overhaul their workshops, improve plant and remove waste. In
trades where underpayment has been pronounced, there is usually
much room for this: for the inefficiency of the cheap underpaid
workers almost inevitably reacts on the management. (Pages 273-
274.)

The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage. SIDNEY WEBB.
The Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago
Press, December, 1912.

Let us, therefore, consider the probable effects of a legal mini-
mum wage upon the brain workers, including under this term all
who are concerned in the direction of industry. Here the actual
experience of the Factory Acts and of strong trade unionism is very
instructive. When all the employers in a trade find themselves
precluded, by the existence of Common Rule, from worsening the
conditions of employment—-when, for instance, they are legally
prohibited from crowding more operatives into their mills or keep-
ing them at work for longer hours, or when they find it impossible,
owing to a strictly enforced piecework list, to nibble at wages—
they are driven in their competitive struggle with each other, to
seek advantage in other ways. We arrive, therefore, at the unex-
pected result that the enforcement of definite minimum conditions
of employment as compared with a state of absolute freedom to
the employer to do as he likes, positively stimulates the invention
and adoption of new processes of manufacture. This is no new
paradox, but has been repeatedly remarked by the opponents of
trade unionism. Thus Babbage, in 1832, described in detail how
the invention and adoption of new methods of forging and welding
gun-barrels was directly caused by the combined insistence on better
conditions of employment by all the workmen engaged in the old
process. (Page 10.)

10
[116 ]

i Coming down. to our own day, I have myself had the
experience of being conducted over a huge steel works in Scotland
by the late Sir Charles Tennant, one.of the ablest and most suc-
cessful of our captains of industry, and being shown one improve-
ment after another, which had been devised and adopted expressly
because the workmen engaged at the old processes had, through
their ‘powerful trade union, enforced a definite minimum standard
wage. (Pages 11- 12.)

The enforcement of the Common Rule on all establishments
concentrates the pressure of competition on the brains of the
employers, and keeps them always on the stretch. “Mankind,” says
Emerson, “is as lazy as it dares to be,” and so long as an employer
can meet the pressure of the wholesale trader, or of foreign com-
petition, by nibbling at wages, or “cribbing time,” he is not likely
to undertake the “intolerable toil of thought” that would be required
to discover a genuine improvement in the productive process, or
even, as Babbage candidly admits, to introduce improvements that
have. already been invented. Hence the mere existence of a legal
minimum. wage, by debarring the hardpressed employer from the
most obvious form of relief—one which is of no advantage to the
community—positively drives him to other means of lowering the
costs of production, which almost inevitably take the form of
increasing productivity. (Page 12.) °

The Case for the National Minimum. Printed for the National
Committee for the Prevention of Destitution. London, 1918.

The verdict of the Economists is equally clear and emphatic.
“Cheap labor” they no longer regard as a blessing, but rather as
a curse to an industrial community. Low wages mean low
efficiency and low consuming power. The recognized economic
advantages of maintaining a high standard wage are:

1. That it increases the efficiency of the workers by giving
them a higher standard of living; and

2. That by preventing economies in wages it forces the com-
petitive struggle on to a higher plane, the plane of efficiency.
[117 ]

High wages, by leading to improved machinery and more
efficient organization, are in the long run the truest form of
economy. (Page 4.)

The Economic Journal, September, 1918, London. The Trades Board
Act at Work. S. C. Moors.

Owing to the higher wages now being paid to the men, greater
efforts are made to keep them fully employed, with the result that
there is less playing between jobs, and that the women’s work is
therefore more regular. Whether there has been increased strain
or any other result of that kind cannot yet be determined. But
so far shorter hours appear to be clear gain to both men and women.
It would appear also to have been beneficial to employers, for
if there has been no decrease in output they will have saved
on power and lighting. (Page 444.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNOWDEN, M.P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1918.

Wages in the mechanical trades are probably higher in the
United States than in any other country, but the cost of labor is
lower than elsewhere, because of its greater output. Necessity is
the mother of invention. If the employer has to face an increase
of wages, he sets his wits to work to effect economy. The high
wages paid in America have forced the progress in machinery to
the highest point. Human labor is often employed today because it
can be had at a low price, which is considered to be a saving on the
adoption of mechanical processes. But if the employers were
obliged to pay higher wages, they would be compelled to adopt labor-
saving. devices. In turn, these machines can only be economically
worked by labor which is intelligent and alert. Where wages are
high there is economy of organization. (Page 146.)

Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1897.
Mr. Hall (Metropolitan District) reports:

In the boot trade a large increase in the amount of labor-saving
machinery is taking place in anticipation of the coming into opera-
tion of the determination of the Boot Board, and this may be
expected to have the effect of decreasing the number of workmen
employed in the trade, and will leave to the manufacturers the
choice of the best and fastest men for the wages fixed upon.
(Page 9.)
[118]

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1901.

Mr. Duff reports:

In several of the largest factories under this heading the very
latest labor-saving machinery for making pastry has been intro-
duced, which appears to do the work eleanly and well.

A very marked improvement has taken place since the Deter-
mination came into operation.

B. On the Part of the Workers.

Work and Wages. Sir THomas Brassey. G. P. Putman’s Sons,
New York, 1888.

With proper supervision, and with an equitable scheme of prices
for piece work, the best paid workman does more work for a given
sum of money than the underpaid and therefore underfed laborer can
by any possibility accomplish. The cost of labor, rightly observes
Mr. Faweett, “is determined by the amount of work which is really
done for the wages. Many of our laborers can barely obtain the
necessaries of life; and we can all appreciate the false economy
that would be practiced, if a horse was so much stinted of food
that he eould only do half as much work as he woyld be able to
perform if he were properly fed.” (Page 74.)

The Wealth of Nations. ADAM SmiTH, Edited by Edwin Cannon.
G. P. Putman’s Sons, New York, 1904.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the
far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but
equity, besides, that they who feed, elothe and lodge the whole
body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their
own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.
(Page 80.)

The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry which,
like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the
encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the
podily strength of the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bet-
tering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and
plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where
wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workman
more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low;
in England, for example, than in Scotland; in the neighborhood of
great towns, than in remote country places. (Page 83.)
[ 119]

Sweated Industry and the Minimum Wage, by CLEMENTINA
BLACK. Duckworth & Co., London, 1907.

The whole teaching of modern industry is that cheap labor is
dear labor, and that it is as important for successful competition
to have a well equipped human instrument as to have well
equipped machinery. (Page XIX.)

The cotton trade has had enormous success not because labor
is cheap but because labor is dear—and good; because the human
machine being kept at the highest point of perfection is the most
productive instrument of its kind in the world. It has succeeded,
above all, because the standard wage has removed the competition
of low-class, sweated labor, which is not only iniquitious in itself,
but which has the effect of depreciating the whole currency of
industry. (Page XX.)

Wherever sweating has been eliminated by the regulation of
wages, the health of the trade is established. (Page XXI.)

The facts of industrial history proclaim the truth that
efficiency is not the cause but the product of fair wages, healthy
surroundings and reasonable leisure. (Pages 226-227.)

That nation becomes wealthiest which pays its workers
best. Health, skill, intelligence: these are the true bulwarks of
national prosperity; and the price of these is liberal payment for
labor. (Page 269.)

Sweating, by EDWARD CADBURY and GEORGE SHANN. Headley
Bros., London, 1907.

The relation between low wages and inefficiency has to be
noted. Many workers are slow and dull because of indifferent
health due to insufficient food, long hours of work and insanitary
surroundings. Thus so far as higher wages allowed better feeding
and more healthful surroundings, so would the efficiency of the
workers increase. Then many who are slow and apathetic because
of the monotony and demoralizing conditions of their work, would
respond to the stimulus offered by the alternative of working
harder for better wages or of being unemployed. (Page 126.)

Report to the Seeretary for the Home Department on the Wages
Boards and Industrial Conciliation Acts of Australia and
New Zealand. Ernest Aves, London, 1908.

In the tanning trade, where the introduction of machinery has
weakened the position of the individual worker, my attention, for
instance, is already drawn by a representative of the employees to
[ 120 ]

the “steadying effect on employees” and the better workmanship
that tends to follow on an enforced minimum. The evidence from
employers, although it does not support, does not controvert this
opinion so far as this trade is concerned, and ultimately it is such
an effect that must tend to follow from the imposition of a legal
rate, or, it may safely be asserted, the rate will not, and cannot,
persist. (Page 53.)

The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage, by SIDNEY
Wess. The Journal of Political Economy, University of
Chicago Press, December, 1912.

If the employer cannot go below a common minimum rate, and
is unable to grade the other conditions of employment down to the
level of the lowest and most necessitous wage-earner in his estab-
lishment, he is economically impelled to do his utmost to raise the-
level of efficiency of his workers, so'as to get the best possible
return for the fixed conditions.

It is clear that the aggregate efficiency of the nation’s
industry is promoted by every situation being filled by the best
available candidate. 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. From the point of view of the economist, concerned to
secure the highest efficiency of the national industry, it must be
counted to the credit of the Legal Minimum Wage that it compels
the employer, in his choice of men to fill vacancies, seeing that he
cannot get a “cheap hand,” for the price that he has to pay, to
be always striving to exact greater strength and skill, a higher
standard of sobriety and regular attendance, and a superior capacity
for responsibility and initiative. This is exactly what has hap-
pened in Victoria under the Minimum Wage Law, as it has hap-
pened in Great Britain where a definitely fixed minimum has been
substituted for the irregular competitive rates. (Page 8.)

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, silently and imperceptibly reacts on the
wage-earners. 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. Under
a Legal Minimum Wage there is secured what under perfectly
[ 121 ]

free competition is not secured, not only a constant selection of
the most efficient, but also a positive stimulus to the whole class
to become more and more efficient. (Pages 8-9.)

Thus, the probable effect of a Legal Minimum Wage on the
organization of industry, like its effect on the manual laborer and
the brain working manager or entrepreneur, is all in the direction
of increasing efficiency. Its effect on the personal character of
the operative is in the right direction. It in no way abolishes
competition or lessens its intensity. What it does is perpetually
to stimulate the selection, for the nation’s business, of the most
efficient workmen, the best equipped employers, and the most
advantageous forms of industry. (Page 13.)

Wages. A.J. CARLYLE. A. R. Mowbray & Co., London, 1912.

First of all, Adam Smith draws atention to the fact that even
if you consider the laborer merely from the point of view of his
physical or animal powers, the efficiency of the laborer will
depend upon the question whether his wages are sufficient to
make him physically efficient. . . . Adam Smith means that
the under-payment and the consequent under-feeding, under-cloth-
ing, and under-housing, of the laborer must, in the nature of things,
result in an inefficient laborer; because human labor, like any other
form of animal labor, has a definite physical basis; you can no
more expect good work from under-paid human labor than you
can expect good work from an under-fed animal. (Page 29,)

In the second place, Adam Smith points out not only that the
efficiency of the laborer is determined by the actual amount of
physical maintenance with which he is provided, but also that
the energy of the laborer may be stimulated by high wages and
discouraged by low wages. (Page 29.)

The wage which is economically most advantageous is
that wage which tends to enable the laborer to be most efficient.

. A wage which does not enable him to be efficient, and
does not stimulate his energies, is normally not economically ad-
vantageous. (Page 75.)

It is clear that from the standpoint of the economic interest
of the community it is of the first importance to establish some
minimum standard of wages, and it is clear that the free play of
economic forces has in a large measure failed to secure this. It is
also clear that by means of combination the wage-earners have
been in many cases enabled to maintain such a standard, but that
their power has its limits. -There does not seem to be any reason
why the community should not come in when voluntary action has
[ 122 ]

failed. The economic justification of a minimum standard wage,
determined either by voluntary or by legal machinery, rests upon
the principle that such a minimum standard is related to the
efficiency of labor. Any serious examination of the economic
theory of wages leads us, and must lead us, to the conclusion that
the amount of wages which are economically profitable in a trade
is related to the efficiency of the laborer; that position, I think,
is not capable of being seriously questioned. Human labor, like
other forms of labor, can only be efficient on the basis of suffi-
cient maintenance. It is of the very highest importance for the
productive capacity of any country, or of any civilization, that
by some means or another wages should be adjusted to this
minimum standard which is related to efficiency.

This is the economic foundation of every attempt to establish
better wages; this is the foundation of the economic possibility of
the success of any attempt to determine wages by combination;
this also is the basis of any attempt on the part of the com-
munity as a whole to secure such a standard. (Pages 124-125.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNowDEN, M.P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1918.

The enforcement of a living wage will not abolish competition
for employment; but it will raise the character of the competition.
The employer would not be able to get a man below the living
wage, and he would therefore be anxious to secure the man who
would at least earn that wage. The legal living wage would
discourage among workmen every habit which was likely to lower
their industrial efficiency. It would increase sobriety, technical
skill, and general intelligence. Every workman would aim at
being his best, knowing that he could not obtain employment by
offering to accept low wages and to submit to bad conditions.
The unemployed and unemployable problems are not to be solved
by the establishment of a living wage; but the living wage would
make these questions easier to solve. (Pages 147-8.)

i By the payment of a wage which aggravates the causes
of inefficiency, a wage which will not allow the individual to keep
up his health and strength, we are doing an inhuman thing, and
one which where the man has others dependent upon him is not
economical, because it is making more inefficients. (Page 158.)
[ 123 ]

Sweated Labour and the Trade Boards Aet. Catholie Studies in
Social Reform—Manual II, Edited by the Rev. THOMAS
Wricut. P.S. King & Son, London, 1913.

When, to use the words of the Committee of the House of Lords
on the Sweating System, 1890, workers have for a considerable
time been reduced to earnings barely sufficient to sustain existence,
they become unfit for remunerative labour. Such people cannot
turn out good work. At the best their efforts are fitful and their
output faulty. (Page 53.)

Minimum Wage Boards. FLORENCE KELLEY, General Secretary,
National Consumers’ League. Proceedings of the National
Conference of Charities and Corrections, Cleveland, 1912.

What of the workers whose work is not worth a minimum
wage? The compulsory minimum compels the employer to increase
in every possible way the efficiency of every worker, in order to
make him worth his wage. In Victoria, for instance, it is specific-
ally provided that the wage of an employee shall not be less than
that which is paid by a reputable concern to an average employee.
This spurs the employer to select carefully every person taken on.
It spurs the lazy to earn the wage. There is, however, a pro-
vision under which incompetent, untrained beginners and aging
workers, the deaf, the slow and persons otherwise handicapped
may receive a reduced rate specifically prescribed after careful
investigation by the wages boards. But all such workers must
be registered, and the number allotted to one establishment is
rigidly fixed. This prevents the accumulation in one place of
hundreds of unskilled young girls, such as we commonly see in
American paper box factories, whose sole recommendation is that
they accept a low wage; who learn nothing and make no improve-
ment either for themselves or their industry with the passage of
time. (Page 9.)

A Minimum Wage for Workers. H. La RuE Brown, Chairman of
Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission; Mrs. GLEN-
DOWER EvANS, Member First Massachusetts Minimum Wage
Commission. City Club Bulletin of Philadelphia, January
27, 1918.

It is, however, to be noticed that no one knows how far ineffi-
ciency is produced by the conditions that result from an inade-
quate scale of wages and therefore no one knows how few ineffi-
[ 124 ]

cients there would be under a decent wage scale. In so far as it
is argued that the tendency of establishing a minimum scale would
be to lower all wages of the industry, it is perhaps a sufficient
answer to say that in many industries in which women are em-
ployed in large numbers the leveling tendency has already gone
on to its ultimate conclusion with a result that in certain industries
90 per cent. of the women employed earn less than $7 a week, and
the range of wages is so closely confined that it is evident that
wages now are fixed at the level of the “inefficient.” The only
effect of fixing a minimum wage at a rate sufficient to sustain
life would be to raise the wages of 90 per cent. of the women
employed. (Mr. Brown.) (Page 211.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1900. Special
Boards.

It is therefore of the utmost importance to the employer that
the employee shall be able to earn. the wage fixed by the Board.
The employee is compelled to do his best to improve in his work
by the knowledge that he cannot obtain employment if he cannot
earn the legal wage fixed for a person of his experience. The
interests of both employer and employee are therefore strongly in
favor of the employee increasing in skill and knowledge as he
increases in experience. As the time draws near for the compulsory
increase in wage, the employer or his agent will urge the employee
to renewed efforts at improvement, and the employee has the
knowledge that failure to do so will lead to dismissal. The lad
who is not suited to the trade, or who is lazy or careless, is soon
eliminated under such a system, instead of remaining for some
years at a small wage, and then having to leave to swell the great
army of unskilled or half-skilled workers. The natural result will
be an improved class of workers who will be a credit to their
employers, the trade, and the State. (Page 12.)

Report 1902.

‘In my report for the year 1900 I brought under notice the
beneficial effect of the Determinations of Special Boards on the
training of juvenile labor in factories. The experience of the past
two years has convinced me that my conclusions in this respect
then published were correct.

Under the Determinations, apprentices and improvers must
year ‘by year receive an increased wage, until finally they are
entitled to the minimum wage fixed for skilled workers. For
[125]

‘instance, the Clothing Board fixed the following scale for male
improvers:

1st month’s experience at the trade........ 2s 6d per wk. of 48 hrs.
Next 11 months’ experience.............. ..- 10s 6d per wk. of 48 hrs.
2nd year’s experience._....... .... 12s 6d per wk. of 48 hrs.
8rd year’s experience... ... 15s per wk. of 48 hrs.
4th year’s experience... ... 17s 6d per wk. of 48 hrs.
5th year’s experience... .... 25s per wk. of 48 hrs.
6th year’s experience... .... 80s per wk. of 48 hrs.
7th year’s experience... eee eee 35s ‘per wk. of 48 hrs.

And thereafter 1144d per hour, or £2 5s per wk. of 48 hrs.

  

Each year, under these circumstances, it becomes very necessary
to the employer to see that the improver is worth the increased
wage; the improver is soon informed, if he is at all careless or
indifferent as to his work, that he will be discharged when his
increase becomes legally due if he does not attend to his work,
and fully qualify himself to earn the higher wages.

The effect is that year by year the improver’s skill and expe-
rience increases, and at the expiration of the seven years, in many
cases before that time, he is able to earn and receive the minimum
wage. (Page 13.)

True Basis of the Living Wage, by RoBert S. WALPOLE. “Public
Opinion,” Melbourne, 1912.

The most effective system for maintaining a high living wage
and a high wage fund is, firstly, in producing an article equal or
better than that made in other parts of the world; and, secondly,
in fillmg up the waste spaces of Australia wherever possible with
a vigorous and hard-working population, accustomed to a decent
standard of living. The higher the wage fund in such a case,
based on sound economic principles, the better for the producer
of either raw or manufactured products, because of the greater
purchasing power. (Page 7.)

-(2) RELATION TO COST OF PRODUCTION.

Experience has proved the fallacy of the ordinary
assumption that high wages necessarily mean high cost
of production. In many instances it has been proved
that high wages have accompanied low cost of production
owing to the greater efficiency of the high wage workers,
and the better organization of business.
[ 126 ]

The Economy of High Wages. [An Inquiry Into the Cause of
High Wages and Their Effect on Methods and Cost of
Production.] J. SCHOENHOF. G. P. Putman’s Sons, New
York, 1892.

Though cheap labor gets less remuneration per diem,
its cheapness is no saving to the employers. More hands are
required to do the same amount of work that better paid labor.
does at the same cost. (Page 22.)

It is a fortunate sign of the times that we are at last begin-
ning to recognize the all-important and redeeming fact, that cheap
labor by no means means cheap production; that, on the contrary,
low cost of production and a high wage rate go hand in hand.
(Page 31.)

If a high wage rate is an impelling cause in this country to
the introduction of improvements and the adoption of labor-saving
processes, the low wage rate per diem ruling elsewhere is an equally
strong inducement for the continuance of rusty and antiquated
methods. (Page 35.)

A high rate of wages expresses a high rate of productiveness,
and its converse a high consuming power. A relatively high con-
suming power, high standard of living, is required to make the
laborer efficient, strong in body and in mind. Without this, labor
remains economically more or less sterile, for which an adequate
proof will be given in the further progress of this work, treating
the industries of the country seriatim. Employers can therefore
under no possibility lose where a permanently high rate of wages
rules. They cannot possibly lose under a rising rate of wages
even, as a rise in actual wages is only possible with a rise of the
productive power of labor. A higher rate of wages than the one
of a previous period simply registers the change which has gone on
in the direction of improvement in the economy of production.
But instead of being injured, the employer gains positively by the
rise in the standard of wages through the inereasing demand
thereby created for the increasing product. (Pages 63-64.)

It is then clearly evident that there is no greater fallacy than
the doctrine that a low rate of wages is necessary to insure a low
cost of production. In fact, the opposite is shown to be the true
principle upon which the productive processes of nations rest.
(Page 65.)

“The great superiority of English manufactures in general over
those of France, in connection with the higher cost of labor, is a
subject of great interest and of the highest political importance.
It shows that manufacturing industries are not benefited by a
[ 127 ]

nominally low price labor, as they flourish most where, on the
eontrary, laber is nominally at the highest price. They flourish
perhaps on aceount of this—that labor nominally the highest is in
reality that which costs the least. The quality of the work, the
skill with which it is performed, go fer a good deal in the balance;
these depend to a great extent on the ease in which the workman
lives. If he is well fed, well dressed, if his constitution preserves
all its viger and activity, then he will surely do his work, far
better than a man to whom poverty leaves but a meagre pittance.”
(Pages 158-154.) (Arthur Young on “Manufactures in France.”)

Boots AND SHOES.

We are certainly justified in saying in regard to this industry
that a low cest of production and a high rate of earnings go hand
in hand, and are the result of the most intelligent application of
the most improved methods and labor-saving inventions in the
economy ef production. Applied to the test of foreign competition,
this is proved with most convincing clearness by this statement of
comparative cost and comparative earnings:

Cost of a Wey ees Weekly Raa

(Cents le Femaie
Lynn, Mass. ................--..-- $ .35 $12.00 $ 7.00
Stafford, England .......... 631 5.76 to 6.24 2.83
Leicester, iis deecebed -64 6.72 to 8.40 3.60 to 4.32
Berlin ....... pase caepetegioceeeacte 67 4,80 to 7.20
. 61 4,32 to 7.20 2.16 to 3.60
-T1 4.30 to 9.60 4,40

 

This is not, on a general question, based on averages, but on
a closely-defined article. An American sample, procured from a
Lynn factory, formed at each place the subject of a personal
inquiry, so that no doubt could be legitimately raised. The differ-
ences in the cost of production and in the relative earnings are
all due to differences in the labor methods, the results of the
habits and trade conditions of the peoples. They all employ
machinery. The goods are everywhere factory products. The
machinery is nearly all American or of American origin, with
foreign improvement or adaptation. Yet these are the results.
(Page 24. Page 874.)

Principles of Economics. EDWIN R. A, SELIGMAN, Professor of
Political Economy, Columbia University. Longmans, Green
& Co., New York, 1910.

Eeonomic production implies the turning out of the greatest
produet with the least cost. So far as the wages of labor ferm an
[ 128 J

element of cost, it would seem to follow that low wages or cheap
labor is a necessary condition of low cost. Before accepting this
ostensibly self-evident proposition, however, it is necessary to
pursue the analysis further. (Pages 286-87.)

3 In any single industry low wages do not necessarily
mean low cost. The real cost of labor is to be measured by its
productive efficiency. Just as the hundred-thousand-dollar railway
president is cheap because an inferior and low-priced substitute
would botch matters and increase expenses, so in the case of the
ordinary wage-earner the real cost is to be measured by the ratio
of wages to the product of labor. In the Philippines the con-
tractors find it in the end cheaper to hire the Chinamen in prefer-
ence to the natives, although the former command larger wages;
in the Southern cotton factories the white laborer is found more
advantageous than the negro factory hand, who can be hired at
a materially lower wage. Furthermore, in the same industry and
with the same workmen neither an increase of wages nor a cur-
tailment of labor time necessarily augments cost. Where a reduc-
tion of hours or an increase of wages succeeds in enhancing energy,
care and sobriety, the output may be greater than before. Espe-
cially where fine machinery is used and a high grade of intelli-
gence is required to secure the best results, we often find a true
economy in high wages and a lower cost in shorter hours. (Pages
287-88.)

So far as labor is a factor of production, cost depends not merely
upon wages, but upon wages as compared with output. Under
certain conditions there is a true economy in high wages; the more
a workman is paid, the less he may cost. (Page 288.)

The true reduction of labor cost of permanent impor-
tance is that caused by increased efficiency. The more of a man
a laborer is, the better tool he becomes. Whatever society does to
improve the individual will be more than repaid by an augmented
production of wealth. (Page 290.)

WILLIAM C. REDFIELD, Before the House of Representatives on
Wool Schedule, 62nd Congress, Second Session, June 12, 1911.

Last January I was in the city of Tokyo, and a friend who was
with me took a large contract, by the way, from the Japanese
Imperial State Railways, in open competition with Germany and
England, for several million dollars’ worth of locomotives. That
gentleman went to the head of the locomotive shops of the Imperial
Railways, and the Japanese master mechanic said to him: “We
can make locomotives much cheaper than you can in America.
We have American equipment, and we can produce them for less
[129 ]

than you can.” “Can you?” inquired my friend. “If so, let us get
at the facts. If you will tell me from your cost sheets precisely
what your locomotives cost, I will tell you what ours cost.” And,
by the way, he said: “What makes you think that your locomo-
tives cost less than ours?” ‘Why,” he said, “because we only pay
one-fifth the wages to our men that you pay to yours.” So they
- got the cost books, and they found that the fact was that the labor
cost for locomotives on the same specifications was three and one-
half times greater in the Japanese shop than in the American
shops. And that is a perfectly normal fact and not an abnormal
one. (Page 1940.) :

The important factor in labor cost is not the rate of wage,
but the rate of output. It is not what you pay, but what you get
for what you pay that counts. (Page 1941.)

I have just stated in the matter of labor cost the serious ele-
ment is not the rate of Wages but the rate of output. . . .

Output varies with the character of the workmen, the equip-
ment, its arrangement, or other local conditions, with the nature
of the superintendent, with the discipline, and so forth. It is
absurd to assume that work done by a man paid $4 daily costs more
per annum than work done by a man paid $2 daily. . . . To
discuss the wage rate as the controlling factor in labor cost per
unit is both inadequate and misleading. The railroads are a very
notable example of this. The English railways have vastly cheaper
labor than we, but their freight charge per ton-mile is two and
one-half times ours. .

To say a man gets $3 per day means nothing at all as to
the cost of his product. It may be either low or high, and the
wage rate taken by itself alone affords no basis of comparison.
Apart from the wage rate, labor cost per unit is very largely
under the control of-the manufacturer and may be radically altered
without changing the wage rate. . . . (Page 1942.)

I know of a machine manufactured in this country—an engine
that sells for $87.50. In our factory we manufacture an engine
of the same size that we sell for $350. How is it that our com-
petitor does not get all the business?

. . The cost of production is more influenced by rate of
output, and its quality, than by rate of wage or hour of labor.
(Page 1946.)

A steadily decreasing labor cost per unit of product is not
inconsistent with, but is normal to a coincident advance in the
rate of pay for the work when accompanied with careful study of
methods and equipment. Now, these principles have stood the
test, gentlemen, of two panics, and of a single year when we
[ 130 ]

lost 35 per cent. of all our business at one stroke, because the
industry that gave it to us collapsed. It went almost out of exis-
tenee, and new business had to be found from some other place.
Yet no man’s wages were cut.

I repeat, a steadily decreasing labor cost per unit of product
is not inconsistent with, but on the contrary is normal to, a coin-
cident advance in the rate of pay for the work when accompanied
by careful study of methods and equipment, as previously suggested.
Conversely, low-priced labor nearly always is costly per unit pro-
duced, and usually is inconsistent with good tools, equipment, and
large and fine product, else such labor would not be low priced.
(Page 1946.)

Now, however, that scientific manufacturing as a profession
has begun and is growing, the fact is found that we can and often
do produce as cheaply here as abroad, not despite of, but because
of, the higher rates of wages here, whieh are but a partial meas-
urement of the higher efficiency and character of the American
workman and of the fine equipment put at his disposal, (Page
1948.)

Report of the Tariff Board on Schedule 1 of the Tariff Law, 62nd
Congress, 2nd Session, March 26, 1912.

As is well known, wages or earnings are not necessarily an
index of the labor cost of any particular process of manufacture.
The labor cost per yard depends on the relation between wages
and output. An extreme illustration can be shown by figures
secured by the Board in Japan. It is true that the wages of
spinners and weavers per day in that country are very low, but
the number of operatives employed to secure a given output is
much greater than in this country. In the case of spinning, the
lower wages paid are not offset by the larger number of persons
employed, and consequently the amount paid to spinners per pound
of yarn is materially less than in this country. On the other hand,
Japanese weavers tend only one or two looms, and the lower output
per weaver under existing conditions makes the amount paid the
weaver per yard of cloth about 80 per cent. of the amount paid
in this country where plain looms are used in this country; while
compared with the use of automatic looms the amount paid the
weaver per yard of cloth is greater than in this country. (Page 12.)
[131]

The New Tariff. A Retrospect and a Forecast. N. I. STONE,
Formerly Chief Statistician of the Tariff Board. Review of
Reviews, October, 1918.

Our mills consume more raw cotton than those of any other
country in the world. We have been threatened with the bugaboo
of cheap labor of British Ividia, China and Japan which, combined,
had 9,250,000 spindles in 1911 as against our 29,500,000. The re-
port of the Tariff Board demonstrated the fact that in spite of
her 15 to 40 cents a day spinners and weavers, Japan’s cost of
production of cotton cloth was higher than that of the United
States. (Page 438.)

Schedule K. The Effect of the Tariff on the Wool Grower, the
Manufacturer, the Workman, and the Consumer. N. I.
STONE, Formerly Chief Statistician of the Tariff Board.
Century Magazine, May, 1918.

Industrial efficiency depends on a great many conditions, an
adequate discussion of which would take us far afield. One fact,
however, stands out preeminently,. and must be emphasized until
it is seared into the consciousness and conscience of the American
citizen, and that is that industrial efficiency, which is synonymous
with low-labor cost, does not mean, or depend upon low wages.
Yet the lower wages in Europe constitute the stock argument in
every plea for protection that is dinned into the ears of Congress.

Almost invariably the mill paying higher wages per hour
showed lower cost than its competitor with lower wages.

Thus, in wool scouring the lowest average wages paid to machine
operatives in the thirty mills examined was found to be 12.16
cents per hour, and the highest 17.79. Yet the low-wage mill
showed a labor cost of 21 cents per hundred pounds of wool, while
the high-wage mill had a cost of only 15 cents. One of the rea-
sons for this puzzling situation was that the low-wage mill paid
nine cents per hundred pounds for supervisory labor, such as fore-
men, ete., while the high-wage mill paid only six cents. Appar-
ently well-paid labor needs less driving and supervising than low-
paid labor.

In the carding department of seventeen worsted mills the mill
paying its machine operatives an average wage of 13.18 cents per
hour had a machine labor cost of 4 cents per hundred pounds
while the mill paying its machine operatives only 11.86 cents per
hour had a cost of 25 cents per hundred pounds. This was due

il
[ 182 ]

largely to the fact that the lower-cost-high-wage mill had machinery
enabling every operator to turn out more than 326 pounds per
hour, while the high-cost-low-wage mill was turning out less than
48 pounds per hour.

The same tendency was observed in the carding departments of
twenty-six woolen mills. The mill with the highest machine out-
put per man per hour, namely 57.7 pounds, had a machinery-labor
cost of 23 cents per hundred pounds, while the mill with a machine
output of only six pounds per operative per hour had a cost of
$1.64 per hundred pounds. Yet this mill, with a cost seven times
higher than the other, paid its operatives only 9.86 cents per hour,
as against 18.09 cents paid by its more successful competitor.

These examples could be repeated for every department of
woolen and worsted mills, but will suffice to illustrate the point
that higher wages do not necessarily mean higher cost. (Page 118.)

Women’s Work and Wages. [A Phase of Life in an Industrial
City.] By Epwarp Capsury, M. CECILE MATHESON, and
GrEoRGE SHANN. TIT. Fisher Unwin, London, 1906.

In the long run it would be to the advantage of con-
sumers and wage-earners alike for the work to be taken from the
inefficient masters and forced into the hands of those who, ex
hypothesi, are not paying unduly low wages, and who therefore
presumably reach low cost of production through the most efficient
and up-to-date machinery and business methods. (Page 286.)

It is a big assumption to assert that prices would rise;
but even if this had to be at once admitted it would not invalidate
the argument for a national minimum. In the first place, although
it is difficult to fix the proportion, it is practically certain that
the workers would not pay all the increase in price, and therefore
they would be proportionately better off. Low prices do not com-
pensate the workers for low wages. The idea that low-priced goods
makes up to the worker for bad conditions of work and for low
wages is one of the most fallacious of popular beliefs. Those who
think like this must look upon: the worker merely as a wealth-
producing machine, and so mistake the whole end of economic
effort. The community, and much less a private person, has no
moral right to use a man or woman merely as a means of pro-
ducing wealth. The end of work should be to develop and humanize
the life of the worker. Of the two lines which the economic
progress of the workers may take, i. e., advancing wages or falling
prices, there is no question which is preferable to the’ worker.
When wages are raised the worker alone gets the benefit in the
first place though, of course, so far as a higher wage develops
[ 133 ]

the efficiency of the worker the community ultimately reaps the
benefit as well. But when goods are reduced in price, those who
consume them, namely the whole community, get the benefit. Thus
low wages are never fully compensated by low prices. From the
workers’ point of view goods may be too cheap. The only ques-
tion can be as to the proportion of benefit the workers get from
an increase in wages. (Pages 288-289.)

Industrial Efficiency. [A Comparative Study of Industrial Life in
England, Germany and America.| ARTHUR SHADWELL. Vol.
2. Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1906.

Labor may be plentiful and-cheap, but it may be bad economy
to buy it cheap. For what an employer wants is not labor but the
result of labor, and if he buys too cheap he will not get it; just
as a man who buys a coat may buy too cheap. What he wants is
not a coat, but warmth or the result of a coat, and if he buys
too cheap he does not get it. Cheap labor may be dear through
want of capacity or of will. The former is generally recognized,
but the latter is often overlooked. Wages are the incentive to
work, and must be adequate to produce it.

Adequate wages are a good investment not only for the em-
ployer, but for the country. They increase national strength.
(Page 125.)

Wages, I repeat, are the incentive to work, and if the work is
to be adequate the incentive must be adequate. Employers often
fail to realize this. The complaint of the men is well founded. A
manufacturer, hard pressed by competition, seeks to reduce cost
of production, and the item which lies readiest to his hand is the
wages bill. He cuts it down, or tries to cut it down. The step
may be unavoidable; it sometimes is; but often it is not, as the
result of some of the greatest strikes has shown. It is truer econ-
omy to make it the last instead of the first thing to touch. A
German textile manufacturer recently worked the thing out for
me in figures. I did not put it to him in that way, but I
asked for some information which led him to make a minute
analysis of the cost of production in his business. The result
surprised him, and he told me that manufacturers in the same
branch of industry have only the vaguest idea of the relative im-
portance of the many items that make up the cost of production.
It is a complicated and laborious task to work them out in exact
detail, and he had never attempted it before. He found that a
10 per cent. reduction of wages was only equivalent to one farthing
[ 134 ]

a yard, or one per cent., in the price of the finished product. The
conclusion he drew was that wages were the last thing they ought
to touch in attempting to reduce cost.

I submit, then, that wages may be too low—economically too
low, I mean, because humanly too low. (Pages 126-127.)

Even those who take a pride in doing good work for its own
sake are helped and stimulated by the recognition implied in higher
pecuniary rewards. It is, therefore, no reflection on any workman
to say that they would work better if they were better paid. Any
workmen in England are in that position. I should not venture to
be so positive about it if I had not good warrant for the opinion
from the quatrer where it would be least expected. In the ship
in which I came over from America there happened to be five
English manufacturers, who had been in America partly on busi-
ness and partly for the purpose of studying industrial conditions
like myself. They represented iron and steel, small arms, cotton,
wool and, I believe, machinery. I am not quite sure about the
last, but at any rate they included several great industries. One
of them had large: interests in cotton-seed oil mills in the States.
They were good enough to invite me to a conference on the sub-
ject of English and American industrial methods; and we dis-
cussed it for a couple of hours. Among other things I asked this
question, “How are you to get more work out of the men at
home?” and the answer came prompt, “Pay them better.” (Page
130.)

Report of Conference on a Minimum Wage. National Anti-Sweat-
ing League, London, 1907.

It does not necessarily happen that a rise of wages
causes a rise of cost of production. So far as time wages are
concerned, an increase of. pay per hour or per day will have.
some effect in raising the standard of efficiency of labor; better
nourished, more energetic and more cheerful workers give out a
larger amount and a better quality of labor power. The economy
of higher wages is certainly applicable to the weak, hopeless,
dispirited worker in a sweating factory or workshop. To piece
wages, too, the same consideration will to some extent apply. The
higher legally enforced piece-wage will not necessarily involve a
corresponding rise in net cost of production; for if it enables and
induces the workers to turn out more and better work per day, the
saving of time and of loss from damaged or rejected goods will
compensate in part, at any rate, the rise of piece-rates.

Cost of production, therefore, does not necessarily rise to corre-
spond with a rise of wage. (Page 54.)
[ 135 1

Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Home Work, House

of Commons—London, 1907. G. R.- ASKWITH (Barrister,
Arbiter in Trade Disputes).

4281. Now there is one more point, and it is a very important
one, which has been raised, and that is with regard to the price
of articles and the effect of legislation upon consumers. I think
you have already told me that you consider that such legislation
would tend to increase efficiency?—Yes, I think so. If the workers
are in a better condition they can generally do better work.

4282. If it imereases efficiency, would the production of the
trade increase in proportion to the labor cost?—Yes, I dare say it
would.

4283. That would be the tendency to increase production?
--The tendency would be that way.

4284. Therefore, if that is so, what would be the obvious effect
on the price?—There would be more articles produced and therefore
the price would not tend to go up so much as if a less number of
articles were produced.

4285. As a matter of fact, if we take the last generation,
wages have risen, have they not?—Yes, in most trades.

4286. Generally all over the country; but the cost of products
has not risen?—The cost of a lot of articles has not risen, but
the standard of comfort has risen.

. 4287. The price of articles is falling?—1 believe that that is so
with regard to articles necessary to life.

4238. That is to say, speaking broadly, while wages have gone
up, prices have gone down in the last thirty years?—Yes, I think
that that is so as a broad proposition.

4289. With regard to the effect on the cost of production, if
we take our Labour Laws, Factory Acts, Workmen’s Compensation
Act, and all the various laws for the protection of labour, are they
not equivalent to an increase in the cost of labour, or in the
remuneration of labour?—Yes, I suppose they are.

4290. They are increases in the cost of management?—Yes,

4291. If a factory has to be whitewashed, for*example, that
increases the cost?—-They have improved the condition of the
worker, and in improving the condition of the worker, they have
thrown the cost on the trade.

4292. Such things have introduced a real improvement in effi-
_ cieney?—That has been the policy of this country ever since Lord
Shaftesbury started his Factory Acts, and everyone agrees now
that the Factory Acts are a most valuable addition to the legisla-
tion of this country.
[ 136 ]

4298. Quite so; and as a matter of fact, since those enactments
the prices of the common necessaries of life have fallen?—Yes,
that is so.

4294, In spite of the increased cost which has been thrust upon
the producer?—Yes—upon the industry as a whole. (Page 210.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNOWDEN, M.P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1913.

High wages pay, cheap labor is dear labor. That truth is
being more generally appreciated by employers of labor. From
Adam Smith downwards economists have pointed out that higher
wages made labor more efficient, and led to an increased output of
work, larger in quantity and better in quality. High wages, too,
it is shown by practical experience lead to a lessening of the cost
of production. Contemporary with the advances of wages which
went on from 1850 to 1900, there was a continual decline in the
cost of production. This lessening of the cost of production, it is
true, has been brought about mainly by mechanical improvements;
but the more intricate the machinery is, and the more elaborate
the organization, the more skillful and efficient the worker is re-
quired to be, efficiency and skill being qualities which are not
acquired and maintained on low wages. In the past there has
been too much attention paid to the improvement of the machine
in comparison with the attention which has been given to improving
the man who works the machine. In every factory and workshop
where numbers of men work, there will be a difference of 30 per
cent. or more in the outputs of the most efficient and the least
efficient workmen engaged on precisely the same work under pre-
cisely the same conditions. That difference is due to causes which
might be prevented. The inefficient man is in most cases the vic-
tim of poverty in childhood. He has been neglected in body and
mind. His children, in turn, are suffering in like manner from
the inefficiency and the consequent poverty of the father. The loss
of labor power and of wealth production from the inefficiency of
the workmen below the average is incalculable. This loss can be
recovered by giving the workman better conditions and better
opportunities. Higher wages will bring back, directly and indi-
rectly, more than is spent in paying them.

The most profitable trades in this and in other countries are
those which pay the highest wages. The better wage enables the
workman to eat more, and of a better quality. He lives under
healthier conditions in his home. He is better nourished in mind
and body. The result is that he tends more looms, minds more
[ 137.]

spindles, hews more coal, turns out more steel, makes more ma-
chines, than the workmen who have a lower standard of life.
(Pages 145-146.)

Facts do not support the contention that an increase of wages
means an increase of prices. Between 1850 and 1900 there was a
continuous increase in wages; but in these years prices fluctuated
without the slightest regard to whether wages were going up or
down. Between 1850 and 1870 there was an increase of 34 per
cent. in wages, and an increase of 25 per cent. in prices; but
between 1870 and 1890 wages rose by 27 per cent., and prices
dropped by over 30 per cent. The increase in the cost of living
from 1900 to 1912 certainly cannot be explained by the increase
of wages, for wages have remained practically stationary, while
prices have risen by about 13 per cent. Instead of an increase of
wages tending to cause an increase of prices the very opposite is
the case; that is, so far as wages do influence prices. High wages
lessen the cost of production, and therefore reduce prices. (Page
150.)

(3) BENEFITS TO GENERAL STANDARDS OF LIVING.

With an increase in wages, the standard of living rises.
Not only does the amount of income spent upon food
increase but the standards of housing, clothing, and
recreation are found to rise also.

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor No. 56. Labor Con-
ditions in Australia, by Victor S. CLARK. Washington, 1905.

The social sanction of the minimum-wage determinations rests
upon the common interest of society in maintaining among all
classes of people a standard of living comporting with the general
wealth and civilization of the community and guaranteeing healthy
social progress. (Page 61.)

Women and the Trades. EuizasetH B. Burier. The Pittsburgh
Survey—Russell Sage Foundation Publication, New York,

1909.

Moreover, the community cannot afford to deny any of its
members reasonable recreation. Industrial success is of small value,
if the contributors to that success lead lives void of spiritual mean-
ing or spiritual impression. Among those girls who have suffi-
[ 138 ]

cient imagination to grasp what is denied them, there is sure to be
reaction, perhaps ill-health, perhaps indecency, to the cost in either
case of the whole community. Recreation, richness of life in leisure
hours, is equally a source of decency and of health. (Pages 349-50.)

Homestead. The Household of a Mill Town. MARGARET F. BYING-
TON. The Pittsburgh Survey—Russell Sage Foundation Pub-
lication, New York, 1910.

A livelihood cannot be said to be independent which does not
provide through insurance and savings for emergencies; and it
falls short of competence if it fails to afford some current share of
pleasure as well as toil, of comfort of mind as well as food and
shelter. It is within the bounds of practical American idealism
to hold that such a livelihood should, within a reasonably short
period of years, be reached and maintained. (Page 182.)

The Living Wage of Women Workers. [A Study of Incomes and
Expenditures of 450 Women Workers in the City of Boston.]
LouisE M. BoswortH, Fellow, Women’s Educational and
Industrial Union. Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1911.

The wage groups are five in number, namely: (1) $38 to $5
per week; (2) $6 to $8 per week; (3) $9 to $11 per week; (4)
$12 to $14 per week; (5) $15 and over per week.

The expenditures of the $9 to $11 wage group may be taken
as representing the minimum living wage. This class stands
midway in the wage scale and represents roughly the average
of all women workers covered by the investigation. It appears,
moreover, that the average income and the average expenditures
of this class approximately balance each other, whereas in the
two classes standing lower in the scale there is a deficit of in-
come below expenditures, and in the two classes standing higher
in the scale a surplus of income over expenditures according to the
tabulated returns. This fact indicates that the income first be-
comes adequate to meet expenditures when this wage group is
reached.

There are also other indications that the expenditures of this
class represent a fair minimum standard of decency and comfort.
(Page 9.)

Between the $3 to $5 group and the next higher division
there is a large increase in food expenditure. The difference
between the $6 to $8 group and the next higher is less marked.
It thus appears that the increase of income up to $8 is used to
[ 139 J

provide a better dietary. The slighter increase, both in regular board
and in extra food, between this and the next higher division would
seem to indicate that the most pressing needs in these directions
are met at about a $9 wage. (Page 46.)

The classification of health expenditures by wage groups shows:
first, a marked increase in amount up to the $9 to $12 group;
second, a practically stationary expenditure for the next group, of
$12 to $14 workers; and third, a great decrease for the highest
group, of $15 and over. This showing indicates that insufficient
wages do not permit of essential medical treatment, and that high
wages tend to diminish the need of such treatment. The percentage
of the income spent for the maintenance of health steadily decreases
with the increase of wages, from 5.80 to 1.89, showing the gradual
lessening of this burden with the expansion of earnings. (Page 77.)

Judicial Interpretation of the Minimum Wage in Australia, by
M. B. HAMMOND. American Economic Review, June, 1918,
Princeton, N. J.

It was in the interpretation of these terms “fair and reasonable”
as applied to wages that Mr. Justice Higgins first enumerated his
famous doctrine as to what should constitute a minimum wage.
Owing to the fact that the standard set up in this case has steadily
served as the precedent in other cases in the same court, and that
the principle here laid down has generally been accepted by other
courts in Australia and even to some extent by wages boards, the
statement of the president deserves to be quoted in full:

“The provision for fair and reasonable remuneration is obviously
designed for the benefit of the employees in the industry; and it
must be meant to secure for them something which they cannot
get by the ordinary system of individual bargaining with employers.
If Parliament meant that the conditions shall be such as they can
get by the ordinary individual bargainings—if it meant that those
conditions are to be fair and reasonable which employees will accept
and employers will give in contracts of service—there would have
been no need for this provision. The remuneration could safely
have been left to the usual, but unequal, contest, the ‘higgling of
the market’—for labor, with the pressure for bread on one side
and the pressure for profits on the other. The standard of ‘fair
and reasonable’ must, therefore, be something else; and I cannot
think of any other standard more appropriate than the normal
needs of the average employee, regarded as a human being living
in a civilized community. I have invited counsel and all concerned
to suggest any other standard; and they have been unable to do so.
If, instead of individual bargaining, one can conceive of a collective
' [ 140 ]

agreement—an agreement between all employers in a given trade
on the one side and all employees on the other—it seems to me that
the framers of the agreement would have to take, as the first and
dominant faction, the cost of living as a civilized being. (Page 269.)

“If A lets B have the use of his horses on the terms that he
give them fair and reasonable treatment, I have no doubt that
it is B’s duty to give them proper food and water and such shelter
and rest as they need; and as wages are the means of obtaining
commodities, surely the state, in stipulating for fair and reasonable
remuneration for the employees, means that the wages shall be
sufficient to provide these things, and clothing and a condition
of frugal comfort estimated by the current human standards. This,
then, is the primary test, the test which I shall apply in ascertain-
ing the minimum wage that can be treated as ‘fair and reasonable’
in the case of unskilled laborers.” (Mr. Justice Higgins. )

Having accepted the principle of the living wage as the only
standard of what was fair and reasonable for the unskilled laborers,
the president next undertook to determine what was a living wage
on the basis of the living to the workers. He sought for and
secured evidence from “working men’s wives and others” as to
“the cost of living”’—the amount that has to be paid for food,
shelter, clothing, for an average laborer, with normal wants and
under normal conditions. He found that this evidence was con-
firmed by reports furnished to him by land agents as to rents and
by tradesmen as to the commodities which working men purchased.
He offered the attorney for the applicant an opportunity to call
evidence to combat these statements but “he could produce no evi-
dence in contradiction.” (Pages 268-269.)

_ “I wish it were clearly understood that it is not my function
to prescribe to the captains of industry how best to do their busi-
ness. My function is to secure peace, if possible; and, in order
to secure peace, to provide that the employee shall have a reason-
able return for his labor—above all, sufficient means to meet the
primary wants of human life, including opportunities for rest and
recreation. A growing sense of the value of human life seems to
be at the back of all these methods of regulating labor; a growing
conviction that human life is too valuable to be the shuttle-cock in
the game of moneymaking and competition; a growing resolve that
the injurious strain of the contest—but only as far as it is injurious
—shall, so far as possible, be shifted from the human instruments.
But in all other respects, employers are to be left free to use their
own judgment and discretion, in their efforts to meet the different
conditions of modern industry.” (Mr. Justice Higgins. Pages
285-286.)
[141 ]

Contemporary Review. A Living Wage. WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM.
Vol. 65, pages 16-28, London, 1894.

Increased money wages are a boon insofar as they give the
opportunity for forming better habits of life, and raising the stand-
ard of comfort; a gradual improvement in the rate, if it can be
maintained, is very likely to have this effect. (Page 20.)

The living wage would not give us immunity from suffering,
but, so far as I see, it would tend towards industrial stability and
would, to this extent, limit the inevitable privation and give the
greatest opportunity for remedying distress. That is why this
project is worth trying where it is possible. (Page 21.)

The Prevention of Destitution. SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB. Long-
mans, Green & Co., London, 1911.

If we were suddenly, without due preparation, to raise the wages
of all the sweated workers to something permitting even a minimum
standard of civilized life, we should not, it is true, thereby put any
new charge upon the taxpayer, but we might, in the case of many
articles, raise the cost of production to the employer and the price
to the consumer. But all the experience of the past, as every
contractor knows, proves that a gradual and moderate increase in
wages, step by step, up to the point of full subsistence, creates such
a rise in productive efficiency that it actually decreases the cost
of production, and lowers prices. (Page 327.)

Any net increase thus occasioned in our total collective expendi-
ture on the poor will, we believe, be more than made good by the
all-around increase in the productivity of the manual working-class
that would accompany their better health, their more regular con-
duct, their greater technical skill and the prolongation of their
average working life. This is, at any rate, the counsel of the
political economist as it is that of those practical men of affairs
who have watched the results of good food, discipline and education
in different countries, at different periods, on different classes and
races. (Page 328.) ;

The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage. SIDNEY WEBB.
Reprinted from the fournal of Political Economy, University
of Chicago Press, December, 1912.

We have, therefore, to consider also the effect on the living
human being of the more adequate wages that the enforcement of
a legal minimum would involve in the lowest grades. If unre-
stricted individual competition among the wage earners resulted in
[ 142 ]

the universal prevalence of a high standard of physical and mental
activity, it would be difficult to argue that a mere improvement
of sanitation, a mere shortening of the hours of labor, or a mere
increase in the amount of food and clothing obtained by the
workers or their families, would of itself increase their industrial
efficiency. But such ideal conditions are far ‘from prevailing in
any country. (Page 9.)

\

The Living Wage. Puitip SNOWDEN, M. P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1918.

Included in the desired standard of life is much more than
the supply of adequate food, clothing and housing. Health, leisure,
education, provision against sickness and accident, freedom from
anxiety about employment and ‘the future, are equally constituents
of the standard of living. (Page 13.) .

The facts given as to the expansion of the trade of the country
when wages were rising proves that there would be no danger of
any falling off in trade if a larger share of the national income
“went to the remuneration of labor. On the contrary, as is shown
in a later chapter, there would be a proportionate stimulus given
to all the staple trades. The increase in wages would. be spent
in the purchasing of necessaries and reasonable comforts, and this
would maintain a more regular trade than when the purchasing
power is in the hands of people who spend a large part of their
income in varying ways. There is an ample fund for the provision
of a living wage for the workers. (Page 75.)
[ 143 ]

III. BENEFITS OF THE LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE.
(1) SUCCESS OF THE ACTS.

The experience of the countries which have fixed a
minimum wage by law has proved successful.

In Victoria, special boards to fix minimum wages have
been established since 1896. The success of the boards is
shown by their continuous increase—from 6 boards in
1896 to 131 boards in 1912, affecting the wages of 150,000
persons. Each board represents a separate branch of
industry. Together they comprise practically all branches
of manufacture and important branches of distributive
trade.

In Great Britain the boards have not been long enough
established to show many results. The testimony to date
all goes to prove that the boards have resulted in benefits
to both employers and employees.

Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories, Workrooms and Shops.
Victoria, 1896-1911.

Report for 1897—
During the year the five special boards elected during 1896, con-
sisting in each case of five representatives of employers, five
_representatives of employees, and a chairman, met to fix the wages.
A sixth board was appointed in January, 1897, to fix the wages,
ete., in the furniture trade.

Report for 1898—

Determinations made by five boards have been in full operation
during 1898. The wage earnings of 10,185 employees have been
increased.

Report for 1899—
The determinations of six special boards have been in force
during the year.

Report for 1900—

Under the provisions of the Factories and Shops Act, 1900,
twenty-one special boards were authorized by Parliament during
1900.

At the close of 1900 there were, therefore, 27 special boards
authorized by Parliament.
[ 144 ]

Report for 1901—

Eleven special boards were authorized by Parliament during the
year 1901.

There are now thirty-eight special boards in existence.

Report for 1902—

There are now only thirty-six special boards which have made
or can make determinations.

I estimate that minimum wages affecting about 30,000 opera-
tives are legally fixed by the determinations of the twenty-nine
special boards now in force.

Report for 1903—

There are thirty-eight special boards affecting over 38,000
operatives.
Report for 1904— :

There are thirty-eight special boards affecting over 38,000
operatives. F
Report for 1905—

There are thirty-eight special boards affecting about 44,500
operatives.

CONSOLIDATION OF ACTS.

During the years 1896 to 1904, inclusive, there were eight acts
passed amending the Factories and Shops Act, 1890. These acts
were all of a temporary nature, and the grave uncertainty in
which the factory legislation of the state stood was clearly shown
by the lapse of the whole of the temporary acts in 1902 owing
to an unexpected dissolution of Parliament. A special act was
passed to revive and continue the lapsed acts, but the temporary
character of same was continued.

Last year the whole of these acts were consolidated and made
permanent.

Report for 1906—

Resolutions in favor of appointing eleven new special boards
were carried in both houses of the Legislature toward the close
of 1906.

With the thirty-eight special boards previously appointed, there
are now therefore forty-nine boards in existence, affecting about
49,500 operatives.

Report for 1907—

Resolutions in favor of appointing two new special boards were
carried in both houses of the Legislature toward the close of 1907.

With the forty-nine special boards previously appointed, there
are now therefore fifty-one boards in existence, affecting over
50,000 operatives.
[ 145 ]

Report for 1908— 7

Resolutions in favor of appointing eight new special boards
were carried in both houses of the Legislature towards the close
of 1908 and early in 1909.

With the fifty-nine special boards previously appointed there
are now, therefore, fifty-nine boards in existence, affecting over
67,000 operatives.

Report for 1909—

Resolutions in favor of appointing twelve new special boards
were carried in both houses of the Legislature towards the close
of 1909.

With the fifty-one special boards previously appointed there
are now, therefore, seventy-one boards in existence, affecting about
75,000 operatives.

Report for 1910—

‘Resolutions in favor of appointing twenty new special boards
were carried in both houses of the Legislature towards the close
of 1910.

There are now ninety-one board affecting about 110,000
employees.

Report for 1911—

Resolutions in favor of appointing twelve new special boards
were carried in both houses of the Legislature towards the close
of 1911.

There are now one hundred and eleven special boards, affecting
about 130,000 employees. Of these, two boards have not been con-
stituted, viz.: the Stationery Board and the Slaughtering for
Export Board.

Report for 1912—

Resolutions in favor of appointing nineteen new special boards
were carried in both houses of the Legislature towards the close
of 1912.

There are now one hundred and thirty-one special boards, affect-
ing about 150,000 employees. (Page 6.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1897.
Tue BREADMAKING AND BAKING BOARD.

Mr. G. Hall reports: .

The determination of the Bread Board, which came into opera-
tion in March, may be said to have had a fair trial, and so far as
my district is concerned, I consider it to have been a success. It
has been the means of raising the wages of many workers very
considerably. The finding of the board is generally observed, and
works smoothly. (Page 5.)
[ 146 ]

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1898.

During the past year the attempt to deal with the sweating evil
by means of legislative action has been practically on its trial. To
all those interested in the system of fixing a minimum wage, the
year has been one of anxiety, and to the officers of this department
one of anxiety, greatly increased responsibility, and extra work.
Failure meant so much. Only those who are constantly in com-
munication with those who earn a precarious daily wage can realize
what misery is brought about by uncontrolled competition—success,
on the other hand, would mean another blow to the theory that
the state cannot protect large numbers of its citizens from many
of the evils of slavery. Where, for instance, is the freedom of men
or women who, without money or food (either for themselves or
others dependent on them), have to go and beg for work from men
both able and willing to take full advantage of their necessities?

With these facts constantly before me it can be understood
that the success of the system of fixing minimum prices by legis-
lative action appeared of the greatest moment and importance.

With a full knowledge of the significance of the statement, I
say I believe the system has been successful.

I do not for a moment claim that the system is perfect, and
propose almost immediately to point out defects. That it has to a
large extent prevented the worst evils of free competition appears
to me to be beyond a doubt. In dealing with the effects of the
various determinations of the boards, figures supplied by manu-
facturers will be given which will, I trust, satisfy the most
incredulous. (Pages 4-5.)

On the determination of the Clothing Board, Miss Cuthbertson
reports:

The workers inside the factories have, generally speaking, bene-
fitted greatly by the determinations, and though possibly they have
to work harder and more consistently, yet they are better paid and
have steadier employment, and continually the hope is expressed
by them that the act will be placed permanently upon the statute
book. (Page 9.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1900.
CLOTHING Boarp.

Probably everyone who is interested in factory legislation will
remember the bitter complaints made for several years prior to
1896 of the “sweating” existing in the clothing trade. That the
complaints were well founded was admitted by everyone who in-
quired into the matter. The Royal Commission appointed to inquire
Page
Missing
In Printing
Page
Missing
in Printing
[ 163 ]

A Country Without Strikes. Henry D. Luiovn. Doutileday, Page
& Co., New York, 1800.

But the briefest and most convincing argument for disabusing
the mind of any one who may fancy that the New Zealand Arbi-
tration Act has hampered industry is to be found in the following
figures, which give the hands employed in the registered factories
of the colony for the last five years. It may be explained that
“factory” in New Zealand means workshop, small or large, and
that registration is universal.

Year Hands Employed Increased
1895 29,879 — 4,028
1896 32,387 2,508
1897 36,978 4,531
1898 39,672 2,754
1899 45,3805 5,633

(Pages 11-12.)

Royal Commission of Inquiry Into the Working of Compulsory
Conciliation and Arbitration Laws, Legislative Assembly,
New South Wales. Sydney, 1901.

Generally, I should say that my investigations showed that,
with possibly one exception, industries have not been hampered by
the provisions of the Act. To attempt to decide whether capital
under other conditions would have been invested in particular in-
dustries is to undertake a task which has merely to be mentioned
to show its impossibility. No doubt general statements were made
that this abstention had been practiced, but I found it more than
difficult to get specific instances. Any cases which were men-
tioned, an investigation hardly bore out the view put forward.
For instance, I was told of the delay in the building of a shirt
factory at Auckland; but the factory is now up and in full work-
ing order, and it was one of my pleasantest official sights, when
going over it, to see the large number of healthy girls working
under conditions which seemed almost perfect. (Page 762. 15.)

Mr. Wiseman, saddler, of Auckland, it was said, had largely
contracted his business after an award. The facts found to be
these: When the award affecting his business was made, he
discharged twenty (20) hands, as he considered they were not
able to earn the wage fixed; one was subsequently taken back, and
now about as many hands are employed as were engaged before
the decision of the court. I presume New Zealand, notwithstanding
its prosperity for some time, has had its profitless speculations,
notably among the companies which were floated in such large
numbers to dredge for gold—many of which have returned very

13
[ 164 ]

little, and give prospect of returning less—but I was not-able to
fix any venture the starting of which the Act prevented, or the
continuation of which it stopped. (Page 762.)

I found it impossible to trace the effect of all the awards, the
time at my disposal being too short, but in the principal industries
affected I made it my business to see in what state they are. The
building trades are a very fair indicator of the general prosperity
of a community, and in New Zealand they have been as much
involved in disputes since the coming into force of the provisions
of the Act as another industry,.if not more involved. Generally
the effect of the awards has been in favor of the men, granting
shorter hours, higher wages, and other benefits. Certainly no one
can say that up to the present the contractors have suffered.
Building appears to be going on everywhere, and there seems to
be more work than the men are able to do. I interviewed repre-
sentatives of the Builders’ Associations at Wellington, Christ-
church, and Auckland, and they almost unanimously expressed
approval of the principle of the Act. (Page 762. 16.)

The clothing industries, although awards regulated them, I
found in a high state of activity. Mr. Blackwell, the managing
director of the Kaiapoi Company, told me that they had great
difficulty in keeping pace with the orders, and Mr. Clarke, of.
Auckland, said that his firm had a standing advertisement for
fifty hands. There was the same prosperity in the iron trades,
but from what I heard just before leaving, it would appear that
the wave of prosperity in these trades has reached its height and
that, gold dredging having been overdone, there may now be a
period of depression, but I do not think the working of the Act
has affected them. (Page 763. 17.) ,

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1901.
STATE oF TRADE.

These figures clearly indicate the steady increase of the manu-
facturing trade of the State. Since 1896 increased employment has
been shown year by year, as a rule of some thousands, but in 1898
of only a few hundreds. There are now over 9,000 more persons
employed in factories than there were during the height of the land
boom.

Since 1894 the number of persons employed in factories have
increased by 22,677 and I find from the wages supplied to me by
the manufacturers that these 22,677 employees would earn over
£1,379,000 a year, if they worked full time. Of this £1,379,000
[ 165 ]

increased wage fund over £300,000 was due to improvement of
trade during 1901. (Page 6.)

STATE OF TRADE.

Report Mr. J. E. Billingham.

The year has been an important one, owing to a large number
of trades having been brought under the Act. The statements
generally made that the application of the Act would result in
the closing of many places of business have not been borne out by
actual experience. It is true that many businesses have changed
hands, and that some have been closed and not re-opened, but this
is a natural result; not of the application of the special boards’
determinations, but due rather to various causes to which trade
generally is subject.

In all centres of population a certain percentage of businesses
close each year, and to attribute such closing to the application of
the Act is unjust.

I know that many manufacturers highly approve of the Act,
and though some sensitive ones regard it as inquisitorial in its
operation, yet have admitted (though reluctantly) the justice of
its requirements, and that if similar legislation was uniform
throughout the Commonwealth, and all working under same indus-
trial conditions, general satisfaction would result. (Page 8.)

It will be seen that the minimums fixed by this Board are low
as compared with other Boards, yet for some months a determined
effort has been made by a small section of the trade to convince
the public that the jam trade would be ruined and the price of
fruit greatly lowered in consequence of the Board system having
been applied to the trade.

I have the assurance of employers engaged in trade that there
is no foundation for such statements, and that the price of fruit
has not been in the slightest affected by the determination.
(Page 27.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1909.
Boot TRADE.

The minimum wage for adult males in this trade has been
raised gradually during the past ten years from 36s per week of
48 hours to 48s per week. This is, indeed, a striking instance of
improvement in a trade and in the position of the workers. The
leading manufacturers declared, in 1897, that the trade would be
seriously injured if the minimum was fixed at 45s, and satisfied
[ 166 J]

the Department that such was the case, yet by 1908 the minimum
wage is raised to 48s without objection on the part of employers.
(Page 23.)

Annual Report of the Department of Labor, New Zealand, 1910.
New Plymouth. Annual Report of Harry Willis, Inspector
of Factories, to Chief Inspector of Factories.

RETAIL AND MANUFACTURING TRADES.

Manufacturers and retailers have no cause for complaint at the
amount of business done during the year just ended. Indeed, it is
acknowledged by the majority of them that, compared with pre-
vious years, the turnover has been very satisfactory.

On the whole, the year just ended will bear very favorable com-
parison from the point of view of prosperity and progress with any
of its predecessors. (Page 42.)

The Labour Movement in Australia. [A Study of Social Democ-
racy.| By Victor S. CLARK, Ph.D. Archibald Constable
& Co., London, 1907.

The impression the country makes upon a visitor is not that of

a land where industry is paralyzed and business stagnated, but

rather the reverse. Permanent and costly buildings are being

erected in the larger cities, public improvements are going forward, ’
the wharves are crowded with shipping, the railway service is

fully occupied. . . . There are few evidences of excessive

unemployment. To a person studying in Australia, the economic

argument that a country will be industrially ruined by state regu-

lation is not convincingly demonstrated. (Page 219.)

Report to the Secretary for the Home Department on the Wages
Boards and Industrial Conciliation Acts of Australia and
New Zealand. Ernest Aves, London, 1908.

It is noteworthy that in reply to the general question as to
whether there was personal knowledge of any cases—employers or
employed—of those.who have been driven out of the trade by the
Wages Boards’ determinations that, without any restriction as to
period, or limitation either to any particular class of person or
cause of displacement, 49 out of 82 are able to reply in the nega-
tive; and it is still more significant, partly of the great prosperity
of the time, and partly of belief in the Special Boards system,
[ 167 ]

that 21 out of 25 of those representing the employees give this
answer.

As regards employers very few instances either of migration or
of failure and retirement reached me. (Page 61.)

Little or nothing is now heard, however, of the risk which the
Boards may involve to the development of the State’s industries,
but the view is by no means unrepresented that this development
would have been greater under a freer system. The assertion,
however, like its denial, cannot be proved to be false. Those who
hold the opinion hold it, it may be noted, less strongly now than
formerly in its connection with the other States of the Common-
wealth, owing to the tendency for similar legislation to become
more general throughout the Commonwealth. (Page 61.)

Woman in Industry. Chapter 2. The Minimum Wage. CONSTANCE
SmitH. Duckworth & Co., London, 1908.

The principle of the minimum rate is no new principle in this
country. In all government works fixed minimum rates exist for
the different classes of labor employed. The great organized
trades have, by means of collective bargaining, succeeded in fixing
such rates for themselves. There is such a rate in the mining
industry, in the engineering industry, and in the cotton trade.
Other trades, less completely organized than these, have succeeded
in setting up similar standards by means of arbitration under the
Board of Trade, when the arbitrator has fixed piecework rates—
even for so complicated an industry, subject to constant change
and dependent on the demands of fashion, as the Nottingham lace
trade, with conspicuous success both as regards the maintenance
of peace, the prosperity of the industry, and the satisfaction of
the workers. (Page 44.) , :

What has been the effect of Wages Boards in Victoria during
the eleven years since they first came into existence? As far as
it is possible to judge in so limited a period, they have been steadily
beneficial to the worker, while at the same time they have not
injured the employer. Indeed, their growing popularity with
employees is one of the most powerful recommendations that can
be offered on their behalf. The first Wages Boards Act was passed
for four years only in the teeth of considerable opposition from
the representatives of employers in the Legislature. But, when
the time came for the renewing of the Act, some of its leading
opponents of the employer class were eager to secure its enactment,
and it is owing to their attitude that the Act has now been made
permanent. (Page 45.)
[ 168 ]

One point should be specially noted. Along with the gradual
rise of wages and the multiplication of Boards, there has gone no
diminution of prosperity in Victoria. The latest report of the
Victoria Chief Inspector of Factories records, from district after
district, the news that trade is flourishing and employment plenti-
ful. . . . Such a system is not necessarily injurious to a
country’s trade. (Page 49.)

The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage, by SIDNEY WEBB.
Reprinted from the Journal of Political Economy, University
of Chicago Press, December, 1912.

It is difficult to believe that the enforcement of a legal minimum
wage in all these hundred different industries employing 110,000
persons (being with their families more than a quarter of the
entire population of the State), has interfered with the profitable-
ness of industry, when the number of factories has increased, in
the sixteen years, by no less than 60 per cent., and the number of
workers in them have more than doubled. Certainly, no statesman,
no economist, no political party nor any responsible newspaper of
Victoria, however much a critic of details, ever dreams now of
undoing the minimum wage law itself. (Pages 5-6.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNowDEN, M.P. Hodder & Stoughton,
: London, 1918.

THE WAGES BOARDS.

What effect, it may be asked, has this Wages Board Act had
in raising wages? The answer to that has, in fact, been given
already, in the statement that trades ‘have clamoured to come
under the operation of the Act. But a few actual details may be
given. Since 1896, when the Act, in a small way, was first passed
(in Victoria), wages have risen by from 12 to 35 per cent., and
the hours of labor have been reduced. The prosperity of the
Colony has been marked in the years which have passed since this
legislation was first enacted. Since 1896 (the-year when the first
Act was passed), the revenue of Victoria has risen from £6,400,000
te £10,700,000. The savings bank investments have risen from
£4,300,000 to £15,400,000. The receipts from the state railways
have increased from £2,400,000 to £4,448,000. The number of mar-
riages have risen from 4,700 to 10,200. It may be said that this
extraordinary expansion of the Colony since the Minimum Wage
Act was passed is not altogether due to its operation. That may
be so, but these facts at least prove that the minimum wage has
not ruined the country or arrested its development. In the same
[ 169 ]

period the number of factories has risen by 60 per cent., and the
number of workers employed in them has more than doubled.
Victoria is now industrially the most important State in the Com-
monwealth. (Pages 113-114.)

In AUSTRALIA.

All this legislation has been largely experimental. It has had
to deal with the most difficult of all problems, namely, those in
which there is a most intricate interplay of influences, and in
which human passions largely enter. There have been failures, as
there must always be in such efforts, but the general results have
been highly satisfactory and where failure has occurred it has
been mainly through defects in the machinery, which experience
ean amend. The attacks which are made upon the system do not
touch its central principle. The one sufficiently convincing testi-
mony to the general appreciation of the legislation is the fact that
in no one instance has such legislation been repealed. Amended
the legislation has often been, but in no case has any community
which has tried the State regulation of wages questions gone back
to the old barbarous method of unrestricted competition and un-
regulated industrial conflicts. (Pages 115-116.)

The results which would follow the payment of higher wages—
the cheapening of the cost of production, the greater use of
machinery, the better organization of the factory and the business
—would have a consequential effect on the employment of labor.
Though the output of work per workman would be increased, there
would be more and not less employment. Low wages mean small
purchasing power. A general increase of wages would enormously
increase the demand for goods, and every staple trade in the
country would be greatly stimulated. With the increased purchas-
ing power the working class would become in larger measure the
patrons of reasonable enjoyments which they cannot now afford,
and by that, further employment would be provided. The economic
and social effect of increased wages would be beneficial all round.
(Page 148.)

(3) BENEFIT TO WAGES.

Statistics prove that the establishment of a legal mini-
mum wage has resulted in increased wages, especially to
the worst paid workers.

Newest England. HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD. New Enon
Page & Co., 1900.

Under the Victorian law, up to the time of the last report of
the Chief Inspector of Factories, June 1, 1899, for the year 1898,
[170 ]

the five special boards had made awards affecting 10,635 em-
ployees, and had increased their wages by an amount estimated at’
$500,000 if they worked full time. In the baking trade the mini-
mum was fixed at one shilling, 25 cents, an hour for men and five
shillings a week for apprentices. This was an increase on the
average of $3.75 a week for the men. There was no increase in
the price of bread to the consumer. In the clothing trade the
minimum was made 7s 6d, $1.87, a day of eight hours for the men
and 838 cents for the women. The average wages of 4,484 em-
ployees were increased 68 cents a week, with no increase in the
price of clothing—a result which the chief inspector considers
“little short of astounding.” (Page 238.)

State Arbitration and the Minimum Wage in Australia. H. W.
Macrosty. Political Science Quarterly, Vol.. 18, Boston,
1908.

Up to 1895 trade had been depressed in Victoria; since that
time it has gradually recovered. To that extent the rise in wages
may be attributed to general trade conditions, but no other trades
show such remarkable increases as those granted by the special
boards. The average wage in the printing trade, an industry
which is a barometer of prosperity, was in 1897 27s 3d and'in 1899
27s 4d. The average wage in the dressmaking trade was 11s 1d
in 1897 and 10s 11d in 1899; in biscuit-making 18s 3d in 1897 and.
16s 3d in 1899—result which may be with advantage compared
with the wages in cognate trades under special boards. Although
the employment figures of the regulated trades show a steady
rise, industry has not been in the flourishing condition, which has
prevailed in New Zealand but, while improving, has been on the
whole dull. We are, therefore, by the experience gained in Vic-
toria, able to discount the criticism leveled at the New Zealand
success that it is due entirely to the prosperity of the colony. In
good times and dull times, we learn that regulation of wages is
possible. (Page 183.)

In all the trades under the newer boards the same story is
told of increased wages, of the decrease of sweating, of the general
prevalence of average wages considerably above the fixed mini-
mum and of the resultant better organization of industry. The
general opinion of employers after experience of the new con-
ditions is that they would not return to the old. Of course there
has been friction. The employers’ representatives on the Woolen
Trade Board objected to one of the men’s representatives since
he was not practically acquainted with the trade, but after some
[171]

months’ negotiations the difficulty was settled and a “determina-
tion” embodying fifty. rates of wages is now in force. (Page 135.)

On the whole, while we must admit that there has been a
considerable amount of friction in the working of the Victoria
wage boards, there has not been more than might reasonably have
been expected. Administrators tackled the hardest part of the
industrial problem first and gained their experience by dealing
with the chaotic sweated trades instead of with those which had
received a fair stage of organization and where employers and
employed were trained to negotiation. (Page 136.)

Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XVII, 1903. A. S. WEBER.
The Report of the Victorian Industrial Commission.

BREAD-MAKING AND BAKING BOARD.

The average week wages of men and boys employed in the
trade was reported by the Chief Inspector of Factories to be 32s
in 1896 before the determination, 37s in 1897, 40s in 1898, 42s
in 1899, 44s in 1900, and 42s in 1901. Judged from the employees’
return of wages, therefore, the minimum wage law was a marked
success, for it had increased the average wage by about 30 per
cent. (Page 625.)

THE FURNITURE BOARD.

The first determination, which became effective April 19, 1897,
fixed 7s 6d a day or 45s ($11.25) a week, as the minimum wage
of experienced male employees, and 20s ($5) as that of experienced
female workers. In October, 1898, the men’s minimum was ad-
vanced to 8s ($2) a day, and in August, 1900, the scale of wages
of improvers was amended without change in the minimum for
skilled workers.

The wages returns of manufacturers (*European) reveal an
advance in wages since the determination took effect, thus:

Oct. 31 Males All Adults Females
1896 : 29s 7d 14s id
1897 ... 35s 8d

1898 _.. 36s 441 ATs 1d 50 19s
1899 ... 38s 10d 497 49s 2d 88 15s 3d
1900 ... 40s 5d 511 50s 1d 47 18s 3d
1901

 

40s 2d 541 50s 7d 56 18s 1d
a é (Page 626.)
* As distinguished from Chinese.
MEN’S CLOTHING.
The manufacturers’ returns of wages to the Chief Factory
Inspector reveal the following changes in the average wage since
1896:
[ 172 ]

MALES FEMALES

No. Em- Average Weekly No. Em- ay eraES oy

ployed wage ployed
1896........ 782 35s 8d—§ 8.81 2,601 15s 5d—-$ 3.85
1897........ 990 35s 8d— 8.91 3,339 15s 8d— 3.91
1898........ 939 39s 6d— 9.87 8,545 18s 8d— 4.56
1899........ 1,024 39s 5d— 9.85 3,940 18s 6d— 4.62
1900........ 902 42s 4d— 10.58 3,935 18s 1d— 4,52
1901........ 1,093 40s 5d— 10.10 4,062 18s 8d— 4.56

(Page 631.)
MUSLIN UNDERGARMENTS.

The attitude of the Commission may be comprehended from
the following passage: “In a third case a shirtmaker doing ma-
chining only,-got from 1s 7d to 2s 2d per dozen and got through
a dozen by working 12 to 13 hours. Her average earnings were
1s 7d a day. If these low rates, with the inevitable accompaniment
of extreme poverty, and too often ill health arising from excessive
hours of work and lack of nourishing food, are contrasted with
the condition of affairs recorded in 1901 when the average wage
of all women in the trade was set down at 16s 10d a week, while
184 earned on the average 20s 8d per week, it will be admitted
as a fact beyond dispute that in this trade the factory law has
broken down a hideous form of sweating and protected in no small
degree an industrious and deserving class of women.” (Page 636.)

OTHER BOARDS.

As the operation of the minimum wage law of 1896 was on
the whole so successful, among the amendments to the factory
law in 1900 was one providing for the establishment at once of a
seventh board to fix mimimum wages for butchers.

In 1900 resolutions passed the legislative assembly in favor of
the establishment of special wage boards in 22 additional indus-
tries.

At one 1901 session of Parliament, 11 additional boards were
authorized, making a total of 38 special wage boards. (Page 637.)

The Commission accepts the principle of wage regulation, and
declares that there cannot, in the circumstances of the time, be
any return to the old conditions of freedom of contract in factory
labor. (Page 640.)

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 56. Labor Con-
ditions in Australia, by Victor 8. CLARK. Washington, 1905.

Concomitant with the existence of the minimum wages law,
whether due to its influence or not, there has been a healthy
increase in the number of factory workers as compared with the
[ 173 ]

years immediately before the Act went into operation, and even
in comparison with the years of the previous boom. In 1902 there
were 4,252 registered factories in Victoria, with 59,440 operatives,
an increase of 2,495 operatives over the previous year, and of
11,627 operatives over the most prosperous year (1890) of the
last boom period. Except in three occupations, where there has
been a recent increase in the proportion of female and juvenile
workers, the rate of wages has uniformly risen since the boards
went into operation., The following table of average wages is
taken from the report of the State Inspector of Factories for
the year ending December 31, 1902:

AVERAGE WEEKLY WAGES IN TRADES UNDER BOARD DETER-

MINATIONS IN 1902 AS COMPARED WITH AVERAGE

WAGES BEFORE DETERMINATIONS WENT
INTO EFFECT.

Before Determination

  
 
 

  

 

Trade Went Into Effect 1902 Increase
Bedstead makers ............ $ 7.83 $ 8.39 $ .56
Bookbinders .... oe 4.81 5.387 56
Bootmakers .... 5.64 6.87 1.23
Breadmakers .. 4a 7.91 10.42 2.51
Brewers .........- ee 8.35 9.63 1.28
Brickmakers .. = 10.12 11.13 1.01
Brushmakers .. és 5.62 6.47 85
Butchers .......... ib 9.17 9.81 64
Cigar makers .................- 7.36 8.09 73
Clothing makers (men’s) 4.87 5.45 58
Confectioners .......-.....--- 4.12 5.09 .97
Coopers .........-- fo 8.66 10.56 1.90
Engravers ..........-- 3 8.98 12.18 3.15
Furniture makers i 7.08 9.61 2.53
Jam makers ........... ee 5.15 4.62 53a
Jewelers ...... ibe 8.23 10.02 1.79
Maltsters «0.20.2... 10.00 10.97 97
Mantelpiece makers ...... 8.15 10.67 2.52
Millet broommakers ...... 6.79 8.13 1.34
Pastry cooks .................. 7.50 6.96 54a
Plate glass makers ........ 6.69 8.68 1.99
Potters. 5./cczdeee ee 6.83 8.84 2.01
Printers (city) -...........- 8.96 9.49 53
Printers (country) -..... 7.54 8.05 51
Saddlers ..........---------------- 6.59 8.54 1.94
Shirt makers .. os 3.51 3.49 02a
Tanners _........--.2---2------- 7.73 8.64 91
Underclothing makers .. 2.74 3.08 34
Wickerworkers .- = 5.58 6.37 .79
Woodworkers ..... sale 8.07 10.63 2.56
Woolen goods ° 4.97 5.19 -22

 

a Decrease.
The following statistical appreciation of the effect of the Vic-

torian Factories Act upon wages is summarized from T. A.
[174]

Coghlan’s Australia and New Zealand, 1902-3: There has been
a general increase in the pay of male labor equivalent to 19 per
cent. and of female labor to 17 per cent., or about 5s 9d and
2s 3d ($1.40 and $0.55) per week, respectively, in occupations
under the determinations of the boards. The comparative aver-
age weekly wages of workers of various ages in regulated and
unregulated trades in Victoria are as follows:

WAGES PAID IN VICTORIA TO EMPLOYEES IN TRADES REGU-
LATED BY SPECIAL BOARDS AND IN OTHER TRADES.

Trades under Boards Other Trades

  

 

Age Males Females Males Females
18 years 00... $ 1.48 $ .97 $ 1.58 $ .87
14 years «0.0.0. 1.58 1.05 1.83 1.03
LO Years! soestest eee evs 1.85 1.24 2.13 1.07
16 YOars).....cccsaccccececescs 2.19 1.56 2.60 1.34
17 years 200... ee 12.84 2.03 3.16 1.72
18 years 200 3.57 2.76 3.97 2.15
19 years .......0..22.2.-..- 4,52 3.08 4,70 2.58
20 years ..0.. eee 5.58 8.73 5.52 2.88
21 years or over 10.77 14,81 10.20 4,24
(ATL BES soos ceescteeeecss a 8.70 3.87 7.56 3.08

The wages of boys and youths are uniformly lower in the
regulated than in the non-regulated trades; but for adult male
workers and for all female workers wages are in every case higher
in the regulated occupations. The difference of $1.14 in favor of
male workers of all ages in the regulated trades is greater than
an inspection of the figures immediately preceding would lead
one to expect, and is due to the fact that in the regulated trades
three-fourths of all workers are adults, whereas in other trades
the proportion is not more than three-fifths. (Pages 70-71.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of, Victoria, 1900.
CLOTHING BOARD.

The average wage for males was £1 19s 6d, and for females
18s 3d. Last year the average wage for. males was £2 2s 4d, and
for females 18s 1d. The average wage for the whole trade in
1896 was £1, last year it. was £1 2s 6d. For adult males the
average was £2 8s 6d; for females £1 1s 3d.

In the short space of three years the whole circumstances of
the trade have been changed. No complaints are now heard of
gross sweating, or of clothes made in miserable homes for a. more
miserable wage. Many of the difficulties to which I referred in
my report of 1898 have disappeared. The Department has little
trouble in enforcing the determination of the Board. The average
wage paid will show that the majority of the men and women
employed receive more than the minimum wage. (Page 17.)
[ 175 ]

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1901.
THE Suirt Boarp.

In 1896 before the determination came into force the average
wage for females was 14s 5d per week, in 1900 and also last year
it was 14s 8d, or an increase of 3d per week for every employee
in the trade. The average wage of adult females was 16s 1d in
1900 and in 1901 16s 10d. The average increased wage of 3d as
compared with 1896 is not very great, but I find that in the latter
year there were only 20 girls employed between the ages 13 and
15 inclusive, whereas last year there were 83. We have thus an
increase of over 300 per cent. in juvenile labor and, notwithstand-
ing this, an increase in the average wage of the trade. An exami-
nation of Appendix B will show that the 134 women who are
employed at the minimum wage or more received an average of
20s 8d per week, which is certainly a high wage for what was
once a sweated trade. (Page 36.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1901.

Pastry Cooks’ Boarp.

Mr. Ellis reports:

Great satisfaction is expressed by these men at being brought .
under the determination at last. These tradesmen have been long
suffering and thoroughly appreciate the benefits they now enjoy
under it. How ever their claims to inclusion were so long over-
looked is a mystery. Bread-makers also participate in the advan-
tages by the passing of this determination, as whilst before they
were paid 13%d per hour for making bread, they were at the
mercy of their employer, who could pay them what he thought fit
whilst engaged in making pastry.

I am sorry to state that some of the employers availed them-
selves of this opportunity to the disadvantage of the men. This
industry is improving; the cheapness and style in which the
articles are turned out seem to meet a public want. The majority
of housekeepers at the present time when the supply of domestic
servants seems limited, find that making pastry takes up too much
of their time and are glad to be able to purchase what they want
so reasonably. Numerous shops are being opened in nearly all the
suburbs for selling pastry only and appear to do a fairly good
business. Very few apprentices are to be found in this -trade.
Proprietors are already complaining of the difficulty of obtaining
them; and they state that-if this continues they will be compelled
[176 ]

to send home for skilled workmen as the number of really good
men is very limited. (Page 31.)

Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate and Report on the
Operation of the Factories and Shop Laws of Victoria. Mel-
bourne, 1902-3.

THE WORKING OF THE LAW IN VICTORIA.
THE CLOTHING BOARD.

The employees stated that wages had been considerably increased
under the board’s determination and that the operation of the law
in this respect had been a distinct gain to both sides, inasmuch
as good employers were not now pitted against unfair and un-
reasonable masters. They viewed with great alarm any proposal
to suspend the system of fixing wages by law, fearing that the
inevitable result would be a relapse into sweating. One worker
said that the act had been distinctly beneficial to her. -Before the
rates were fixed, she used to work twelve to sixteen hours a day,
and the weekly average of her. earnings was 12s 6d, while the
minimum rate was now 20s. The same conditions prevailed as
before, but they got higher wages, and the methods of manufacture
had been improved to meet the extra cost. (Page XL.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1909.
CARDBOARD Box TRADE BOARD.

‘Miss Cuthbertson reports:

This determination appears to be working very satisfactorily.
Piece-work rates are paid generally: to female employees, and these
rates seem, in the majority of instances, to be fixed on a very
fair basis, so that a fair remuneration can be earned. Before the
determination came into. operation the average’ wage earned in
the trade was 15s 9d; but under the determination, which employers
concede is only a reasonable one, the average rose to 18s 1d. This
is not anything extraordinary, taking into consideration the fact
that all the men employed in the trade are included; but it shows
a vast increase on the rates prevailing before the determination
of the wages board, and must mean a good deal in increased
comfort in their method of living to the people concerned. (Page 32.)

Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on Home Work, House
of Commons, London, 1907.

Clementina Black (representing the Anti-Sweating League and
the Women’s Industrial Council) :
[177] :

2962. If you had a wages board, do you agree with Miss Mac-
arthur that the employers would all be competing as to who should
pay the highest wage?—I did not hear Miss Macarthur say that.

_ 2968. Miss Macarthur informed the committee that the em-
ployers told her they were all willing to pay higher wages if
others would do the same.—Oh, yes.

2964. Are you of that opinion?—I think that an employer
always says that he is willing to pay the highest wages paid, and
he generally hopes that you will not be able to prove that he is
wrong; but I think it would generally be found that the best
employers would aim at getting the best workers by paying higher
wages, as they now do.

2965. Do you think a wages board would have the effect of
raising wages?—If it is administered in what I consider a proper
manner, I do not see how it can fail to do so.

2966. Might not the employers on the wages board endeavor to
secure as low a minimum wage as possible?—They would un-
doubtedly do so, but I think that it would be very difficult in the
face of the public to fix so low a minimum wage as prevails in
most women’s trades.

2967. You think, therefore, that the effect of a wages board
would be to raise wages?—Oh, yes. (Page 150.)

Report to the Secretary for the Home Department on the Wages
Boards and Industrial Conciliation Acts of Australia and
New Zealand. Ernest Aves, London, 1908.

In as far, therefore, as wages have,improved in the breadbaking
trade, to some considerable extent the improvement is probably
traceable to the special board; there is abundant testimony to the
fact of improvement. There has been great improvement, I was
informed by a leading master baker. “Many shops do not pay full
rates,” but the “improvement is real throughout the trade,” and
“sweating has been practically abolished.” :

In this trade the rises in the rates of wages have been from
48s in 1897 to 50s in 1900, and it has been seen that the last rise
of 1907, to 54s, led to a reference to the Court of Industrial Appeal
and to a strike. In this trade the influence of a fairly active trade
union has thus to be allowed for as well as the general rise in
wages which, quite apart from the special boards, has accompanied
the increasing prosperity of the last few years. But after allow-
ing for the influence of the trade union and this general tendency,
and remembering the admitted fact that evasion is not infrequent,
the special board does appear to have had an appreciable effect
in bettering the conditions of this trade. (Pages 71 and 72.)
[178 ]

The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage. SIDNEY WEBB.
Reprinted from the Journal of Political Economy. Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, December, 1912.

So far we have considered merely the effect upon produc-
tivity of enforcing a minimum wage, quite irrespective of this,
involving a positive increase of wages. But to enforce a minimum
is actually to raise the wages of, at any rate, some of the worst-
paid operatives. (Page 9.)

The Economic Journal, September, 1918, London. The Trades Board
Act at work. S. C. Moore.

In June this year the local branch of the Clothing Operatives
Union determined to take a census of their male members to find
out what wages were being paid. In order to ascertain the effect
of the Trades Board Act they also asked for information about
wages and hours before and after the act came into operation.

There were 250 of these forms sent out and 230 were returned
duly filled up. A committee of four was appointed to examine
them, and as the returns from each shop were in the first instance
kept separate, the committee were able to check them from their
own personal knowledge, and they have every reason to believe
that they are substantially accurate. These returns show quite
clearly what reduction in working hours has actually taken place.
Before the operation of the act:

One firm, employing 18 males, worked 55% hours;

One firm, employing 6 males, worked 56 hours;

The remaining firms, employing 206 men, worked 58 hours.

Since February 20, the date on which the Board of Trade made
an obligatory order:

One firm, employing 22 males, has worked 52% hours;

One firm, employing 6 males, has worked 54 hours;

The remaining firms, employing 202 males, have worked 52
hours.

This gives an average reduction of more than five and a half
hours per week, which has been a great benefit to the family and
social life of the district.

The returns reveal some striking facts about men’s wages in
the clothing trade of Hebden Bridge, and also prove that the Trades
Board Act has caused some remarkable increases to be given. The
minimum of 6d per hour is not compulsory until the age of twenty-
two; therefore, as sixty-one out of the total number making returns
are at present getting less than 26s, we may presume they are
juniors. Out of the 230 male workers, about whom we have defin-
[ 179 ]

ite information, 134 received increases when the act came into
force. The following table gives particulars of the advances
received:

382 men received an advance of 1s 0d per week
25 men received an advance of 2s 0d per week
28 men received an advance of 3s 0d per week
23 men received an advance of 4s 0d per week
11 men received an advance of 5s 0d per week ,
8 men received an advance of 6s 0d per week
5 men received an advance of 7s 0d per week
1 man received an advance of 7s 5d per week
1 man received an advance of 8s 0d per week

The average increase per week was 3s per man. In no case
do the returns show any reduction in wages, and as the union offi-
cials have not heard of any such instance, it is evident that the
increases are a clear gain to the workers. (Page 445.)

(4) THE MINIMUM WAGE IS NOT A MAXIMUM.

Where the minimum wage has been established, the
fear that the minimum might prove also the maximum
wage has not proved well grounded. On the contrary, the
usual variation in wages appears to operate after a mini-
mum has been set by law, below which wages may not
sink.

State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand. WM. P. REEVES.
Vol. I. Grant Richards, London, 1902.

The Chief Inspector of Factories, writing in May, 1902, denied
that the tendency of the minimum wage was to become the maxi-
mum also. He asserted that, whereas in the clothing trade in 1901
the minimum wage for adult males was 45s a week, the average
paid was 58s 6d; for adult females, while the minimum was 20s,
the average was 22s 3d. He instanced similar differences in the
boot, furniture, [and] shirtmaking trades. (Page 62.)

Work and Wages. EDWARD CaDBURY, M. CECILE MATHESON and
GEORGE SHANN. Unwin, London, 1906.

Experience of public bodies shows that a legal minimum does
not necessarily become the actual maximum, as some critics assert.
(Pages 284-285.)

14
[ 180 ]

“T am pleased to report that, notwithstanding that several hands
were receiving in one factory a higher rate of wages than pre-
scribed by the determination, the wages were unaltered.” (Report
of Mr. Duff [Ballarat], page 11.) (Report of Chief Inspector of
Factories, Victoria, 1904. Also see report of Miss Thear, page 13.)
“A good proportion of the girls in this trade are receiving more
than the minimum wage of 20s per week.” Other inspectors report
to the. same effect, that wages above legal minimum are paid.
(Page 285.)

Sweating. EDWARD CADBURY and GEORGE SHANN. Headley Bros.,
London, 1907.

In reference to the assertion that the minimum tends to become
the maximum, and that slower workers thus benefit at the expense
of the more efficient, we find that the experience of Victoria does
not bear this out. In the 1904 report of the Chief Inspector of
Factories for Victoria, several inspectors report that wages above
the legal m‘nimum are paid. Mr. Duff of Ballarat says: “I am
pleased to report that, notwithstanding that several hands were
receiving in, one factory a higher rate of wages than prescribed
by the determinaton, the wages were unaltered.” Miss Thear also
reports: “A good proportion of girls in this trade are receiving
more than the minimum wage of 20s per week.” The experience
of workmen under public bodies in this country also shows that
the minimum does not become the maximum. (Pages 128-129.)

Report to the Secretary for the Home Department on the Wages
Boards and Industrial Conciliation Acts of Australia and
New Zealand. Ernest Aves, London, 1908.

Absolute uniformity of rating in any occupation appears, how-
ever, to be quite the exception, and in most trades, especially in
those ranking as “skilled,” it may, I think, be assumed that a cer-
tain proportion, even though it be in some cases only a small one,
would receive a wage that was above the minimum, this proportion
varying according to the character of the firm and the class of
work. (Page 49.)

Woman in Industry. Chapter 2. The Minimum Wage. Duckworth
& Co., London, 1908. CONSTANCE SMITH.

Over and over again, in the latest report of the Victorian Chief
Inspector of Factories, do we come upon definite statements from
[ 181 ]

his inspectors that the workers in this trade and that controlled
by wages boards are receiving wages above the minimum rate.
3 Mr. Askwith, K. C., whose experience as a conductor of
arbitrations under the Board of Trade is “extensive and peculiar,”
poured scorn upon the idea that wages based upon a minimum rate
would necessarily never rise above that basis. It will always be
worth the employer’s while to pay a higher rate to the worker
possessing exceptional skill, or able to work at a higher rate of
speed than his fellows. (Page 55.)

The Economie Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage. SIDNEY WEBB.
The Journal of Political Economy. University of Chicago Press,
December, 1912.

oR We must first get clearly before us the distinction between
the fixing and enforcing of a minimum, and the fixing and enforc-
ing of a wage. What is here in question (as in all factory legis-
lation) is a minimum, not a maximum, still less any actual decision
that the wage shall be such or such sum. It ought not to be
necessary to point this out. (Page 6.)

: Here we have, in fact, the lesson of actual experience from a
whole century of industrial history. It is only necessary to watch
the operation, in trade after trade, of analogous common rules,
many of them enforced by law. These common rules, like the legal
minimum wage, are always minima, not maxima. Every employer
prefers to be free to do whatever he chooses; to compete in anyway
he pleases, on the downward way as well as on the upward way.
But the enforcement in any industry, whether by law or by public
opinion, or by strong trade unionism, of a standard rate, a normal
day and prescribed conditions of sanitation and safety, does not
prevent the employer’s choice of one man rather than another, or
forbid him to pick, out of the crowd of applicants, the strongest,
the most skillful, or the best conducted workman. The universal
enforcement of a legal minimum wage in no way abolishes com-
petition for employment. (Page 7.)

The Economic Journal, September, 1918, London. The Trades Board
Act at Work. S. C. Moore.

‘These returns also shed light upon that most interesting and
important problem as to whether there is any danger of a legal
minimum wage becoming the actual maximum. Of the 134 who
received advances, 111 had to receive them in order to bring their
earnings up to the sum required by the act; but the remaining
[ 182 ]

twenty-three were getting the minimum before they received the
advance. These twenty-three were evidently considered .by their
employers to be worth more than the lower-paid men, and when
the wages of lower-paid men were compulsorily raised they were
given a corresponding increase. This seems to indicate that what-
ever causes have tended to produce variation of wages in the past
will continue to operate after a minimum has been fixed by the
Trade Board. (Page 445.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1902.

Boor TRADE.

Mr. Billingham reports:

The minimum wage has not proved the maximum in this trade,
as many of the better workmen are paid more, some receiving as
much as 15s per week over the minimum, proving that a good
workman will always be paid much above the minimum or even
average wage. (Page 15.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1906. “Ty

PLATE GLASS BOARD.

Mr. Billingham reports:

Every factory visited and employees questioned. This deter-
mination is being well observed, and working smoothly. The mini-
mum wage is not by any means the maximum, as many employees
receive over the legal rates. (Page 35.)

SHIRT BOARD.

Miss Shay reports:

The workers are principally all on piecework, and able to earn
considerably more than the minimum wage. In the cases of those
receiving a weekly wage, I have found determination complied
with. (Page 38.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1907.
ARTIFICIAL MANURE Boarp.

Mr. Billingham reports:

In the majority of cases the employees are being paid higher
rates than those provided by the Courts of Industrial Appeals
(36s), and feel dissatisfied that the rate provided by the board
(40s 6d) should have been reduced. (Page 15.)
{ 183 ]

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1907.

JAM TRADE BOARD.

Miss Mitchell reports:

The determination is well complied with, the majority being
paid a piece-work rate, which averages considerably more than the
minimum wage. (Page 41. )

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1908
BREAD Boarp.

Mr. Collopy reports:

Wages are still being paid in excess of determination rates.
Every adult worker questioned by me confirmed the above state-
ment. (Page 21.)

Mr. Dunean reports:

Those that come under my inspection are in the majority of
cases paid more than the legal rate. (Page 22.)

Mr. Austin reports:

In most cases the men working at this trade are receiving above
the legal wage. (Page 22.)

Brick TRADE BOARD.

Mr. Rowe reports:

I find that in the majority of the yards rates in excess of the
determination are being paid, and I have received no complaints.
(Page 24.)

PLATE GLASS BOARD.

Mr. Billingham reports:

The minimum wage for this trade is not by any means the
maximum. Many of the employees receive more than the legal
rates, and there have not been any cases of breach of determination.
(Page 47.)

UNDERCLOTHING TRADE.

Miss Mitchell reports:

The determination in this trade is working well. I have not had
any complaints. I find the wages paid are far in excess of the
minimum for skilled workers. (Page 55.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria. 1909.
SHIRT BOARD.

Mr. Ingham reports:
I can only repeat my report of last year, that this determina-
[ 184 ]

tion is being satisfactorily carried out and most of the boys receive
far above the minimum rates. (Page 65.)

UNDERCLOTHING Boarp.

Miss Thear reports:

The minimum wage in this trade is 16s. The board has not
thought it necessary to raise it, as, owing to the scarcity of com-
petent hands, more than that amount can be readily earned by
proficient hands. In a room where 172 hands are employed
(mostly on piece work), 107 are earning more than the minimum
wage of 16s, and there are only six who earn the bare 16s.

Miss Shay reports:

This trade is not largely represented in my district. The
majority of workers are being paid weekly wages, and it is pleas-
ing to note the minimum wage is not the maximum paid, by any
means.

No evasions have come under my notice during the year.
(Page 69.)

Report of Chief Inspector of Factories of Victoria, 1910.
MILLINERS BOARD.

Miss Cuthbertson reports:

Though the increase in the minimum wage is a substantial
one, I do not expect to find any marked increase’in the average
earnings of those employed, owing to the small number working
who receive the minimum. (Page 54.)

Annual Report of the New Zealand Labor Dept., 1902.

It is my pleasant duty once more to report a prosperous year
for the laboring classes in New Zealand. The steadiness of em-
ployment, the extension of industries, and the improvements in
regard to wages, hours of work, overtime pay, etc., have made
' the position of the workers penerally more endurabla than it has
been for many years.

It was asserted that when the court fixed a minimum wage
in a trade, that wage tended to become an average wage or even
a maximum. Such a system would scarcely be possible in a large
business, or even a go-ahead small one, for a capable workman
knows his own value too well to work under such conditions, and
if an employer wants to keep up with or to surpass his competitors
he must get the most efficient hands he can find or pay for. It
is true, however, that when a workman leaves his old employer
[ 185 ]

and gets new work, he often has to start on a minimum wage,
but if he is a valuable man he does not long remain at that rate.
In practice, however, it is found that the best men leave the mini-
mum wage far behind, and there has been no proof presented that
during the last two or three years—during which most of the
awards have been made, any suffering has been caused by the
institution of a minimum wage, while the benefit to the majority
of workers is indisputable. (Page 5.)

Report of the New Zealand Department of Labor. 1909.

In Table 6, appended to this report, appears the result of an
investigation, as far as factories are concerned, into the extent
to which the Arbitration Court in fixing a minimum wage has or
has not lowered the average wage, or injured high rates for
especially good workers. It has so often been asserted with blind
confidence that every award of a minimum wage has “levelled
down” all wages, that it will come as a surprise to the general
public to find how few workers have to accept the minimum wage,
which is not, as has been so often stated, “the award wage,” but
a limit of wage below which no persons in that particular trade
may be paid. In the bootmaking trade, for instance, in Auckland
66%, in Wellington 85144%, in Christchurch 66%, and in Dunedin
50% of the workers receive wages above the minimum wage. In
Auckland 91%, in Wellington 57144%, in Christchurch 50% and in
Dunedin 26% of the cabinetmakers receive above the minimum
wage named in the award. Plumbers and gasfitters receiving
wages above the award minimum are: In Auckland 66%, in
Wellington 19%, in Christchurch 84%, in Dunedin 59%. It is
of no use laboring the matter here by quoting figures too pro-
fusely, since the whole state of the case can be seen by any
person studying the table, but the-investigation has served to
prick one of the bubbles so freely blown by opponents of the act
when trying to gain the sympathy of those whose wages have
been for years protected by the industrial courts from the under-
cutting of unscrupulous mates or the forcing down methods of
greedy exploiters. (Page 13.)

Annual Report of the Department of Labor, New Zealand. 1910.
Wellington, 1910.

COMPARISON BETWEEN MINIMUM RATES UNDER AWARDS AND THE
ACTUAL RATES PAID.

However, there is sufficient evidence to show that in our manu-
facturing industries at least an average of 50% of the workers
[ 186 ]

compared received more than the rate granted in the awards of
the Court of Arbitration. Such a result must be exceedingly
gratifying to those interested in the industrial legislation of the
Dominion, especially in view of the fact that opponents of the act
have stated in and out of season that the majority of workers
are receiving only the minimum wage, and that the work accom-
plished by the first-class man gets no more recognition than that
of the ordinary employee who makes no special effort to deserve
extra monetary reward. If this allegation is true in regard to
workers outside manufacturing industries—which I very much doubt
—the figures quoted by the department in this report hardly bear
out the contention in regard to many of our leading manufacturing
industries. I find in regard to the cities the returns show that in
Auckland, out of 2,119 employees compared, 782 receive the mini-
mum rate and 1,387 in excess, equal to 68%. Wellington, 1,518
employees have been compared, 535 of whom receive the minimum
rate and 978 in excess of the minimum, or 64%. In Christchurch,
2,367 have been compared, 869 of whom receive the minimum rate
and 1,498 in excess of the minimum, or 68%. In Dunedin, 1,375
employees have been compared, of whom 599 receive the minimum
and 776 in excess of the minimum, or 564%%. (Pages 11-12.)

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor No. 49. Labor
‘Conditions in New Zealand. Victor 8. CLARK. Washing-
ton, 1908.

There are sometimes greater differences between the legal
minimum and the highest wages paid. The Otago award fixes
the wages of journeymen painters at 80 cents an hour for an
eight-hour day, but wages in Dunedin were said to run as high as
43 cents an hour and to be customarily above the award minimum.
(Page 1171.)

An iron works superintendent: “The minimum wage is not
the maximum wage with us. We sack a poor man when we can
get a good man, and pay him more than the award. That’s most
profitable for us, and keeps the men cheerful.” (Page 1207.)

A labor member of Parliament: “Painters and carpenters here
are getting from $0.73 to $0.97 a day more than the award mini-
mum.” (Page 1208.)

‘A labor member of Parliament: “On the whole, the effect is
not to put wages on a dead level.”

A factory inspector: “My experience is that most employers
pay more than a minimum wage to some employees. In the book-
binding trades in my district all but one employee receive more
[ 187 ]

than the minimum wage, which is $9.73 a week. They get from
$12.17 a week up.” (Page 1208.)

Another factory inspector: “It is the general rule here to pay
over the minimum wage.” (Page 1208.)

Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor No. 56. Labor Conditions
in Australia. Victor S. CLARK. Washington, 1905.

The manager of a boot factory in the same state said: “We
don’t hold our men down to the minimum wage. Our cheapest men
are those to whom I give the most money. I make the foreman
of each room judge of his employees, and he must make his room
pay—and pay wages that will produce that result.” Another manu-
facturer said: “The minimum in the boot trade is £2 5s ($10.95)
a week. I am paying some of my operatives £2 10s ($12.17),
others £2 15s ($13.39), and some up to £3 ($14.60) a week.” A
manufacturing saddler and harnessmaker’s books showed that he
was paying from 10s ($2.43) to £1 ($4.87) a week above the award
minimum to several of his workmen. (Pages 122-123.)

Proposed Minimum Wage Law for Wisconsin. Prepared under
the Direction of JOHN R. COMMONS. Wisconsin Consumers’
League, Madison, 1911.

The minimum has not become the maximum, but in every fac-
tory there is a considerable number of employees getting more
than the legal rate. . . . (Page 4.)

The Theory of the Minimum Wage. H. R. Seacer. New York
American Labor Legislation Review, February, 1913.

From the point of view of wage-earners, it is urged, finally,
that minimum wage regulations will tend to level all wages toward
the minimum prescribed by law. I can see no a priori ground for
such a view. So far as the competition of wage-earners of less
capacity with lower standards tends to lower the wages of those
of greater capacity and with higher standards it already operates
with full force. With a legally prescribed minimum wage, instead
of forcing wages down to a starvation level, as it may now do, it
could at the worst force them down only to the legal minimum.
But I do not ascribe great importance to a priori arguments as an
issue of this sort. It is of much more significance that in Victoria,
after the minimum wage system had applied to the clothing indus-
try for half a dozen years, the average wage for women was
reported as 42s 3d a week, as compared with the prescribed mini-
[ 188 ]

mum of 36s, and the average for men as 538s 6d as compared with
the legal minimum of 45s. An average nearly 20% higher than
the minimum is pretty conclusive evidence that wages continued
to vary with the individual capacity of the workers after the
minima were prescribed as they had done before. (Page 89.)

(5) BENEFIT TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE.

The establishment of minimum wage boards has tended
towards creating industrial peace. Instead of resorting
to strikes and lockouts, employers and employees are
brought into co-operative relations. ,

Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage
Boards January, 1912. House No. 1697.

In Victoria, at the instance of either employers or employees,
or of the Minister of Labor, the Legislature may authorize the
creation of a special board, which is empowered to fix a minimum
wage for a given trade.

These special boards, although authorized to secure a “living
wage,” in practice have served rather to formulate common rules
for a trade, to bring employees and employers into co-operative
relations and to provide suitable machinery for the readjustment
of wages and other matters to changing economic conditions.
(Pages 14-15) /

It would furnish to the women employees a means of obtaining
the best minimum wages that are consistent with the on-going of.
the industry, without recourse to strikes or industrial disturbances.
It would be the best means of ensuring industrial peace so far
as this class of employees is concerned. (Page 26.)

The Minimum Wage. Mrs. EvizABETH G. EvANS, Member First
Massachusetts Convention on Minimum Wage Boards. City
Club Bulletin, Chicago, 1912.

I will say frankly that when I realized how very conservative
this proposed legislation was I was afraid that it might not accom-
plish much. If it was to be so moderate what good would it do?
But I believe that though it will work slowly, and will take time
in correcting abuses, there are few pieces of legislation that will
do as much. It has more educational value than any other labor
legislation that I know of. It brings the employers and employees
into co-operative relations around a table to bargain collectively
[ 189 ]

for wages. It establishes a sort of a social contact, not as a result
of the strike, but before the strike. (Page 31.)

A great many.of them (the employers) could do a great deal
better by their employees if they would turn their attention to this
matter and discuss it. But they are thinking about the selling
price, not about wages. They are thinking about profits—that is
what they are there for. But they will think just as much about
the wages question when it becomes a matter of public education.
The educational value of this measure I think is greater than any
other similar measure I know about. (Page 31.)

American Economic Review. American Economic Association, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1912. The Legal Minimum Wage in the.
United States. ARTHUR H. HoLcomMBE.

The boards have taken their cue from the language of the
statute, and instead of attempting to determine the cost of the
standard of living in the state, they have attempted rather to
bring together employers and wage-earners in the several indus-
tries for which they have been established, for the adoption of
common rules for the trade, including among the rest mutually
accepted rates of wages. Thus their chief concern is to ascertain
and publish the normal “going” wages for the various grades of
labor in the several industries, and to provide suitable machinery
for the readjustment of wages and conditions of employment
generally to changing economic conditions. In this they have been
successful. The number of special boards has been continually
increased until there are now nearly a hundred in commission
regulating wages and hours of labor for nearly all the wage-
earners, both men and women, of the state. For ten years there
was no strike of any importance in a trade under a special board.
In 1907 a strike took place, when the Bakers’ Union ordered the
journeymen out, not against a determination of a wage board,
however, but against a decision of the Court of Industrial Appeals,
annulling an increase of wages determined by the board. It was
quickly ended in a victory for the strikers. Whatever may have
been the original purpose of the Victorian wage boards, their
chief function today is to establish a more solid foundation for
industrial peace. The protection of the standard of living is
merely incidental thereto. This function has become so well recog-
nized in Australia that upon the temporary collapse of the system
of compulsory arbitration in New South Wales in 1908, an attempt
was made by the government then in office to introduce the Vic-
torian system in its stead. The Labor Party vigorously opposed
[ 190 ]

this attempt, ultimately with apparent success. In short, the
Victorian wage boards serve today primarily to foster collective
bargaining between capital and labor with a view to the peaceful
conciliation of industrial disputes. (Pages 22-23.)

The Labour Movement in Australia—A Study of Social Democracy.
Victor S. CLarK, Ph. D. Archibald Constable & Co., Lon-
don, 1907.

Few, if any, strikes have occurred where wage determinations
are in force. The workers themselves, who ought to be the best
judges, commend the effect of the act. (Page 148.)

Bulletin of the United States. Bulletin of Labor No. 56—Labor
Conditions in Australia. Victor S. CLARK. Washington,
1905.

The secretary of the Melbourne Bootmakers’ Union expressed
himself regarding conditions under the amended law as follows:

“Trade has been better since federation than previously. The
Factories Act has not injured trade and it has benefitted the
workingmen. We have had no strike since it went into effect, and
we now recognize that strikes are done with, and look to Parliament
for our remedies.” (Page 74.)

Report to the Secretary for the Home Department on the Wages
Boards and Industrial Conciliation Acts of Australia and
New Zealand. Ernest Aves. London, 1908.

The boards, especially those formed in the women’s trades, are
greatly valued and are widely believed in, and a chief explanation
of this must, I think, be found, not so much in any demonstrable
and lasting effects that they have had on the individual earnings
of women, as in the increased feeling of security that they give, and
in the belief that they make treatment more unitormly fair. :

‘The boards have helped both in the home and in the factory,
and probably not simply in the trades under them, to set a more
certain standard. They are also believed to mark out a point below
which, should reaction come, wages will not, at least without
greater difficulty, fall. The test of this period of decline has, it
is true, not been reached, and should it come, the determinations
may break down. But while maintained or sometimes even when
exceeded, they are felt to be a source of strength. They affect
sentiment, both public and private. They help to establish bene-
[191]

ficial customs, and if character is not thereby weakened, this is a
great gain. They become, moreover, something which the con-
science, not only of the trade but also of the community, has to take
into account. (Page 123.)

The Practical Case for a Legal Minimum Wage. R. C. K. ENsor.
Nineteenth Century, London, 1912.

It is a part of such a policy of social hygiene, not tinkering
directly wth the symptoms of labor disputes, but strengthening
broadly the forces which make for social peace and stability, that
the policy of a legally enforced minimum wage has today a special
claim on the attention of the moderate and foreseeing statesmen.
(Page 264.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNowbDEN, M. P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1918.

Two principles have been accepted in the Industrial Aribitra-
tion and Wages Boards legislation which has been outlined in the
previous chapters. The first is, that the state cannot stand quietly
by and see industry paralyzed and society held up by strikes and
lockouts. The second is, that there is a collective responsibility,
which ean only be discharged through the state, for ensuring work-
people a reasonable remuneration for their labor. It has gone so
far in Australia as to enforce the doctrine that the wage of the
workman should be “enough to satisfy the normal needs of the
average employee regarded as a human being in a civilized com-
munty.” (Page 132.)

Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Working of Compulsory
Conciliation and Arbitration Laws. Legislative Assembly,
New South Wales. Sydney, 1901.

Although I have gone fully into matters in which the act appears
to be defective, I wish it to be clearly and unmistakeably known
that the result of my observations is that the act has so far, not-
withstanding its faults, been productive of good. I have empha-
sized what were pointed out to me as its weaknesses, in order that
they may be avoided should similar legislation be enacted here.
The act has prevented strikes of any magnitude, and has, on the
whole, brought about a better relation between employers and
employees than would exist were there no act. It has enabled the
increase of wages, and the other conditions favorable to the work-
men which, under the circumstances of the Colony, they are entitled
[ 192 ]

to, to be settled without that friction and bitterness of feeling
which otherwise might have existed; it has enabled employers, for
a time at least, to know with certainty the conditions of produc-
tion, and therefore to make contracts with the knowledge that they
would be able to fulfil them; and indirectly it has tended to a
more harmonious feeling among the people generally, which must
have worked for the weal of the Colony. (Page 25.)

True Basis of the Living Wage. Rost. S. WALPOLE. “Public Opin-
ton,” Melbourne, 1912.

It is the country which has the greatest storage of capital that
supplies the largest quantity of wages and material, thereby giving
employment to thousands of workers, which becomes the richest
and most powerful nation. Now, if a means can be found by which
such stored capital can be increased by the poorest worker becoming
a capitalist as well as the rich, and such capital utilized in bene-
ficial channels, then all must gain. It is in this capacity we
must consider such schemes as co-operation and profit-sharing.
(Page 22.)

The writer believes that the plan suggested for fixing once and
for all a “living wage,” on lines allowing for reasonable comfort
and the higher standard of living demanded by the Anglo-Saxon
race, together with the fact that every worker would at that fixed
wage, toe the line and, in proportion to the energy and skill given
off by him, be the gainer in a larger payment for the work done,
would be the best means of ensuring peace. The agitator, who is
generally a non-worker not practically interested in the trade,
would find his occupation gone. (Page 31.)

(6) BENEFIT TO COMPETING EMPLOYERS,

The establishment of a legal minimum wage not only
checks the unscrupulous employer but makes it possible
for the enlightened employer to pay higher wages without
fear of underbidding competitors.

A Country Without Strikes. HENRY D. Luoyp. Doubleday, Page
& Co., New York, 1900.

That an Arbitration Act can operate as much for the protection
of employers against guerilla competitors as for the protection of
labor against capital, is one of the great discoveries being made by
experience in this experiment. Manufacturers in New Zealand are
beginning to see this and take advantage of it.
[ 193 ]

I learned of several cases in which, by assisting their employees
to organize and appeal to the Court of Arbitration, the manufac-
turers sought to obtain decisions which would bind not merely
themselves, but also their uncontrollable competitors. Such a com-
petitor can by this use of the Arbitration Court be prevented from
making the cuts in wages which enable him to cut prices to the
ruin of all who do not irritate him in squeezing out of the employees
the funds to fight business rivals. (Page 45.)

Report of the United States Industrial Commission on Labor
Organizations, Labor Disputes and Arbitration and on Rail-
way Labor. Vol. XVII. Washington, 1901. Working of
the New Zealand Compulsory Arbitration Law.

“In the case of industries in which competition between em-
ployers is sharp, there has been some disposition to favor the
system of compulsory regulation of the conditions of labor because
of the resulting uniformity. Manufacturers know that their com-
petitors have to pay the same wages and meet the same conditions
of employment, so that the conditions of competition are made
more equitable. There are advantages, too, in the stability which
results from the establishment of the terms of the labor contract
for a definite period of time, within which contracts may be made
with reasonable certainty regarding costs. (Page 533.)

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 49. Labor
Conditions in New Zealand, by Victor S. CLARK. Wash-
ington, 1903.

A second desirable result that the act is generally conceded to
have accomplished is the prevention of sweating and undercutting
by a few unscrupulous employers, to the detriment of the trade
and the prejudice of the fair-minded majority who are content to
conduct their business with reasonable regard for the welfare of
their employees. The chairman of one of the conciliation boards,
himself an attorney and in no way specially identified with the
workingmen, said: “It was a common experience to have fair
employers encourage suits in order to prevent undercutting in
wages.” A factory inspector said: “Most of the complaints of
breaches of the acts and of the arbitration awards come from the
employers themselves, who want their competitors prohibited from
unfair competition.” Specific instances were mentioned by work-
ingmen where they had been asked by employers to bring suits
under the act in order to establish fair and uniform conditions of
wages in an industry. (Page 1231.)
[194]

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 56. Labor
Conditions in Australia, by Victor S. CLARK. Washington,
1905. ,

The proprietor of probably the largest boot factory in Mel-
bourne, a new and model establishment, expressed the following
opinion of the Factories Act in an interview: ;

“We have invested largely in our business since the act has
been in force. Under it our conditions are more settled, and this
gives us an advantage over New South Wales. Before the act
went into operation sweating was rampant, and for that reason
the fair employer has benefited by the change. We pay many of
our employees more than the minimum wage. There are incom-
petent employers as well as incompetent employees, and it is
the employer who never ought to be in his position who is forced
to sweat men. The act eliminates that sort of an employer.”
(Page 73.)

The effect of the determinations is to establish uniform rates
of payment and hours of labor among competing employers, and
thus to favor those who are by inclination or policy most liberal
to their employees; at least this must be the effect if the law
is properly observed. (Page 77.)

The great expansion of Victorian manufacturers since federa-
tion is a stubborn assertion that no death blow has yet been dealt
to the growing enterprise of the country. (Page 78.)

American Economic Review, American Economic Association,
Cambridge, Mass., 1912. The Legal Minimum Wage in the

United States, by ARTHUR H. HOLCOMBE.

There would result a restriction of the field of competition
between employers. The employer whose chief stock in trade is his
shrewdness in driving hard bargains with his employees would lose
the advantage of that pernicious superiority. The peculiar quali-
ties of the best type of business man, imagination, judgment, and
courage in undertaking legitimate business risks, and sagacity in
managing his establishment, would become of greater importance
in the achievement of success, especially in the sweated industries.
In short, the indirect economic effect of the establishment of a
minimum standard of living wage would be to promote the con-
centration of competition between working people and between
employers on efficiency. (Page 36.)
[ 195 ]

Minimum Wage Boards, FLORENCE KELLEY, General Secretary,
National Consumers’ League. Proceedings of the National
Conference of Charities and Corrections, Cleveland, 1912.

It may be asked whether there is not danger, in case this con-
stitution should be adopted and so interpreted that minimum wage
boards can be created under its terms, of driving industry out of
Ohio into Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Indiana, where wages
may still be forced down below the minimum level of vital effi-
ciency without interference. That threat has been made in the
Australian colonies and in the English Parliament. It is made
by the textile trades in Massachusetts, and will continue to be
made in our states. But no industry goes. Cut-throat com-
petitors may go, but experience has shown that the increased
efficiency that accompanies the creation of wages boards deprives
competition of its power for harm. In Victoria more than half
of the 91 trade boards now in existence have been asked for by
employers glad to be rid of cut-throat and incompetent competitors.

When, through the acquisition by the weaker working people
of proper elements of bargaining strength, a living wage is made
a first charge upon industry, incompetent employers must either
call iti the efficiency doctors and follow their prescriptions,. or
themselves seek work in some occupation other than fattening upon
defenseless workers and keeping them in chronic destitution.
(Page 9.)

The Wage-Earner and His Problem. JOHN MITCHELL. P. S.
Ridsdale, Washington, D. C., 1918.

A continually fluctuating labor market is a heavy burden on
the fair employer in manufactures. He is menaced by the under-
cutting of his wage rates, by his rivals in business, by strikes of
his employees, by the uncertainties of the future, by alterations in
costs. His losses besides are those of a citizen obliged to help
support those of his competitors not paying a living wage and
whose employees are hence from time to time thrown on the
community for assistance.

We cannot but conclude that the fair employer must in the
end agree with us on the desirability and feasibility of the mini-
mum wage as here advocated. (Page 103.)

15
[ 196 ]

A Mininium Wage for Workers. H. LA RUE Brown, Chairman of
Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission. Mrs. GLENDOWER
Evans, Member First Massachusetts Minimum Wage Com-
mission. City Club Bulletin of Philadelphia, January 27,
1918.

In regard to the general question how it will work if you raise
wages too much, there is this to be said: The wages are fixed by
the wage boards, after arbitration and discussion, upon which the
employers sit and have the whip hand. As a rule they level up the
wages of employers who are below a decent scale, to the level of
employers who are actually doing business successfully.’ Hither
the unsuccessful employers improve their methods or they go
out of business. The same amount of work is to be done, and it
had better be done by employers who are more successful in their
methods. Employers may say: We can’t afford to pay that much
wages. Well, it'is recommended by employers in their own indus-
try who can afford that much wage, so it is a question of adjust-
ment. (Page 211.)

The Labor Movement in Australia—A Study of Social Democracy,
by Victor 8. CLARK, Ph.D. Archibald Constable & Co.,
London, 1907.

Propertied interests were not opposed to a statutory minimum
wage on the ground that it was an attack upon capital. The bet-
ter employers rather courted some provision that freed them from
the competition of less scrupulous men of their own class. (Page
141.)

Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on Home Work, House
of Commons, London, 1907. G. R. AskwitH (Barrister,
Arbitor in Trade Disputes).

8947. How do you think that the establishment of Wages
Boards would be regarded by workers and employers? You must
have a good deal of experience by coming in contact with both
of these classes of the community. What would be their attitude
towards them, do you think, speaking broadly?—As far as I can
judge from speaking to employers in many trades, they would be
very glad to have them.

3948. Then you would suggest that, as regards employers, where
low rates are paid, frequently they are driven by competition to
pay these rates, and that they would not be unwilling to pay
higher ones, if higher ones prevailed throughout the trade?—
[197 ]

Certainly, I think that is so, if they knew that the man around
the corner was not paying less. If, say, a trades-union official,
or representative of the workmen, came to them and said, “I want
this price raised,” and their answer was, “We would raise the
price if So-and-So around the corner was not paying a lower one,”
and the remedy was to be found in the Wages Board statement,
and they were able to bring the competitor around the corner
before the Wages Board, I think they would be ready to pay the
enhanced price. (Pages 192-193.)

4108. Will employers generally agree as to the establishment
of Wages Boards in these industries, do you think?—The em-
ployers whom I have spoken to on the matter have generally said
that they see no objection to that, and that they consider no harm
would be done, but they would be the better class of employers.
I do not know what a sweating employer would say to it, and I
should not much mind what he did say. (Page 202.)

4184. Generally, have you found that employers are willing
to accept the decisions of Arbitration Boards?—Yes.

4185. And does your experience tell you that employers wouid
be willing to have joint Arbitration Boards and pay standard
wages if all the others in the trade agreed?—Yes, I think so. The
great objection of employers is to other employers paying less
than they do, thereby, as they think, unfairly competing with
them, and further, all employers in a trade are particularly
anxious to avoid uncertainty and to have peace. (Page 205.)

Woman in Industry. Chapter 2. The Minimum Wage. Duck-
worth & Co., London, 1908. By CONSTANCE SMITH.

Here at home—the simple production of evidence that a higher
wage is paid by his competitors in industry thus relieving him of
the fear that he must necessarily be undersold if he pays a decent
rate—will sometimes produce an advance in wages so considerable
as to prove the existence of a very substantial “margin” without
any corresponding increase taking place in the price of the article
manufactured. (Page 53.)

The Economic Review, Vol. 18, London, 1908. The Remuneration
of Women’s Work. HAMILTON W. FYFE.

Low wages are not really due to ghoulish employers or to
selfish workers. Most employers are ready to pay more, but are
prevented by the competition of a few inefficient employers who
undercut their prices. Workers are quite ready to take more, but
[ 198 ]

hunger makes them take what they can get, and that amount is
continually depressed by the competition of the partially sup-
ported. The chief value of Wage Boards would be the extinction
of this competition. (Pages 143-144.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNOWDEN. Hodder & Stoughton, Lon-
don, 1918.

In these days of competitive industry the employer is
often the victim of circumstances over which he has little control,
and it is useless to preach to him to apply moral precepts in the
conduct of his business. The conditions in the unorganized and
unskilled industries are made by the least scrupulous employer,
who finds it more profitable to draw upon (at the expense of
the community) the unlimited supply of half-starved and helpless
labor, which he quickly uses up. The well-intentoned employer is
driven by such competition to adopt the same methods or to leave
the business. The State only can make and enforce common con-
ditions in regard to wages, just as it has done already in regard
to many other conditions of industrial life. (Pages 7-8.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNOWDEN. Hodder & Stoughton, Lon-
don, 1918.

As the payment of high wages necessitates high mechanical
equipment, perfect organization, keen attention to business, the
compulsory payment of high wages would have the effect, of
eliminating the small employer with inadequate capital and infe-
rior business ability. He is kept going now only because he can
exploit an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor, which is subsidized
by the community in innumerable ways. The existence of this
class of employer keeps down the wages of the whole industry.
Employers -who would be willing to pay higher wages are pre-
vented from doing so by the illegitimate competition of this sub-
sidized labor. (Page 147.)

Annual Report of the New Zealand Labor Department, 1902.

The better class of employer is, of course, in favor of a mini-
mum wage, since he is compelled by his own honesty to pay his
men a just price for their services and is thus exposed to unfair
competition from the “sweater” who wishes to grind the earnings
of his work people lower and lower, and abhors a minimum wage
that interferes with what he calls his “liberty to run his business
as he likes.” (Page 5.) .
[ 199 ]

Report of the New Zealand Labor Department, 1907.

It is satisfactory to have to report that generally speaking the
privilege of working under an award is appreciated both by em-
ployers and workers, the former because it equalizes the conditions
in the cost of production and tends to prevent cutting in prices—
the latter because they know they are getting one current market
value for their labor. (Page 27.)

Report from the Select Committee on Home Work to House of
Commons. London, 1908.

We have been impressed by the testimony we have received
to the effect that most, if not indeed all, employers would be glad
to have fixed a minirnum rate of payment and conditions below
which neither they nor their competitors, should be allowed to go.
If nothing more than this were accomplished by the adoption of
the recommendations which we make, a substantial step would be
taken in the improvement of the position of that portion of our
people whose special circumstances we have been considering.
(Page XVIII.) -
[ 200 J

IV. ANALOGY WITH OTHER LABOR
LEGISLATION

Authorities agree in the opinion that the establishment
of a legal minimum wage for women is the logical exten-
sion of the principles underlying other labor legislation,
justified by a century of experierice.

The Recent History of the Living Wage Movement. HENRY W. |
Macrosty, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 13, New York,
1898.

In a long series of public health acts and factory acts rules
were established, coextensive with industry, for the regulation of
the conditions under which labor should be carried on. Each
successive Act of Parliament carried the interference of the state
into more minute details of industry. ae

The natural result has been the application of the same doc-
trine to wages, and the emergence of the vague idea of the “living
wage.” (Page 414.)

Report of Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards,
1912.

To say that a woman shall not contract to work for less than
a decent living wage is to go no further than to say that she
shall not contract to work more than eight or ten hours, or under
certain other unwholesome conditions which may affect her as
the potential mother of future citizens. Indeed, it is much easier
to trace a social connection between working for wages inadequate
to maintain a decent standard of living, and working more than
eight or even ten hours a day. (Page 23.)

The New Democracy. WALTER E, WEYL. Macmillan, New York,
1912.

It is economically as possible to regulate wages as to regulate
hours or sanitary conditions. It is as easy to forbid the manu-
facturers to pay less than a definite scale of wages as it is to
forbid the manufacture of counterfeit coins or the distilling of
untaxed whiskey. All that is required is a changed point of view
in ourselves and our judges. (Pages 293-294, footnote.)

We must regulate factory conditions for men, women and
children and we must so change our legal traditions as to permit
[ 201 ]

the state to establish, not only maximum hours of labor, but also,
in the worst paid trades, minimum wages. (Page 326.)

American Economic Review, American Economic Association,
Cambridge, Mass., 1912. The Legal Minimum Wage in the
United States, by ARTHUR H. HoLcomBE.

The assumption that no such proposal as that to regulate wages
in private employments can be enforced through the courts is pre-
mature. It is first indispensable, however, that the American
people should be convinced that some action for the protection
of the American standard of living is necessary and that the
proposed remedy is appropriate. Whereas the Illinois court of
last resort once refused to enforce a law regulating the hours
of labor of women, and then in the light of further reflection
and a more thorough acquaintance with the actual conditions of
eployment in the state (in the second Ritchie case) reversed its
earlier decisions, so social reformers who can prove their case for
the minimum wage may expect equally favorable consideration
from the courts. There is no essential difference, so far as con-
stitutional status is concerned, between the legal regulation of the
hours of labor and the legal regulation of wages. The constitu-
tionality of both alike is solely a matter of producing sufficient
evidence showing the necessity and appropriateness of the pro-
posed legislation. (Page 29.)

Sweating, by EDWARD CADBURY and GEORGE SHANN. Headley
Bros., London, 1907.

At the present time it is not necessary to justify the right of
the State to interfere with the individual so long as such inter-
ference is for the good of the community as a whole, and the long
story of factory legislation dealing with hours, sanitation, dan-
gerous trades, etc., has justified itself by its results. (Page 112.)

It is to be noted that the proposal to regulate wages is
a logical extension of the principle justified by a century of expe-
rience, of regulating hours, sanitary and other conditions of work.
State legislation in regard to these matters increased in the first
instance the cost of production, but the principle on which such
regulation proceeds is that no trade has a right to persist at the
expense of the health and strength of the employees. The result
of this legislation is that the unscrupulous employer cannot com-
pete unfairly by providing insanitary conditions of work or by
employing his work people long hours. Thus competition must
[ 202 ]

work on other lines and induces more efficient management and
the invention of improved machinery. The increased outlay is also
compensated for by the increased efficiency of the workers.

The same line of argument justifies the regulation of wages.
(Pages 121-122.)

Thus there is no logical distinction between fixing by legisla-
tion a standard of hours and sanitation and fixing a standard
wage. A trade that does not pay a wage that allows for the
maintenance -of the health and strength of the workers is detri-
mental to the welfare of the public. (Page 122.)

West Ham, by Epwarp G. HAawartu, M.A., and Mona WILSON.
J. M. Dent & Co., London, 1907.

One employer whose attitude was not, on the whole, unsympa-
thetic to the inquiry, although he failed to produce returns,
asserted that his wages were quite disgraceful, and that he could
not understand why he and other employers in his trade were
allowed to pay their work people what they chose since ventilation
and other conditions of their employment were regulated by the
Factory and Workshop Act. (Page 155.)

Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on Home Work, House
of Commons, London, 1907. CLEMENTINA BLACK (Repre-
senting the Anti-Sweating League and the Women’s Indus-
trial Council).

P, 2889. Comparing the effect of the Factory Acts with the
legislation you are suggesting now, or which is being suggested,
I suppose you are quite clear that there are cases in which longer
hours would be worked were they not forbidden by the Factory
Act?—I am not only sure of it from my own opservation, but I
have been told it quite frankly by employers within the last three
weeks.

That they would work longer if they could?—Yes. -On the
other hand, during the same period, I have been told by other
employers that they are quite sure it has been to their advantage
to shorten the hours and that it does not really pay to have longer
hours.

Do you suggest from that that wages tend to fall, and will
do so, unless they be, so to speak, supported by legislation?—That
is my firm opinion. (Page 146.)

I thought it was rather self-evident; employers have never
without the law in any trade shortened their hours effectually, and
[ 203 ]

we may see it this minute in mills in the Southern States of
America where there is no Factory Act, and where even quite
young children are working all night, or working all day, and may
legally be worked the whole 24 hours. (Page 146.)

Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on Home Work, House
of Commons, London, 1907. G. R. AsSKwiTH (Barrister,
Arbitor in Trade Disputes).

Parliament stepped in in the Factory Acts to stop the exploit-
ing of the individual by unlimited competition in the production of
articles, and that is exactly what the idea of these bills is with
regard to people who have not been able to organize themselves,
and, in certain industries, to continue the policy of the Factory
Acts. (Page 210.)

Report to the Secretary for the Home Department on the Wages
Boards and Industrial Conciliation Acts of Australia and
New Zealand. ERNEST Aves. London, 1908.

The Special Board system of Victoria is an extension of the
factory legislation of that State, and the legal sanction for the
establishment of these Boards is still found in the same Act that
regulates conditions as regards health and safety. Thus, alike in
enactment and in administration, the Special Boards form part of
the general system of factory regulation. (Page 11.)

Report from the Select Committee on Home Work to House of
Commons, London, 1908.

Upon the question of the general policy of Parliament fixing
or providing for the fixing of a minimum rate of payment for
work, below which it should be illegal to employ people, your
Committee are of the opinion that it is quite as legitimate to
establish by legislation a minimum standard ef remuneration as it
is to establish such a standard of sanitation, cleanliness, ventilation,
air space, and hours of work. If it be said that there may be
industries which cannot be carried on if such a standard of pay-
ment be enforced, it may be replied that this was said when the
enactment of many of the provisions of the Factory and other
similar Acts were proposed, and public opinion supported Parlia-
ment in deciding that, if the prognostication were an accurate one,
it would be better that any trade which could not exist if such a
minimum of decent and humane conditions were insisted upon
should cease. Parliament, with the full approval of the nation,
[ 204 ]

has practically so decided again and again, when enactments have
been passed forbidding the carrying on of specified industries,
unless certain minimum conditions as to health, safety and com-
fort are complied with. (Page XIV.)

National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution. The Work
of the Trade Boards, by J. J. MAuuon. P. S. King & Son,
London, 1912.

The successful results of a legal minimum wage have been
demonstrated by half a generation of actual experience. That the
legal enactment of common rules for an industry as a whole, far
from lessening production, would, as compared with each employer
managing his business as he thought best, actually be an economic
advantage to the industry, has been the teaching of Political
Economy for the whole of this century.

We have in fact, for a whole century been prescribing by
law the minimum condition of the wage contract with regard to one
item after another and thus regulating, in the public interest, by
a hundred successive statutes, the condition under which industry
shall be carried on.

And the scope of the legislation has steadily broadened. For a
long time our factory acts confined themselves in the main to the
enactment of a legal minimum of sanitation and safety in the
workshop and the mine, insisting, for instance, that whether or
not profits were being realized, employers should provide healthy
work places properly warmed and ventilated, free from noxious
effluvia, sufficiently protected against accidents, and adequately
equipped with sanitary conveniences. From that our code went
on to prescribe, for boys and girls, a Legal Minimum of Education,
requiring parents and employers to forego the help in industry
of children below a certain age, insisting that such children should
be in attendance at school, and now gradually enlarging the sphere
of the Local Education Authority so as to ensure that no child
remains below the prescribed National Minimum of Nurture in
any respect whatever. Meanwhile our labor code was laying down
also a Legal Minimum of Leisure and Rest by prescribing a maxi-
mum working day, insisting upon proper intervals for meal-times
and holidays, limiting overtime, etc.

All these successive interferences with the employer’s “right”
to “manage his business in his own way” were resisted on the
ground that they involved additional expense, increased the cost
of production, just as much as if the rate of wages had been
arbitrarily raised, and that they thereby made it impossible for
[ 205 ]

the most hardly pressed business to be carried on. That they
amounted virtually to a confiscation of property was repeatedly
asserted. It was, as an eminent Conservative Minister declared
in the House of Commons: “Jack Cade Legislature,” which robbed
the capitalist of some of his income for the assumed benefit of
his work people. It was accordingly nothing more in the way of
Jack Cade Legislature than that to which we had long grown
accustomed, when the Legislature of Victoria, in 1896, added to
the various minima already required by its Factory Code, a Legal
Minimum Wage. (Pages 394-396.)

The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage. SIDNEY WEBB.
The Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago
Press, December, 1912.

What, at any rate, is clear to the economist is that a Legal
Minimum Wage would have no more effect, and no different an
effect, on our international trade than the limitation of the hours
of labor and the enforcement of sanitary conditions which our
Factory Acts have imposed; and no educated person in Great
Britain today—certainly no one having the least pretensions to
economic knowledge—believes that our Factory Acts have been
otherwise than beneficial to our international trade, which we see
increasing by leaps and bounds. (Page 14.)

Just as it is against public policy to allow an employer to

engage a woman to work excessive hours or under insanitary con-
ditions, so it is equally against public policy to permit -him to
engage her for wages insufficient to provide the food and shelter
without which she cannot continue in health. Once we begin to
prescribe the minimum conditions under which an employer should
be permitted to open a factory, there is no logical distinction to
be drawn between the several clauses of the wage contract.
To the economist and the statesman, concerned with the permanent
efficiency of industry and the maintenance of national health, ade-
quate food is at least as important as reasonable hours or good
drainage. To be completely effectual the same policy will, there-
fore, have to be applied to wages. Thus, to the economist, the en-
forcement of a Legal Minimum Wage appears but as the latest
of the long series of Common Rules, which experience has proved
to be (a) necessary to prevent national degradation; and (b)
positively advantageous to industrial efficiency. (Page 17.)

Indeed, the fixing of a minimum wage on physiological grounds
is a less complicated matter, and one demanding less technological
knowledge, than the fixing of a minimum of sanitation, which is
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done in every factory law; and it interferes far less with the day-
by-day management of industry or its productivity, than any fixing
of the minimum hours of labor, whether of men or women, to
which, wherever excessive hours prevail, the European economist
is now converted. (Page 23.)

The Practical Case for a Legal Minimum Wage. E. C. K. ENsor.
Nineteenth Century, London, 1912.

Under-payment tends clearly to the loss of the nation; and it
is difficult on any ground of pure logic to see why the State,
as trustee of the national interests, should not interfere with it,
just as it has interfered with other features of competitive in-
dustry which appeared destructive of the nation’s human capital.
For about a century a long and ever lengthening series of Factory
Acts and Mines Acts, etc., has been developed and it now minutely
regulates industry, fixing the kinds of people (as to sex or age)
who may be employed in the various trades, the hours they may
work, the conditions (as to sanitation, ventilation, fencing in the
machinery, humidity, etc.) under which they may work, and even
in some measure (as by the Truck Acts) the conditions under
which they may receive their wages. (Pages 265-6.)

It is difficult as had been said, upon any ground of pure
logic to explain why under-payment did not become an orthodox
subject for labor legislation just as much as over-long hours,
inadequate sanitation or dangerous machinery. Whether you put
State interference on the ground of humanitarian sentiment, or on
the more scientific ground of conserving the nation’s capital
resources makes no difference. It is just as cruel to underpay
people as to overwork them and just as wasteful from a national
standpoint. (Page 267.)

The Living Wage. PHILIP SNOWDEN, M.P. Hodder & Stoughton,
London, 1913.

“Unfettered Competition,” says Lord Morley, “is not a principle
to which the regulation of industry may be safely entrusted. The
appalling results which came from a generation of unrestricted
industrial competition arrested the attention of even the landlord
and capitalist classes, and it became manifest to them that some
restriction of unfettered competition was necessary to preserve the
existence of a laboring class. In 1802 there was enacted the first
of the long list of industrial and social measures, which in prin-
ciple are the same as the demand for the Living Wage. A wage is
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only one way of providing the means to satisfy the workers’
needs and aspirations. (Page 13.)

The nation is beginning to realize that. Regulative legislation,
necessary though it is, and beneficial though it is within its lim- ,
its, cannot materially raise the Standard of Life of the workers if
unregulated competition in the matter of wages prevents them
from having wages sufficient to provide them with food, clothing,
housing, and other necessaries essential for the maintenance of
physical health, industrial efficiency and reasonable comfort. The
Living. Wage is the inevitable outcome, and the natural complement,
of the industrial and social legislation of the last hundred years.
(Pages 23-24.)