о A LIVING WAGE BY LEGISLATION THE OREGON EXPERIENCE BY EDWIN V. O'HARA Chairman of the Industrial Welfare Commission of the Together with the Code of Rulings of the Oregon SALEM, OREGON: 1916 I. W. C. Orders No. 6 to No. 23 inclusive.. Act creating the Industrial Welfare Commission. Extracts from the Decision of the Supreme Court of ii A Living Wage by Legislation The Oregon Experience I. RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE STATE The minimum wage movement is not an isolated program; it is an integral part of a general campaign for the establishment of minimum standards of public health and well-being. It is intimately associated with the demand for the limitation of hours of labor; for accident prevention; for regulation of light, air, congestion and sanitation in the housing of the multitude; for social insurance against accidents, sickness, old-age and unemployment; for popular education and industrial training. The general thesis is that the State has the duty to prevent any large section of its people from falling below decent standards of living. In support of this general proposition we urge that the submerging of any considerable portion of the population below decent standards of living inevitably results in: a. Economic evils, namely, a diminished power of production and a diminished power of consumption. An under-fed, over-wrought, unhealthy and under-paid working population must be inefficient workers and will be unable to purchase the products of industry for their own use. b. Social evils, namely, the spread of infectious and contagious diseases, the lowering of educational standards and the deterioration of public morals. It cannot be questioned that the power of a human being to resist physical disease and moral temptation is greatly weakened by over-strain and malnutrition. c. Domestic evils, namely, a disintegration of family ties, a diminution of parental control and a growth of parental irresponsibility. Normal home and family life is imperilled in a submerged population. iii |