The produc

done by men weavers and by women weavers. tion of the men weavers is, if anything, slightly greater. As has already been shown, there is a difference as between England and the United States in the practice of supplying weavers with assistance. In England a weaver has assigned to him a given number of looms, and is commonly required to do all the "laboring" connected with these looms. In the United States the weavers have, as a general rule, no helpers, but the work of oiling, sweeping, and carrying yarn and cloth is done by operatives known as "oilers," "sweepers," and "filling carriers," etc., employed by the mill. In a number of the American mills for which information was secured the wages of oilers and other employees mentioned amounted to slightly over 7 per cent. of the wages of the weavers. This percentage may therefore be regarded as the amount of assistance which the American weavers receive in their work. As the English weavers usually pay their own help, the percentage representing the assistance received by American weavers should be taken into consideration when comparing the amount of work done.

THE MINIMUM RATE POLICY

[THE following extracts have been made with the assistance of the author, D. A. McCabe, assistant professor of economics in Princeton University, and are printed with the publishers' approval. These selections comprise parts of the Introduction, pp. 10-16, and parts of Chapter II, found on pp. 83–106 (rate grouping by competency) and on pp. 114-119 (wages and efficiency), from The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 30th series, No. 2, 1912.]

The standard rate as a minimum [page 10]. The maintenance of standard rates has always been a leading feature of American trade-union wage policies. The unions have from the first sought to attain their primary purpose of advancing wages by substituting collectively established rates of wages for those which their members could obtain in isolated wage bargains. Almost universally their efforts in this direction have taken the form of the establishment and enforcement of standard rates. . . . The standard rate is ordinarily expressed as a minimum rate. Members are allowed to receive more than the standard rate, but for a member to work for less, unless specifically exempted by the union, is a violation of the union rule. The establishment of a standard rate does not, therefore, necessarily secure to the unions complete participation in the settlement of the wage rate to be paid in each individual case. Such full participation would require that the union rate should be the actual rate paid to each workman. Union piece prices are almost always the rates actually paid, for there is ordinarily no good reason why the employers should pay one member more per piece than another for the same kind of work. Standard time rates, however, are, with few exceptions, not only nominally but actually

minimum rates, leaving it necessary for individual settlements to determine in each case whether and to what extent the rate to be actually paid shall exceed the standard.

Piece rates as contrasted with time rates are therefore intrinsically better adapted to collective action. Since those who are working by the piece on the same kinds of product or parts of a product ordinarily are paid at the same rate, they all have a common interest in the rate. But there is no such advantageous rallying point in the matter of time wages. Indeed there is a natural tendency in time wages to variation on account of differences in competency among the workmen. In the case of the piece rate, or of the normal work day, on the contrary, the union makes a uniform demand, which is assumed to advance the interests of all alike, and can be easily made the subject of union bargaining for the group as a whole.

Difficulty of rating time workers. Bargaining for time wages thus presents an inherent difficulty. It is not reducible to a uniform demand which is to affect all alike. On the other hand the policy of establishing a distinct time rate for each individual worker has not commended itself to the unions. This policy would give the union full control of actual wages, if it could be enforced; but the union rate would in each case apply to an individual only. There would be collective action, but not for a rate with collective application. As actually in vogue, the standard time rate may not give complete union determination of actual wages; but it does make possible a rate of collective application. It has the advantage of simplicity as a means of determining wages for a considerable number of men in collective bargaining and as an obligation to be enforced by the union. In choosing to enforce minimum time rates rather than actual individual rates the unions have surrendered a possible complete participation in the determination of actual wages in favor of a kind of union rate which makes much more feasible the establishment by union bargaining, or in the absence of a union

agreement with the employer-by collective enforcement, of the rates adopted by the union. . . .

Problems in adjusting the minimum [page 15]. The questions of chief interest in the employment of the standard time rate grow out of the fact that, as workmen are found, there are variations in efficiency in practically every group of workers. If the union is to secure effective participation in wage determination the minimum rate must be so adjusted that a relatively large proportion of the workmen covered by a particular rate will be favorably affected in a perceptible way by its existence. The basis chosen for the inclusion of workers within a given rate group very largely determines the difficulty of reaching this result. If the groups are so divided that the members of each are of almost equal wageearning capacity the minimum rate will stand in approximately the same relation to the wages of all the members of the group. In such a case the use of the standard rate for time wages seems to reap a maximum of union advantage. If, however, the members employed in a given trade or branch of a trade vary considerably in worth to the employer, unless they are grouped according to competency and each group rated correspondingly, any particular standard rate will either be so low as to be of little appreciable support to the most efficient men, or so high as to exclude a number of the least efficient from employment at the union rate.

There is obviously an inherent difficulty in establishing standard rates for workers who are not standardized. Occasionally unions have sought for a solution in the direction of standardizing the workers by dividing them into groups according to competency. But the usual basis of grouping is the kind of work done, not the efficiency with which it is done. An appreciable tendency toward standardization of men engaged in the same kind of work or subject to the same minimum, at least toward the elimination of those below a somewhat variable level of capacity, is fostered in many unions by the requirements as to competency insisted on for

admission to membership. In the great majority of cases, however, the same rate applies to workers of appreciably differing capacities, and the establishment of the standard leaves some members of more than average efficiency under the necessity of individual contracting to secure wages higher than their less efficient fellow members. The influence of the various phases of union policy connected with the maintenance of minimum time rates on the opportunities of the speedier or more highly skilled workmen to obtain more than the union rate, and the extent to which they actually do obtain more, are among the most significant questions connected with union wage policies-and the most difficult of exact answer.

Group rates by kinds of work in a trade [page 83]. The line of demarcation between groups subject to different minimum rates has nearly always to do with the kind of work the members are performing, not with the degree of competency shown in doing work of the same kind. In many trades there are two or more separate kinds of work which are recognized as constituting distinct branches or subdivisions of the trade or craft, each in itself the special, and for the most part exclusive, occupation of those who follow it. Where there are such occupational groups within the membership of a union -and in most time-working trades there are at least two, and often several-the general union policy is to establish different minimum rates for groups recognized as requiring different grades of skill. . . .

The differences in occupation within the membership of a union are often wider than those within what may be considered a trade or craft. Some unions, the so-called "industrial" unions, include workmen of several trades within their membership. . . . In such unions as these, the question of rating naturally resolves itself at the outset into a separate determination for each of the distinct trades.

Many unions are composed of the members of trades which have been much subdivided in recent years in conse