is an important factor in producing the low wage scale. Many are women who are often members of a family group, unable to move from place to place in search of better opportunities, but remaining at home to overcrowd the few lines of work available in a given locality. Then, too, the majority of women workers are young and inexperienced and their frequent withdrawal from industry on marriage makes them look upon their work as only temporary. On the whole, it has been extremely difficult to form stable unions among women workers. Experience both in England and in this country shows that organization among low-skilled men workers is almost equally difficult. In the absence of collective agreements it has sometimes been possible to compel the workers to keep their wages secret. An Oregon department store, for instance, requires each applicant for employment to sign an agreement which includes a promise to "keep my salary confidential." Such secrecy obviously makes it easier to depress wage scales. Under the circumstances it is also not surprising that among this group of workers the relation between wages and productivity is not traceable, but that "there are also great differences in wages for work that is apparently the same. Some firms pay constantly 25 per cent. more than their rivals for similar operations.' the United States the situation is further complicated by the stream of immigration, which furnishes an abundant supply of cheap labor and which puts still another barrier, in the shape of divergent language and customs, in the way of union organization.

,, 2 In

Another reason for the low wage scale, largely the result 2 of the first, is the cutthroat competition of the workers for work. Among the unskilled, unorganized workers, the wage that the cheapest laborer, such as the partially supported woman, the immigrant with low standards of living or the workman oppressed by extreme need, is willing to take, very largely fixes the wage level for the whole group. 3. A third reason, the obverse of that just discussed, is the

1 Report of the Social Welfare Committee, Consumers' League of Oregon, 1913, p. 26.

2 Fourth Report of the New York Factory Investigating Commission, 1915, "The Confectionery Industry," Vol. II, p. 312.

absence of active competition among employers for workers. With a plentiful supply of the lower grades of labor continually seeking employment, the employer need offer no inducement in the form of higher remuneration in order to fill his shop.

Moreover, a socially undesirable type of competition between employers flourishes when the bargaining power of employees is weak. The encouragement of superior ability and invention has always been pointed out as one of the chief advantages gained by the community from the competitive system of production. When an employer can hire workers for practically his own price, he can be slack and inefficient in his methods, and yet, by reducing wages, reduce his cost of production to the level of his more able competitor.

Minimum wage legislation, therefore, may answer the demands of social policy in two ways. By setting a barrier below which wages may not fall, it lightens the pitiful poverty and prevents the degeneration in body and spirit of those forced to live on a wage too small to supply the necessaries of life. Competition among them no longer takes the form of offering to work for lower wages, but that of developing greater efficiency. At the same time employers are forced to compete in efficiency of management, thus securing for society at large the many advantages of constantly improved methods of production. Minimum wage laws attempt neither to destroy competition nor to fix wages by law; they merely seek to set the lower limits to both in the interests of society as a whole.

Australasia is the birthplace of minimum wage legislation. Though it is a new and prosperous country, as long ago as the 'eighties the sweating system, with its evils of low wages long hours and unsanitary conditions, was discovered to be alarmingly prevalent. The Age, the leading Melbourne newspaper, carried on a crusade against these conditions, and a royal commission was appointed whose report in 1884 showed

that hours were excessive and that wages were constantly reduced by the miserable rates paid to home workers. Public indignation was aroused until finally determined efforts were made to overcome these evils.

In 1894 New Zealand passed a law providing for the compulsory arbitration of labor disputes, which, while primarily intended to preserve industrial peace, may also be used for the prevention of sweating. The district conciliation boards established by this law have authority to fix minimum wages, and if sweated workers want their conditions improved they need only file a statement of their claims in the office of the nearest conciliation board. By means of this machinery underpaid workers, men more often than women, have secured wage increases.

However, the first Australasian law whose main purpose was to end sweating was passed by Victoria two years later, and since it is the Victorian method which Great Britain and the United States have adopted, the system deserves consideration at length. The public feeling against the sweating system in Victoria had resulted in the formation of an Anti-Sweating League. Largely as a result of the league's efforts and in spite of bitter opposition from the employers under the leadership of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures, Victoria passed the first minimum wage law in 1896. Sir Alexander Peacock, originator of the system and later minister of labor in Victoria, has written: "It was alleged, first, that all work would be driven out of the country; secondly, that only the best workers would be employed; and thirdly, that it would be impossible to enforce such provisions at all. . . . However, the government managed to carry the bill and the wage-board system was inaugurated."1

The law required that representative boards fix minimum wages in certain industries designated by the legislature. Moreover, being frankly an experiment, the act was to be in force for only four years. Wage boards were first appointed in the six especially sweated trades of boot-making and

1 M. B. Hammond, "The Minimum Wage in Great Britain and Australia." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 1913, p. 28.

baking, which employed mostly men; clothing, shirt-making, and underclothing, which mostly employed women; and in furniture-making, in which the competition of Chinese labor was depressing wages. In 1900, when the first minimum wage law came to an end, the government brought in a bill providing for the extension of the wage-board system to other trades. The Victorian Chamber of Manufactures protested violently, urging, and with good reason, that the government's proposal meant the extension of the system to trades in which there was no evidence of sweating. However, the government showed that it had received a number of applications from employers, asking for the appointment of special boards, and that sweating had disappeared in the trades in which boards had been established. Accordingly the bill was passed and an extension of the system was begun which has continued from year to year until at the present time nearly 150 separate boards have been appointed, fixing minimum wage rates for over 150,000 employees in a state whose total population is less than a million and a half. The only important group of workers whose wages are not regulated are those in agricultural pursuits. Minimum wage rates have been established for all the important manufacturing occupations in the cities and also for street railways, mercantile and clerical employments and mining. The wageboard system is no longer regarded as an emergency measure intended to secure a living wage where conditions are exceptionally bad, but as a satisfactory method of fixing the standard wage in any trade. The act was again renewed in 1903, and in 1904 was made permanent. While the scope of the law has been widely extended the opposition of the employers has decreased, until in April, 1912, M. B. Hammond, of the Ohio Industrial Commission, as a result of first-hand investigations reported that both employers and employees "are now practically unanimous in saying that they have no desire to return to the old system of unrestricted competition in the purchase of labor." South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania in 1900, 1908, and 1910, respectively, adopted legislation similar to the Victorian act.

1 Ibid., p. 35.

(2) Great Britain

One of the most important developments in the English social reform movement during the last decade is the acceptance of minimum wage legislation as a practicable policy. While ten years ago the fixing of minimum wage rates by law was apparently outside the realm of practical politics, it is advocated in Great Britain to-day not only by the Labor Party, but also by the Liberals and an influential group of Conservatives.

Among the chief reasons for this development of public policy is the increased public knowledge of conditions among sweated workers. Investigations showed that large numbers of low-skilled unorganized workers were receiving less than the wage necessary for the maintenance of mere physical efficiency. Attempts were made to extend trade unionism among them, so that they might raise their wages as more skilled workers had done, by collective bargaining. But the formation of strong unions among these sweated workers was generally found to be impossible. The market for their labor was chronically overstocked and the struggle for bare existence was too severe to permit the development of stable organizations. The public was aroused to this menace of insufficient wages, which its victims themselves seemed powerless to remedy, mainly through the efforts of the National Anti-Sweating League, which, with the Labor Party and certain other organizations, vigorously urged the adoption of minimum wage legislation. The agitation resulted first in a parliamentary inquiry and finally in 1909 in the passage of a trade boards act, modeled on the Victorian statute, which should go into effect the following year.

This law provided that wage boards may be established by order of the board of trade, subject to ratification by Parliament, for all employees in any industry in which the prevailing rate of wages is "exceptionally low as compared with that in other employments." 1 The first four trades regulated were tailoring, paper - box making, the finishing of machine-made lace, and the manufacture of certain kinds

'Trade boards act, 9 Edw. 7, C, 22, Sec. 1 (2).