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not earned at the time the assignment is made shall be null and void." Assignments to secure loans or future advances are invalid in Georgia and Massachusetts, and all assignments of future earnings are prohibited in Indiana.

2. THE LABORER AS CREDITOR

Modern industry is conducted mainly "on credit." The employer is the middleman, whose creditors are those who advance the capital he uses, and whose debtors are those who buy his product. When the laborer starts to work for him, he also becomes, for a time, a creditor. He contributes his services in advance of compensation. He is a temporary investor in the business. While he works he passes over to the employer the title to his product, and retains a claim for wages. When his wages are paid his investment is liquidated.

Other investors advance money or "credit." Their contracts are secured by notes, bonds, mortgages, giving to them a preferred claim on the property and earnings of the business. They invest "capital"-the laborer invests "labor." Laws regulating the time, place, and medium of payment, laws providing for mechanics' liens, wage preference, and so on, are intended to guarantee to the laborer as creditor, regardless of contract, that certainty of payment which the capitalist as creditor secures in the ordinary enforcement of contracts.

(1) Time of Payment

1

Legislation has not until recently ventured to interfere directly and set the amount of wages, but it makes the amount of wages greater or less by indirect methods. Whatever the nominal amount may be, the frequency of the time of payment is a matter of concern to the laborer. The longer he must wait for his wages the greater is the extent of his need for credit, and, accordingly, the higher will be his cost of living and the lower his real wages. The advantages of fewer

1 See Chapter IV, "The Minimum Wage."

pay days are obvious to the employer. His cost of bookkeeping is less, and his required circulating capital will be less.

Over the entire world in industrial states there are statutes requiring a regular pay day, which may be once a month, semi-weekly, or weekly. Many of the European laws are so phrased that modifications may be introduced according to local custom. The Swiss government makes it incumbent upon the master to pay wages at any time according to work done, so as to enable the servant to meet any special need, and the interpretation of the law is left to administrative officers." Two-thirds of the states of the United States, and Hawaii, have laws dealing with time and mode of payment of wages. Most of these laws provide for semi-monthly payment, and most of them stand without being contested in the courts to determine their constitutionality. Some cases have reached the courts, and different decisions have been rendered.

In favor of the validity of such laws, it has been argued that semi-monthly payment of wages is required by the actual necessities of employees, and that regular payment of wages at short intervals is much more a matter of life and death to a workingman with a family dependent on him than to the employing corporation.3 The purpose of the Rhode Island weekly payment law was laid down by the court as being protection of the worker from "the greed of corporate capital." Poverty and weakness, it was said, "can wage but an unequal contest with corporate wealth and power"; and the act was considered to be for the prosperity and comfort of the workingmen, who depend entirely on their weekly wages, and are, like other people, obliged to pay for credit.1

The cases in which laws relating to time of wage payment have been held unconstitutional show, as might be expected, that less consideration was given to the practical economic facts of the situation. In these cases appears the usual argument that the liberty of contract of the workingman is en

1 For example, the Netherlands, Bulletin of the International Labor Office, Vol. II, 1907, p. 411.

Federal act to supplement the Swiss federal code, March, 1911, Bulletin of the International Labor Office, Vol. VI, 1911, p. 96.

'Arkansas Stave Co. v. State, 94 Ark. 27 (1910).

• State v. Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co., 18 R. Į. 16, 25 Aṭl. 286 (1892), at p. 252.

croached upon by legislation. In the case of Johnson v. Goodyear Mining Co. an indignant protest was raised by the court against any interference with the liberty of contract. "The workingman of intelligence," it was said, "is treated as an imbecile. Being over twenty-one years of age, and not a lunatic or insane, he is deprived of the right to make a contract as to the time when his wages shall fall due."

There are several states which legislate to the effect that wages shall be paid during working hours. This accomplishes two things: it saves the time of the employee and precludes payment in bar-rooms. In Austria the time for payment of wages to mine workers is reckoned within the duration of the shift.2 In Massachusetts, where there are 100 or more persons employed in any establishment, wages are to be paid during working hours. In France payment of wages must not be made on days kept as rest days for employees. The law of Greece is fairly representative of those of some other countries: it provides that wages shall be paid not later than the time when daily work is concluded, and that in undertakings with more than 200 workers the manner of paying wages may be regulated by administrative order."

3

Most of the states and countries provide that an employee shall be paid immediately upon discharge, and for delay thereafter is entitled to interest charges-in the case of Iowa $1 a day penalty up to twice the amount of the wages due. In some cases this penalty is 5 per cent. a year to be added for the cost of the delay, and the attorney's fee if his services are necessary to procure wages withheld from an employee. When an employee quits, the law generally stipulates that he shall be paid at the next regular pay day.

(2) Place of Payment

The evil attached to the payment of men in saloons needs no elaboration, and it is to be noticed that this evil is partly

1 Johnson v. Goodyear Mining Co., 127 Cal. 4, 59 Pac. 304 (1899). 2 Bulletin of the International Labor Office, Vol. VII, 1912, p. 246. Lois, Décrets, Arrêtés concernant la Réglementation du Travail, Bk. I, Ch. II, Sec. II, Art. 46.

• Bulletin of the International Labor Office, Vol. VII, 1912, p. 290.

taken care of in some places by providing that wages shall be paid upon the premises, as in Servia and Berne. This coincides with most of the legislation of the American states on the subject. California and Nevada, however, specifically provide that payment of wages shall be made to no one in bar-rooms except it be those employed therein. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Great Britain 2 have all legislated against payment of wages in public houses and

taverns.

(3) Basis of Payment

In the United States there are some statutes that prohibit the screening of coal before it is weighed, the loss of coal through the screen being regarded as causing an unjust loss to the miner, whose contract calls for payment by the weight of coal mined. The validity of such laws has been both upheld and denied by different state courts, but in the case of McLean v. State of Arkansas 3 the Supreme Court held the law to be within the police power of the states.

(4) Medium of Payment

Carlyle declaimed against a modern civilization whose only bond of union is the cash nexus. Yet, from a different point of view, it may be said that liberty depends on cash. Indeed, the transition from slavery to freedom is a transition from payment in lodging, board, and goods, or "truck," to payment in legal tender or in a medium convertible into money on demand at its face value. Cash means freedom. It permits the wage-earner to buy what and where he wants. It also means earnings, for it exposes and corrects unwarranted deductions, such as high prices, through bookkeeping ac

counts.

a. “Living In.” Under systems of slavery, serfdom, in

1 Great Britain, Departmental Committee on Truck Acts, Report, 1908, pp. 96, 97.

2

46 and 47 Vict., C. 31 (1883).

McLean v. Arkansas, 211 U. S. 535 (1906).

dentured service, and apprenticeship the laborer lived on the premises of his master. The most complete survival of these systems in modern industry is known in England as "living in," where the employee receives part payment in board and lodging at his place of employment. The system is encountered in all countries, and is characteristic of domestic service. Very often "living in" is made a condition of employment, either express or implied, and the board and lodging accommodations provided are often inferior and inadequate. The system may rob the employees of their sense of personal responsibility and check individuality and independence of character. There is frequently no freedom of complaint, for, if the workers venture to remonstrate about food or lodging, they render themselves liable to dismissal and "spoiling" their references. In Great Britain the committee on the truck acts in 1908 recommended regulations as to accommodations provided in "living in" establishments, but did not seem to have a clear case for the abolition of the system. However, a minority report advocated its entire abolition.1

In Berne the law of 19082 requires that food provided for the employees must be sufficient and wholesome and that the accommodation must satisfy all sanitary requirements. In Austria the administrative authority may determine by order that, in the case of undertakings of a certain kind or situation in certain districts it shall be unlawful to provide board or lodging for the employees as a part of their remuneration. In South Australia the occupier of an establishment and the members of his family are prohibited from lodging and boarding adult persons in his service, in the case of those whose wages are fixed by wage boards, exception being made in the case of hotels, clubs, restaurants, and the like.*

In the United States the subject of "living in" has not yet come into the realm of legislation, but it exists in hotels, restaurants, bakeries, and clubs.

b. Company Houses and Labor Camps. The employer may

1 Great Britain, Departmental Committee on the Truck Acts, Report,

1908, Vol. I, p. 78; Minority Report, Vol. I, p. 84.

2 Bulletin of the International Labor Office, Vol. III, 1908, p. 122.

3 Ibid., Vol. V, 1910, p. 203.

Ibid., Vol. VII, 1912, p. 20.

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