14. The court will not keep down wages to help one competitor against another.

15. The court accepts and follows the usual practice of making rates for casual employment higher than the corresponding rates for continuous employment.

16. The court provides exceptions to the minimum rates in the case of aged, slow or infirm workers.

18. The court regards the old system of apprenticeship as unsuitable for factories under modern conditions. The proper method, however, seems to be to co-ordinate the work of the factories with the work of the technical schools.

21. Where it is established that there is a marked difference in the cost of living between one locality and another, the difference will so far as possible, be reflected in the minimum wage.

24. In cases where employes are "kept," found in food and shelter by the employer, the value of the "keep" is allowed in reduction of the wages awarded.

25. The principle of the living wage has been applied to women, but with a difference, as women are not usually legally responsible for the maintenance of a family. A woman's minimum is based on the average cost of her own living to one who supports herself by her own exertions. A woman with a comfortable home cannot be left to underbid in wages other women or girls who are less fortunate.

26. But in an occupation in which men as well as women are employed the minimum is based on a man's cost of living; if the occupation is that of fruit picking, as both men and women are employed, the minimum must be a man's minimum.

29. In certain exceptional cases the court has granted a right to a leave of absence for two or three weeks on full pay to employes after a certain length of continuous service; not of course to casual or temporary employes.

In applying the minimum wage principle to piece work the following plan was adopted:

The court prescribed the piece-work rates on a time-work basis-found the piece-work rates which would enable an average worker to earn such wages per week as would be the just minimum for a man (of equal qualifications) if he were paid by time. Sometimes the court protects piece-workers in making their bargain by prescribing that their remuneration shall not fall below, in result, a certain time-work minimum.

IV. AMERICAN LEGISLATION

These propositions of Justice Higgins outline for us admirably the working out of minimum wage legislation abroad.* Let us now turn to our own country. Because it was feared that the courts would consider the application of wage regulation to men an infringement on the right of free contract guaranteed to American citizens by the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, all measures for minimum wage legislation in America up to the present apply only to women workers. We shall consider the legal question. presently. Let us first understand the general provisions of the American acts.

The first American minimum wage commission was created by the legislative assembly of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1912. In several important features the Massachusetts act has been followed by all states enacting such legislation except Utah, which alone of the eleven states has fixed a minimum wage by direct act of the legislature without the instrumentality of an administrative commission and without any obvious relation between the wage so fixed

* For the British experience, see Studies in the Minimum Wage by R. H. Tawney, The Ratan Tata Foundation. (University of London, London, 19141915.)

and the minimum cost of decent subsistence. Three features of the Massachusetts law have been generally accepted in this country:

1. That a commission shall be appointed to administer the act; thus providing for a continuing body which may acquire some expert knowledge and competence in dealing with the social and economic facts involved.

2. That wage boards or conferences consisting of representatives of the public and of employers and employes in the various industries shall be established to make recommendations to the commission before rulings are made.

3. That the basis of minimum wage determinations shall be an inquiry into the sum "which is adequate to supply the necessary cost of living and maintain the worker in health."

The Massachusetts law differs from all subsequent acts except Nebraska in this, that it is "without teeth"; the decisions of the Massachusetts commission are enforceable only in so far as public opinion is effective and are without legal sanction. The states which have minimum wage laws at this writing are as follows: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. Practically every other state in the Union has the matter under active discussion; many have official investigating committees preparing elaborate reports on the question.

V. THE OREGON ACT

The Oregon act, which was passed almost unanimously by the legislature of 1913, without regard to party, was prepared by a committee of the Oregon Consumers' League. A survey of the wages, hours and conditions of women workers in Oregon was prepared for the committee by Miss Caroline J. Gleason, who later did a similar work for the Washington

State Industrial Welfare Commission, and who has served continuously as secretary of the Oregon Industrial Welfare Commission since its inception. The Industrial Welfare Commission authorized by the Legislature was appointed by Governor West in the spring of 1913, and began work in June of that year. In addition to the regulation of wages there was committed to the Commission the fixing of maximum hours and sanitary conditions of labor. The Commission as first constituted, consisted of Mr. Amedee M. Smith, representing the employers, Miss Bertha Moores, representing the employes, and the present writer, as chairman of the Consumers' League Committee, which had drafted the law, representing the public. No change has since occurred in the personnel of the Commission.

At the beginning of its work the Commission called informal conferences of employers in the hope that they might voluntarily adopt standards of hours and wages and conditions for their women workers which would make it unnecessary to proceed with compulsory orders. After several weeks of fruitless efforts along this line, the Commission realized that suspicion of their competitors on the part of many employers and disinclination to cooperate with the Commission on the part of not a few, rendered the issuing of mandatory rulings the only practicable course to follow. The autumn of 1913 was devoted to calling conferences in the various industries, receiving recommendations and holding public hearings. Before the end of the year compulsory orders had been entered covering the general field of the Commission's activity. These orders contained the first minimum wage determinations made by any Commission in America. The orders of the Commission, revised to become effective September 1, 1916, will be found codified in an appendix to the present paper. They provide for a minimum weekly wage rate for experienced adult women workers ranging from

$8.25 in the smaller towns of the State to $9.25 in certain occupations in Portland. An important feature of the revised orders is the provision for a rise in the wage scale every four months during the year allowed for apprenticeship. Other provisions of the Code relate to the limitation of daily hours of labor, the prohibition of night work, the requirement of one day of rest in seven, a forty-five minute lunch period and general sanitary regulations.

VI. CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS

We have already referred to the fact that American wage legislation has been applied only to women because of the fear that legal interference with the contractual freedom of men might be declared unconstitutional. As a matter of fact the courts were to be called on to decide whether the same would not be considered the case where women were concerned. In upholding the celebrated Oregon ten-hour law, the United States Supreme Court has laid down broadly the grounds on which welfare legislation interfering with the freedom of contract of women would be upheld by the courts while similar legislation would not be sustained for men. Justice Brewer wrote in the case of Muller v. Oregon:

That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. Still again, history discloses the fact that woman has always been dependent upon man. He established his control at the outset by superior physical strength and this control in various forms with diminishing intensity has continued to the present. As minors, though not to the same extent, she has been looked upon in the courts as needing especial care that her rights may be preserved. Differentiated by these matters from the other sex, she is properly placed in a class by herself, and legislation designed for her protection, may be sustained even when like legislation is not necessary for men and could not be sustained. It is impossible