VIII. EMPLOYERS' VIEWPOINT

While the argument for minimum wage legislation is generally stated from the standpoint of the employes, it must not be supposed that such legislation is opposed by representative employers. Even apart from the human appeal to which most employers readily respond, a policy of enlightened selfishness on their part would lead them to support this legislation. A legal minimum wage destroys the advantage which unscrupulous employers who are willing to cut wages below the subsistence level have always enjoyed over their more decent competitors. Respectable employers have not been slow to appreciate this fact, as was evident during the public hearings held in the spring of 1916, by the conferences appointed to revise the orders of the Oregon Industrial Welfare Commission. During those hearings, while many employers manifested opposition to further reduction of the working day, opinion was practically unanimous in favor of minimum wage legislation; and an increase in the weekly minimum wage in many occupations in Portland from $8.25 to $8.64 was awarded without a single voice being raised in protest at the public hearings held by the Commission. It may be recorded as a matter of interest that the first real encouragement which the movement for wage legislation received in Oregon was a unanimous resolution of endorsement by the Board of Governors of the Portland Commercial Club.

The question is sometimes asked: What will happen to the girls who cannot earn the legal minimum? It may be answered that the aged, crippled and defective workers receive special permits to work for less than the usual wage; and further that if a girl of average ability is unable after a year of apprenticeship to earn enough to pay for the mere necessities of life she is evidently a misfit in that occupation and in justice to herself as well as to her employer she

should seek another line of work. But there is another observation to be made in answer to the above question. There are no standards of earnings among women wage earners. In the words of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards: "There is a common and widespread but erroneous view that an economic law by some mysterious process correlates earnings and wages. There is no such law; in fact, in many industries, the wages bear little or no relation to the value or even to the selling price of the worker's output. Wages among unorganized and lower grades of labor are mainly the result of tradition and slight competition." The investigation of that commission showed "that no principle nor tendency, either according to the size of the establishments, their location or the class of trade to which they cater, underlay the variation in wage scales. Every employer seemed to pay for his labor what he thought 'it was worth,' a mysterious term that no employer was able to elucidate." (Survey, November 9, 1912.) The most astonishing variation in wages for the same grade of work frequently exists between. competing establishments in the same city. This fact, as has been pointed out by competent authorities, is the irrefutable reply to the common objection that wage regulation by states is impracticable because of the burden it would impose on local manufacturers who are confronted with interstate competition.

IX. THE CASE FOR A MINIMUM WAGE

A few words may be said at this point concerning the policy and principles which are found most effective in urging minimum wage legislation. There have been many states in which the connection between inadequate wages and immorality among women has been strongly emphasized. But it is interesting to note that in no state where this agitation. has been carried on has the campaign for securing wage legislation been successful; and this for two reasons: First,

because it is a question whether inadequate wages are to any large degree a cause of women going into a life of immorality; and, second, because such an agitation is a gratuitous insult to the thousands of underpaid women workers whose cooperation and support is absolutely necessary if we are to succeed in arousing public opinion for this legislation. A more substantial argument is that underpaid women workers are denying themselves the necessities of life in order to lead lives of virtue. They are living on one or two meals a day, are denying themselves clothing necessary to maintain their health, and are huddled together in rooms devoid of light, ventilation and of heat. These are facts which investigation has revealed in every city in America, and they are facts of a character to create public sentiment of a permanent sort in favor of minimum wage legislation.

The reasons why women in industry are miserably underpaid, when unprotected by wage regulations, are sufficiently obvious. Women in industry are for the greater part very youthful. They have a marked sense of dependence upon men's judgment, and consequently lack the qualities which are requisite for successful individual wage bargaining. Most of them expect to be self-supporting only for a few years and this circumstance taken in connection with their youth and inexperience incapacitates them for sustained organization which is the essential condition for collective bargaining. Historically women entered industry to supplement the wages of their fathers, husbands and brothers. Conditions have changed and multitudes of women workers are now dependent on their own exertions for their own support, and in many cases for the support of dependent relatives. But the old theory that a woman's wage was merely supplemental to the family income has lingered on to the grave injury of thousands. Many employers and not a few others continue to rehearse the threadbare tales about women working for "pin-money"

and girls "living at home" not needing a living wage. A final relic and instrument of the "sweating" system is the requirement still found in the application blanks of some firms that girls shall keep their wages "confidential." Secrecy of wage schedules has been a prolific source of underpayment among women workers and "pitiless publicity" will be one of its chief correctives.

Just as the whole body of workers must be supported by the entire body of industries, so it is only right that in each industry the wages be sufficient to maintain the workers in health and frugal comfort. An industry which does not pay its employes enough to purchase the necessities of life is a parasite. It makes its profit not from legitimate commercial enterprise, but is subsidized by the workers, at least to the extent of the difference between what they get as a weekly wage and what it costs them a week to live. If any business is so necessary to the community that it must be maintained by a subsidy, in the name of decency and humanity let the subsidy come from the public treasury and not from the earnings of working women and the homes of the poor.

X. LABOR MORE THAN A COMMODITY

The consequences of such a judicial decision as that given by the Oregon Supreme Court cannot easily be over-estimated. It is writing into the fundamental law of the land a new view of labor, namely, that labor is not a mere commodity like corn or cotton. We have been told by reactionaries that the law of supply and demand must be left free to fix wages. Justice Higgins, whom I have already quoted, writes:

They treat this law as being in the matter of wages more inexorable and inevitable than even the law of gravitation, and not being subject as laws of nature are, to counteraction, to control, to direction. "One may dam up a river or even change its course, but one

cannot (it is said) raise wages above the level of its unregulated price, above the level of a sum which a man will accept rather than be starved."

To drag such theories as these into the light of the day, Justice Higgins considers a service to the community. I have listened to an eloquent lawyer pleading in one of our courts, that just as the price of hogs at the slaughter-house is regulated by the law of supply and demand, so likewise, the same law should be allowed freely to control the wages of our women workers upon whose physical strength and moral character depends the perpetuity of the race and the future of humanity.

The right to a living wage vindicated by this judicial decision is the right of a human being to develop his personality, to work out his spiritual destiny, to be what the word "human" implies. If a business cannot pay its rent and interest on borrowed capital, the burden is passed on to those who can. No sympathy is extended to a firm which fails because it can not meet the demands of the landlord or the money loaner; but because it is proposed to make a living wage a first cost on industry, great consternation is expressed at the business failures which are threatened as a result. It may reasonably be suggested that such a calamity may be averted by lowering the rent and the interest.

To a person who thinks that labor is merely a commodity, minimum wage legislation must indeed seem radical. In such a view the labor of women and men has no quality superior in kind to the labor of the beast yoked to the plow; and consequently wage-earners are on a parity with the beasts of burden, for their labor is their sole justification. This horrible and revolting doctrine cannot be repudiated by anyone who denies that the state can insist on "wages at least high enough to insure the worker normal living conditions, sufficient food and healthy housing." How much nobler was