AN HONEST CONFESSION
An Honest Confession Statement By A Large Employer of The Benefits That Accure In A Business Way By Doing Justice To His Employees TESTIFYING before the Committee on the District of Columbia of...
...The very encouragement of this increased wage would help them?-" Mr...
...Mr...
...Filene said: "Mr...
...It has in it the poisoning of the very strength we need in this critical time if we are really going to win this war...
...I will pass now to the actual experience that we had with the minimum wage...
...That is one of the real reasons for approving it-—the minimum wage legislation merely provides the machinery by which joint action is .-secured by that part of the industry that really is far-sighted enough to advance it...
...Reason For Past Acts...
...We employers need this legislation really, not figuratively...
...Oh, yes...
...That makes the slacker employer in the shops, in the industry, who does not want to think hard enough to see what is really the profitable thing in business stop and think...
...Ws treat our cows and horses well because we have got to pay out the money directly if we maltreat them and they become sick or die...
...And let me say that I believe that is so especially now that a hearing like this is actually on...
...A decent wage is based on intelligent work, which means intelligent management in the final analysis...
...Their semiannual increases of 50 cents, therefore, will come on October 1 and April 1. 'The store manager is to arrange for a separate consideration and determination of the facts in every case where the employee is not approved for the standard semiannual increase by the department executive...
...Our business, the retail distribution, is about the most lawless business in the world, I think...
...I personally have always in picking my executives, preferred very expensive executives...
...It becomes peculiarly true that if now when the minimum-wage issue is put up this committee should say, and Congress should say—and I do not believe you will say it —but I want you to imagine what the effect would be if Congress should say that these unjust wages—because they are unjust—are sufficient, or that for any other reason they do not see fit to deal with it...
...we heed this legislation just as much as the employes do...
...It was made as a result of his own business experience...
...the in rease of wages through bonuses which come from a percentage, which is half *.he percentage that the minimum wage represents...
...but because we can drop an employe who becomes sick from lack of proper wages, because society takes up that burden for us, we blindly go ahead—shortsightedly go ahead —and let this system keep on...
...I am constantly afraid that I shall die disgraced...
...For those who have been in this store less than a year these increases will come on the anniversary of their entrance...
...Cheap wages make cheap standards, and the danger is that with all the details of the supervision necessary with cheap wages we will b satisfied with those cheap standards...
...If you are in doubt about the situation, 1 think yon Will find 1ft stores over the country where the minimum wage is placed pretty high, higher than was contemplated in Massachusetts t—you will find the owners are content...
...Most of us business men see this...
...they are paid a lot of money to do so...
...We have found that there was an enormous advantage in adopting the minima a wage...
...You can not teach spiritual truth to starving people...
...I will stop there because that brings up the thought as to what becomes of the people who can not earn $12...
...Of course when that is really understood it is going to be remedied...
...I sometimes wonder how many kinds of a hypocrite I am...
...I have been rather surprised that so little has been said to you of our case...
...there is no freedom without a material base and support to it...
...Now, of course, this may sound a little bit up in the air, that we had rather pay more than $12, but all of these things have produced results...
...Beginning today there is to be" "an adjanc$ of at least 50 cents for each half year of service as completed for all employes, earning less than $12, provided their work is considered to be satisfactory...
...it really takes the blinders off of him by making him give wages good enough so that he will have some time to think of thesi problems...
...That is the disgrace I had in mind...
...The only thing that would fake the place of this sort of a minimum wage, and which might properly take the place of it would to make the employers pay as much attention to their employees and be as responsible to them as they are to their cows and horses...
...There is so much leeway in the improvement in retail dis tribation and in production that the extra initial cost can be made to fay...
...Although the employees have received'higher wages...
...FILENE...
...WHEN we make this appeal throughout the community, when we make the appeal in the shipbuilding communities for loyal support in such a way as to make the man in the shipyard feel that he is an industrial soldier and doing as much as the man with the gun, then the community which is being oppressed, being badly used, will not respond to that appeal, and the result is bad...
...We encourage ail we ca...
...very much...
...There are very few who can not earn $12...
...I think it will appeal to you gentlemen as business men that an underpaid employee will not have strength or desire to study very much to put more intelligence into the distribution, into the selling...
...If we were directly responsible for our employees, there would not be any need for the minimum-wage proposition...
...The $7 a week girl is pretty hard pressed with her own problems, and she does not have very much time to do much more than just do her day's work and then worry for the rest of the time about how she is going to get along with what she has made that day...
...If a man or woman is working for me for $15 or $20 a week, or a gfrl for $5 or $6 a week, I am complacent and let them go on, thinking that, after all, they do not cost very much...
...It ought not to go on, and especially it ought not to go on now...
...The best proof that this experiment in these six or seven years has been very satisfactory is shown by the fact that on April 1 of this year we made a new minimum wage of $9 for inexperienced help and $10 after one year, and then an increase of 50 cents a week each six months until $12 is reached...
...but that is the most costly thing that can happen to my business...
...i am not going to deal with the theory that no trade 6* occupation Is justifiable which does not pay a decent wage, I think you have accepted that...
...Oh, yes...
...You say, of course, that the management ought to furnish the Intelligence...
...But, as a rule, we do not...
...and after all, this minimum wage legislation merely provides the machinery...
...Keating of Colorado, to provide for the establishment of a minimum wage in the District of Columbia for women and children...
...We would not be satisfied even with a $12 wage, unless our salespeople could earn more than that...
...I think that otherwise I should tot have been here...
...It is not what they are getting a week, but what they ought to deliver if conditions were made right for them...
...I was under the impression that we had it a good deal longer than I find we have when I look it up...
...I am going to boast somewhat and say that in this kind of work we have grown to be by far the biggest thing in the world of the kind...
...Prof...
...Making the world safe for democracy is a big sounding thing, and it appears as if freedom were an eagle in the air that never has to do anything...
...that does not have to get anything to eat but just flaps its wings...
...for inexperienced help $9...
...and if they know they ought to learn, they go to evening classes and read about this, or find out about that in order to earn $12...
...An Honest Confession Statement By A Large Employer of The Benefits That Accure In A Business Way By Doing Justice To His Employees TESTIFYING before the Committee on the District of Columbia of the House of Representatives, Edward A. Filene, of Boston, one of the foremost retail merchants of the world made some statements with respect to a minimum wage that should be of interest to every business man as well as worker...
...I am trying to help, with a lot of other men, to get out ships...
...Filene's statement rings true...
...We employers, dealing with a cheap, underpaid lot of employes, have got to use most of our time in adjusting the differences and dis-affections that arise through that...
...If the community is to support shipbuilding, and without it we can not get out the ships, then the community has got to visualize something concrete out of making the world safe for democracy...
...Pay a Bonus...
...the average thing we handle doubles in price...
...The statement said...
...But we have had the minimum wage in our concern since March 1, 1912, and the important thing about it is that relatively the cost of the wages as compared with other costs of running the business has not increased, but, on the contrary has decreased...
...It perhaps, might pay just for a minute before I close to show you the statement that went but to our employes on April L Our people are convineed that the new $10 minimum wage will not increase the percentage of fie cost of wage's to the total expenses of the store and I am personally convinced that that is true...
...The minimum wage for experienced help Is bow $10...
...If I have & man or woman working for me in an important office for $2,000, I will keep them if they make mistakes, because it does not cost much...
...It comes unexpectedly most of the time, but it does come...
...All who have been here more than a year and who are earning less than $12 have received a fiat increase of $1...
...Holcombe made a statement that appealed to me very much, and that is as to the relation of underpaid help to the "bosses...
...and it is not because we are vicious or indifferent, but because we do not understand...
...and the greatest incentive, the greatest power, the underlying power for improvement within the business, lies in correcting the weaknesses of our employes, and in intelligent study by the employes...
...I want, with your permission, to preface that with my strong conviction that what Mr...
...Is that clear...
...It is not a question of philanthropy...
...We must put into stores the Ford productio.i idea—to handle such large quantities that the overhead charges become negligible—and that has got to be applied to retail distribution, because, as I have said, the charge that retail distribution puts upon production is disgraceful...
...We know the need of ships is very critical...
...we would not grow as fast as our ambitions want us to grow...
...Any* one who has b^en in the store six months of Who has had six months of experience else* where is to receive at least $950...
...That was a smart thing to do, you know...
...and if we in the retail distribution business do not remedy it, we will be eliminated, and the distribution will come from the producer direct to the consumer with the aid of the parcel post or something of that kind...
...we know that we-are sending our boys who are staking their lives in the faith that the American people will supply the ships to keep them supplied with food, etc...
...In Detroit Hudson and Co., the biggest store in Detroit, pay $12 as a minimum wage, and the owners are very Well satisfied and see that it does really pay to do that...
...Most of them can earn it...
...There is nothing so costly as cheap help...
...That is true...
...it is a question of good business...
...Cheap Wage Issue...
...we are doing a business of over $14,000,000, and We are doing it at' the present time with the greater part of our management in war work, away from the business an important part of the time...
...Chairman, I take it that if I can be of any service to this committee it would lie largely in telling from my practical storekeeper's standpoint what my experience is with the minimum wage...
...That, relati/e to the other costs, the cost of running the store we have not found to increase on account of a mi imam wage...
...The Committee was considering a bill introduced by Mr...
...HILLIARD...
...That freedom has got to mean something to the average man or woman, and freedom does not consist in speeches...
...The employes have grown distinctly In thinking capacity during the attempt...
...The more intelligent a girl can become and the more she can sell, the less the overhead expenses weigh upon the business, upon the individual sales...
...Encouragement Would Help...
...It fails .very often, but still the definite attempt to deal Intelligently—and to deal intelligently means an attempt at justice—has succeeded...
...MR- FILENE...
...HILLIARD...
...we are pressed with small details of competition, and we usually go ahead as fast as we are pushed ahead...
...NOW, the reason that we have not dealt better with it before I think is largely because We have not had intelligent enough employes...
...That is not good for the employer...
...We are dealing in a business where the average thing doubles in price from the producer to the consumer, and this is disgraceful...
...We pay a bor.us for what is sold above what thi minimum wage calls for...
...Laughter) E%'ery decent thing one does in business pays, but it is really true that we have never done a decent thing in business which has not finally paid...
...A minority of short-sighted men force the others to do really what they do not approve...
...It seems hardly believable under thoso circumstances that there should be only about half operation in the shipyards...
...It is all well enough to have some of these ladies say that Filene's put in the minimum wage first...
...I said in Chicago last week before a large gathering that the fault was not in the Government, but in the community, in the average citizen of the country...
...This is the greatest adventure of history that we are undec-taking...
...A $5 a week employe does not make a cheap boss...
...but if that position is filled by somebody who is paid $15,000 or $20,000 or $25,000—and we are paying $25,000 salaries in a store like ours, quite a number of them^--then I am bound to help them improve their work, or else find somebody who can do it, because I can not afford these important losses that the higher wages impose upon me...
...it tones them up...
...Frankfurter said in ending his convincing argument that this is peculiarly a war measure is true...
Vol. 10 • May 1918 • No. 5
