NEED A MINIMUM WAGE FOR WOMEN
Hise., Janet Van
Need a Minimum Wage for Women By Janet Van Hise. NO ATTEMPT has been made in the following to present any genera] arguments in behalf of the Minimum wage. It is felt that these arguments were...
...An examination of a chart showing the history of prices in this country looks like the waves of the sea with all sorts of subripples on them...
...Opponents of the Minimum wage will say that this is a merely temporary condition...
...To some extent the establishment of the minimum wage will protect her and the men who are fighting at the lane time...
...The investigation recently made in three cities of Wisconsin shows that 92 per cent of the women investigated are getting less than a living wage...
...They are already rushing into new fields of labor every day...
...The United States Steel Corporation has given increases of 65 per cent since the beginning of the war...
...that prices will tumble after the war...
...In the first place no one can ever say again that women are not in industry to stay...
...Wherever there is a vacuum created by the er-odus of men, and into some places it is felt not solely because of the dearth of men, but because employers see an opportunity under camouflage of war necessity to get workers for less, or not to pay the increasing wage demanded by war prices, women are being taken on as wage earners...
...They will need all the protection from industrial exploitation that can be given them...
...The whole course of labor legislation in regard to women shows the inability of the woman worker to protect herself in the industrial field...
...This may be true, although many feel that the necessarily great demand for materials and services for reconstruction after the war will postpone this for some time...
...However, the changed world, and womens' changed position in it, since 1914 are so challenging that a few words, however obvious, regarding the relation of the war to the Minimum wage must be said...
...Finally enough cannot be said about the necessity of protecting and strengthening at every point our social fabric which is being subjected to so terrific a strain...
...Only by protection and helping them in every way to sustain it, can the future of this country be safeguarded...
...The government sees the need of meeting the ever higher cost of living for men...
...The wages of men in New York state have advanced 40 per cent since 1914...
...So much for the human element...
...It is felt that these arguments were accepted by Wisconsin when the Minimum Wage law was passed...
...At the same time one reads that th Railroad men are recommended by the commission investigating the matter for increases up to 43 per cent...
...Let us now consider the question of war prices and war cost of living...
...and that the object of this survey has been to show the need or lack of need of the enforcement of the law...
...and there can be help no greater than the assurance that they will be paid a living wage for work well-done...
...However true it might have been in the past that girls have taken jobs en route to marriage, the sad fact is that if America pays the price of lives comparable in a small degree with that paid by her allies, there will be thousands of girls in America whose chances of marriage have disappeared...
...This matter cannot be foretold by anyone...
...This brings us to the thought that women must not be allowed to lower, or to prevent the wages of men from rising, so that when our soldiers return to civil life they will not find working conditions worse than when they went away...
...However no one should expect or desire that a minimum wage rate should be stationary...
...Hence it seems a hardly defensible argument against it, that the highest prices ever known in this country may last only a few years...
...These girls and the wives and sisters and mothers of men killed or maimed in the war, whose normal expectation would have been support by some man, will from now on be entering the working world...
...Under the Wisconsin law a minimum wage can always be revised by the industrial commission to fit industrial conditions, and it is the only way that women can obtain justice...
...Upon the women of this generation falls a burden of almost unimaginable weight—industrial, social and family...
...Any permanent minimum wage would not fit any period of this country's history for more than a few years...
Vol. 10 • July 1918 • No. 7
