MASSACHUSETTS AND THE MINIMUM WAGE

...No doubt the widespread labor unrest which made itself so portentiously manifest during the early months of 1912 was a controlling factor in delivering this surprising victory...

...but there is no requirement that this wrong shall be righted by a Wage Board flat at the price of driving an industry from the State...

...Let it be noted that in this respect the Massachusetts Bill is a vastly different one from that presented to the Wisconsin Legislature in 1911 and defeated in that progressive State...

...Weighing all these factors, the Board shall endeavor to determine the minimum wage, "whether by time rate or piece rate, suitable for a female employee of ordinary ability in the occupation in question or for any or all branches thereof, and also suitable minimum wages for learners and apprentices and for minors below the age of eighteen...

...Upon this point the Wisconsin Bill was certainly a drastic measure, for it specifically declared that no employer should be allowed to do business who paid less than a living wage...

...Thus there is an interval in which it is probable that employers sensitive to public opinion may take steps to put their houses in order before the light is let in and Wage Boards when they get to work may find a better standard of wages ana other conditions in many industries than prevail to-day...

...In fixing wage rates, Boards are specifically instructed to consider, along with the needs of employees, "the financial condition of the occupation and the probable effect thereon of any increase in the minimum wages paid...

...employers' pay-rolls are laid open for public scrutiny...

...What the Law Provides THE Massachusetts law, as it now stands written upon the Statute Book, creates a Minimum Wage Commission of three persons whose duty it shall be to organize a Wage Board in any occupation in which it shall appear that the wages received by a substantial number of women employees are "insufficient to supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain them in health...

...That its Bill should pass in that session seemed beyond belief...

...At least this was the reason given...

...At any rate it is a good beginning and renews for Massachusetts her imperiled position of leadership in Labor Legislation among the states...

...This delay was exalted on the ground that the creation of a Labor Bureau was imminent, and that, if established, the functions of the wage Commission should probably be entrusted to it rather than to a separate body...

...However, this amendment is not a serious matter...

...Be this as it may, the Bill will not go into effect until July 1, 1916...

...In these measures is surely a leaven which may be trusted in time to go far toward leavening the whole lump...

...Another effort to extract the fangs of the Bill may turn out in somewhat the same way, for by a further amendment employers who make an oath before the Supreme Judicial or the Superior Court to the effect that their business will be endangered if the prescribed wage scale is enforced may be exempted from compliance therewith...

...The former simply lays down the rule that employees are so far entitled to a living wage that industries which fail to pay this are proper subjects of State supervision...

...As publicity is believed by the advocates of this legislation to be its chief benefit, it may turn out that this amendment demanded by the industrial overlords as the price of the passage of the Bill, will heighten rather than subtract from its value...

...An Entering Wedge IT IS to be hoped that other states which are contemplating a minimum wage campaign will take heed to the fact that whereas, when the idea was first launched and was denounced by the conservative as ridiculous, by the time the Bill came up for action in the Legislature its moderate character had been so convincingly set forth that opposition had practically evaporated...

...Agreement by two-thirds of a Wage Board shall be necessary for a determination, and when this is reached it is within the option of the Commission to disapprove any or all of the wage rates determined upon or to recommit them to the same Wage Board or to a new one...

...Not a voice was raised against the measure in the House, not a vote cast in opposition, while in the Senate,— that graveyard of progressive legislation,—only one negative vote is on record...

...and employers who pay low wages are required to make good the necessity for so doing before the bar of public opinion...

...If approved by the Commission, however, after a public hearing, the Commission "shall enter a decree of its findings, and note thereon the names of employers...

...But the Bill did pass...

...But State House gossip alleged that the desire of a Republican legislature to balk Governor Foss, a Democrat, in the appointment of the new Commission, had something to do with the result...

...Their review by the Court was asked by representatives of the cotton industry while the original Bill was in process of being framed by the Investigating Commission and was refused upon the ground that questions of this character were not properly legal ones and also because employers' interests seemed to be more than amply guarded by the two-thirds decision of a Wage Board on which employers and employees are equally represented, which is required in making a determination, and by the further fact that these determinations are subject to a public hearing and review by the Commission...

...By the Massachusetts plan underpaid women workers are organized for the purpose of collective bargaining with their employers...

...Massachusetts and the Minimum Wage An Important First Step Toward Establishing a Revolutionary Principle By ELIZABETH GARDINER EVANS MASSACHUSETTS has enacted a Minimum Wage Bill—a somewhat emasculated one, to be sure, compared with that recommended by the investigating Commission whose terms were outlined in La Follette's of February 24, 1912, but one which preserves the essentials of the original bill and even adds one feature 6f value...

...An Ecouraging Victory WHEN A COMMISSION to consider the need of Minimum Wage Boards was petitioned for by the Women's Trade Union League in the Legislature of 1911, the undertaking seemed almost quixotic...

...Here was a plan, endorsed by Labor, and urged by the Reform element, which, while radical in principle,—since it pierces to the very heart the old contention that industry is a purely private affair,—was nevertheless so moderate in application that by no possibility could it materially damage employing interests...

...Hence, if Massachusetts has outstripped Wisconsin in Minimum Wage Legislation, it is because the former has been content, as a first step, to lay down a revolutionary principle and to devise machinery for putting it in force very gradually, as public opinion and industrial conditions allow...

...Then again when this Investigating Commission reported its Bill last January, a five years' campaign at the very least was expected...

...who fail to accept such a minimum and agree to abide by it...

...But the Massachusetts Bill bestows upon the Commission in the place of mandatory power a provision of perhaps even greater importance, for the names of employers who refuse to accept the minimum decreed are to be published in at least four newspapers in each county of the commonwealth in type not smaller than that in which ordinary news is printed...

...That some remedial legislation must be conceded was driven home to even the least susceptible minds...

...Thus the Minimum Wage Bill was let by,—a sop thrown to Ceberus by the conservative forces, but in the eyes of the far-seeing the thin end of a very wide wedge...

...This is a substitute for the mandatory power with penalties attached which the original bill contained and which is a feature of similar bills in England and Australia...

...Thus those who worked hard with little hope of immediate success are patient now at the delay of one year which the Bill as enacted requires...

...The right of appeal is not likely to be often resorted to, and when it is used it will add still another element of public inquiry and discussion and so is not pure loss...

...The provision is significant chiefly as one more evidence of the way capital is seeking to intrench itself behing the courts...