WHY A MINIMUM WAGE?
Robins, Margaret Drier
Why a Minimum Wage? Working Girls and Working Women Voice Their Need of a Living Wage, And the Individual and Social Menace of The Low Wage, in an Address at the Recent Convention of The National...
...What then is the importance of that "last attachment" to the production of the whole...
...IN ORDER that we may arrive at some intelligent conclusion upon the subject, I take it that we wish to consider first some general facts regarding the question of wages...
...We are told that the wages of women need not be adequate for self-support because the girls live at home...
...Just as the most important knowledge to the worker is the value of his or her labor power, so the most important knowledge to the employer is that a living wage is the first charge upon any industry...
...What of the skilled workers in the sewing trades What of the skilled needle women who embroider beautiful shirtwaists or dresses, and after working for two weeks at such an embroidered dress will receive a wage of $4.50 for the two weeks', work...
...Believing as we do in all that makes training and education universal, we may yet ask ourselves what of the hand-workers of costly lace, representing some of the most skilled as well as the cheapest labor for generations...
...The industry that seeks to shield from properly constituted authorities information as to its wage questions and other data related to the earnings of employees is in the category with the man who maintains his right to guard his private cesspool from the public health authorities who have discovered in that cesspool the genesis of the city's epidemic...
...This was well brought out by the Minimum Wage Commission of Massachusetts when it was found that in the candy industry, for example, one of the employers was paying fifty-six per cent...
...Any Child Can Run This Machine...
...It is essential that it be definitely understood that there are girls by the tens of thousands who have maintained the integrity of their womanhood in the face of great personal suffering and self-sacrifice, as well as in the face of great temptation...
...And who were these women so exploited...
...But we have made an idol of our 6wn invention...
...Sidney Webb so aptly terms "the minimum conditions of the wage contract...
...Is not this the question...
...but whether any able-bodied, intelligent young woman is to put all the years of her girlhood and womanhood, all the possibilities of the joy of her motherhood, in jeopardy because she is giving her all in service without receiving sufficient remuneration to make possible decent nutrition, decent clothing, decent living conditions for herself—conditions making for the education and development of all the fine powers hidden and held within her...
...It is well to remember that this is not an experiment, but that it has been tried for the past sixteen years in Australia, where during that time over one hundred trades have been placed under legal minimum wage boards...
...a Legal Minimum of Education for the Child...
...The Best Hope of Our Day" THE DEMAND for a minimum wage must include some definition of that minimum, otherwise none of us know exactly of what we are talking...
...Such should be the case and such would be the case under normal conditions...
...That there is commercialized vice, organized for the purpose of betraying the youngest of our sisters, we now all know, and that it sends its representatives into the day's work of factory and store and business we also know...
...This we recognize by providing that the State shall care for the health of the people and contribute to their education...
...But well may we question the civilization, the democracy, the Christianity of a community tolerating such conditions...
...This law has been demanded by skilled and unskilled trades, by men as well as women, by highly-paid and sweated workers, by strongly organized as well as unorganized trades...
...What of the girls who, with their deft fingers willowing plumes, received 15 cents an inch three years ago and 3 cents an inch today...
...What of the fact that in trade after trade we are eliminating skill by the introduction of machinery...
...It is well for us to remember that the loving cup is as old as any hunger and that to enter into the labor and festival of life is part of the eternal quest of the human heart...
...A period which has seen the immense development of the mechanical genius of our people, the introduction and development of machinery to such an extent that we sometimes feel as if the machine had become quite human...
...If there is one statement above another which shows lack of knowledge of the conditions in industry today, it is the assertion that skill is the only determining factor in the wage question...
...It is still held by many that the wage paid is in proportion to the ability, the intelligence, the character, the skill of the worker...
...We are demanding in the every-day life of our working girls the stuff out of which heroes and martyrs are made...
...Through such subsidies it has enabled many an employer with no business qualification whatever, nor knowledge nor judgment, to open an industry, *put the wage as low as conditions permit, quite certain that the community will bear the burden...
...What of the Irish crochet edging for which the girl gets 2 cents a yard, being able to make three to five yards an hour...
...This is no new undertaking...
...The only protection for the girl under those circumstances is to be found in her trade union organization...
...THE QUESTION of the establishment of a legal minimum wage is before us as a people, and it is doubtless one of the many expressions of the awakened social conscience in America...
...But we are not living under normal conditions...
...Representing as we do the organized women workers in America, it was natural that we should be among the first to understand the need of such legislation...
...I know girls who take it as an everyday matter-of-fact experience of working girl life that they should daily go without their luncheons...
...The question of the low wage must be met...
...The question is, can we afford to wait for such social uprisings in the other sweated industries...
...We have permitted the machine to become the juggernaut of our time and in its triumphant procession to crush the lives of tens of thousands of our fellows...
...And, would it not be well for the working men to ask themselves if they could not find a more profitable investment for their earnings than to furnish the means of support to their daughters when their work entitles them to a self-supporting wage...
...Are we in America going to wait, or are we going to take thought now before a great crisis comes...
...Have we not real wisdom in Pat's answer to a gentleman who was walking along the roadside watching him trying to break a large rock which finally gave way, "Well, Pat, which blow did it...
...I know girls who have simply paid for the space of half a bed during the night when the same bed was not only shared by them during the night with another girl, but had been used by two Other girls during the day time, these other girls being night workers...
...To strengthen the hands of the girls so that they are empowered to protect themselves within the four walls of their work is the imperative duty of every man or woman who wishes to combat the social wrong...
...A Community Danger THE MAIN THOUGHT underlying 1 the demand for the minimum wage is the realization that the danger and the menace of the low wage is a community danger...
...Faith," answered Pat, "they all did it...
...that if they were skilled workers their wage would entitle them to a living...
...The demand for the minimum wage on the part of the general public is simply the statement that it is tired of subsidizing industries...
...Low Wages and the Social Evil THE INVESTIGATIONS into the question of the low wage paid to the women in America have brought out the close relationship between the low wage and the social evil...
...Second, we are living in one of the great transitional periods of industrial development...
...I know girls who have entered a saloon because they could there get a bowl of soup as well as a glass of beer for five cents, receiving in that bowl of soup better nourishment than any other expenditure of such five cents could bring them...
...Today, however, thoughtful men and women everywhere are realizing the individual and social menace of the low wage and there is a general recognition of the fact that in a great, rich, empty country able bodied men and women should find it possible to earn their living by their day's work...
...In most of our states we have factory laws prescribing what Mr...
...It is not confined to the making of small chains, but includes the making of the large anchor chains that anchor our ships and vessels...
...Not only have we division and subdivision in such trades as the needle trades, glove making, boot and shoe making, book binding, but carpenters, wood workers, cabinet makers and coopers are slowly losing their trade...
...The Sins of the Fathers" PERHAPS the statement thus far will enable us to see the reasons underlying this demand for the establishment of the legal minimum wage...
...Are There Parasitic Industries...
...When this fact is given by an employer as a reason for a low wage does he not accept as silent partners in his enterprise the fathers or brothers or husbands who support these girls...
...After a full discussion of all the facts, the minimum wage board decided that the wage given to the women should be doubled, and that award finally prevailed...
...The National Women's Trade Union League at its second biennial convention in 1909 included in its legislative program the demand for a minimum wage...
...Is There Freedom of Opportunity...
...What of the fact that the telegraph operator will get a third less if a woman than a man, though she receives the same number of messages and handles the same amount of work, with the same capacity as the man sitting by her side...
...What of the Irish crochet yokes for which the girl receives 9 cents a yoke, paying 2 1-2 cents for the cotton with which to sew the yoke...
...Working Girls and Working Women Voice Their Need of a Living Wage, And the Individual and Social Menace of The Low Wage, in an Address at the Recent Convention of The National Women's Trade Union League of America By MARGARET DRIER ROBINS Reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post of Philedelhia...
...Is it not true that the minimum wage boards will not only help to establish minimum wages, but to bring to the least of the little girls in such industries the opportunity of organization and self-government...
...SPOKESMAN—"We have called to express our extreme gratichude fer the beeutiful fight you are making in ear behalf...
...The question of the wage is not wheth...
...We are living in the midst of a "wealth-producing, poverty-breeding" industrial chaos...
...We are also told by the government investigations of the National Report on the Condition of Women and Children in the United States that eighty-one per cent...
...Which Blow Did It...
...To the courage, the grit, the fineness of character all can testify who know intimately the daily life of the working girls...
...The Question of Skill BUT ONE of the most reiterated reasons given for the low wage paid to women and young girls is the assertion made that the women and young girls represent unintelligent, unskilled, inefficient labor...
...Is it not, therefore, time for us to insist that the State cannot afford to put in so great an investment, only to reap the continuous loss of the defeated young lives that go under in the industrial world...
...However, the placing of the sweated industries and such others as the community may see fit to decide upon under the jurisdiction of minimum wage boards is but a further attempt to standardize industry...
...When the minimum wage was first established in England in 1908 the first industry that came under the minimum wage commission was that of chain making...
...But these facts represent only one group of difficulties...
...The chaotic condition of many of our industries gives no basis for a wage but the will of the individual employer, and the girl's poverty and inexperience forces her consent...
...It must give opportunity and time not only for the development of the powers within us, but also for expression of human fellowship...
...Copyright: 1913 by the Curtis Publishing Company...
...A living wage must certainly mean sufficient reward for labor to provide health-giving food, good clothing, shelter with sunlight and air and warmth and comfort, education and recreation—books and music—sufficient reward to tide over periods of sickness or other unemployment and to make provision for a happy and serene old age...
...What about the bindery girl who loses her position as a hand worker and is reduced in her wage from $14.00 to $5.00 a week because of the introduction of machinery...
...Three times the English army has had to lower its requirements of physical strength, for the men could not measure up to the standard demanded...
...Everywhere invention and the introduction of machinery is taking the place of skilled craftsmen...
...Let the doors of America be closed to the strong young womanhood of other nations for ten years—aye, or for five--and the knowledge would come home to us that the American-born woman of the working group is not physically able to do the work demanded...
...That a minimum wage can be established in the sweated industries has been proven beyond all peradventure of doubt by the victorious strikes in the garment industries which we have now witnessed in the leading industrial cities in America for the past four years...
...Chain making was done largely by women at Cradley Heath, outside of London...
...All these minima represent the community's demand for a standard of industry and with our growing knowledge of the overshadowing menace of the low wage we naturally include a wage minimum...
...As has been well said by Mr...
...We all know that to bring about conditions making possible such a living wage more than the creating of minimum wage boards will be necessary...
...The elimination of this unfair competition will be one of the immediate results of the minimum wage and will help to standardize industry...
...It would seem that a training school for employers is as essential to the welfare of the community as a trade school for workers...
...Some of us would like to see the conditions of industry so arranged that every-day folk like you and me might have a chance of earning our daily bread on the square...
...Another reason given for the low wage is that women, or young girls, have no one dependent upon them for support...
...Such victories express, indeed, the best hope of our day...
...It adds the strength of the group to her own individual strength and guards and protects and teaches self-government and self-respect...
...The most costly production of any nation and its most valuable asset is not its annual output of corn, neither the wheat harvest nor the yield of coal or cotton, but its output of men and women...
...What of the fact that the basis of a teacher's pay is not the quality of the teaching, but the question, man or woman...
...If we have classes for training in the salesmanship of lace and jam and linens and silk, how a thousand times more important is it to have training in the salesmanship of labore values...
...The mothers of girls, potential mothers of another generation, each one representing a lowered vitality and constant trend toward degeneracy...
...If, through the most stupid and unintelligent maladjustment of our industrial life, fathers of families are thrown out of work because too old at the age of forty and their young daughters of sixteen become the supporters of the family, we are face to face with a fact of life before which theory must give way...
...I know girls who have lived twelve in a room, on twelve mattresses, because their earnings did not permit them better sleeping accommodations, and who have lived for three years at a stretch on rye bread and olive oil, unless invited out for a meal...
...What of the fact that the bookkeeper as efficient, as accurate, as capable as the man will receive one-third the wages because she is a woman...
...As one of our leading Chicago labor men has said, "The only thing the machine needs is that amount of bone and sinew and brain to fill in what they could not put in with metal and other things, and so the operator is put in as the last attachment...
...They were the mothers of those men whom the English army could not accept into its service during the Boer War because they did not come up to the physical standard demanded...
...To bring the best results, to bring technical knowledge, accurate data and experienced judgment to bear on this grave question, minimum wage commissions should consist of men and women representing the public, representatives of the employers in each industry, and representatives of the workers in each industry elected by the workers...
...Can we imagine a greater illustration of the exploitation of women...
...But these women chain makers were not only mothers of sons, they were also mothers of daughters...
...and by prescribing a maximum work day, a Legal Minimum of Leisure and Rest...
...First, we have destroyed freedom of opportunity through monopoly rights and special privileges, recognizing forms of property and authority through which some of us derive advantage over our fellows...
...Owen R. Lovejoy, chairman of the Committee on Standards of Living and Labor, in his report to the Conference of Charities and Correction held in Cleveland in 1912: "If it is contended that minimum wage boards would unveil the private concerns of any industry, the reply is that there are no private concerns of industry...
...THE INDUSTRY which cannot pay a fair wage is parasitic and receives a subsidy from the community through its public or private charities, through its clinics and hospitals, through its reformatories and its pris-ons, through its alms houses, and homes for the aged...
...The girl who is hungry and tired and lonely is likely to take "a long chance" and when invitations come from fore-ladies as well as foremen in the department stores or factories, or are brought by leading customers of her employer, her instinctive friendliness naturally responds...
...I know other girls who, with equal "matter-of-factness," never think of spending money for car fare or lunches or laundry or outings, and never dream of earning enough to make life even half-way decent and comfortable or giving a chance for any realization of aspiration or ideals or education—or sweetness of fresh air in the mountains or by the sea-and yet these girls by the tens of thousands, in the face of such constant denial of all that makes life worth while, have held their womanhood intact and protected its integrity...
...Let us consider for a few moments some of the reasons given for the low wage paid to the women workers of America...
...This Machine Can Be Run by a Woman...
...The Right to Live NO ONE will deny that however difficult the problem, we find ourselves under conditions demanding immediate action...
...But if there is the darkness of tragedy here, there is also the light of heroism...
...of all factory girls living at home put their entire earnings into the family treasury...
...One reason that we in America are so unconscious of the physical, mental and spiritual loss to our people by the exploitation of our women workers is because of the steady yearly influx of strong peasant women...
...Upon the quality of each generation depends the strength and greatness of the nation...
...As of old, we worship the work of our own hands and that which our fingers have made...
...a week less in wages than another employer in the same town...
...a Legal Minimum of Sanitation and Safety...
...The right to live and the right to earn a living are indistinguishable terms...
...At any cement show or machinery exhibit we will find great placards stating, "This Machine Does the Work of 10 Men...
...er a girl can or cannot hold her own in the face of suffering and poverty and temptation...
...England, through her army, was only measuring the physical degradation of her people, and great and grave as that may be, it is little when compared to the mental and spiritual degradation that such poverty breeds and that such exploitation always entails...
...WHEN division and subdivision of industry and the invention and continuous invasion of machinery eliminates skill in trade after trads what are we going to substitute for the theory that skill is the determining factor in wages...
...that they need to be trained...
Vol. 5 • July 1913 • No. 27
