INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

...It is enough if it puts solid earth beneath the Trade Union in the trade, and lays a foundation on which the Union can build a proper superstructure...

...in four others, legislation was attempted and failed...

...From my own experience as a representative of the public upon the first wage board which is now sitting in Massachusetts— (it- is probably the first of the kind to be held in the United States, since the conferences held in Oregon under its minimum wage law seem to have been quite different affairs)—I can testify to the significant character of the proceedings...

...They appeal to the working girls,—those men who not long since were called "Masters,"-— to tell them what constitutes "a living wage...

...three other states made provision for official wage investigations...

...The barbarities of strike and lockout are discarded, each side guaranteeing to discipline those of its own members who disregard the accepted terms...

...But the moment was auspicious...

...Under these protocols, what is in effect a new form of government in industry has been established...

...But to meet this new wage adjustment, the hours of labor for the whole group were reduced, it being found possible through a better organization of work to shorten hours without curtailing output...

...Moreover, in every wage arbitration, employers hold the upper hand so long as they are free to discharge whom they will, and to shut down altogether, if they feel their profit encroached upon too far...

...is the one doubt which forces itself upon the mind...

...Louis D. Brandeis, acting as intermediary between the contending parties in the bitterly fought strikes which convulsed New York and ramified into a half dozen other industrial centers...

...They give the worker some faint voice in fixing the conditions which govern his life...

...is the touch stone by which every effort at social reform should be tested...

...Indeed the phrase is often used as if it possessed the miraculous powers of the philosopher's 6tone, or were a spell with which to conjure...

...Indeed this method of adjusting wages is seen to be nothing less than a new social discovery, so far-reaching are its implications...

...AN INTERESTING analogy here suggests itself between the possibilities of the wage board system and the so-called Protocol of Peace set up in two branches of the garment trade of New York under the guiding genius of Mr...

...Can it be made to work amid the industrial complications of the United States...

...This does not mean that a minimum rate should remain unaltered...

...At that time the idea of state interference with wages was contrary to the whole political traditions of our people...

...its members are given a preference in employment...

...For they can serve as-initial steps toward bringing to pass that industrial democracy without which our political democracy will become a barren phrase,—a mere tale that is told...

...Joint boards of grievance, of arbitration, and of sanitary control are established to regulate wages, hours, sanitation, seasonal employment and the various abuses and oppression incident to any relation in which the weak are subject to the uncontrolled power of the strong...

...The cost of this industrial government is borne by each side in equal parts...

...The union is not only "recognized...

...Florence Kelley of the Consumers League from an international congress held in Switzerland...

...Many forces had conspired to break down the fierce individualism inherited from our pioneer days, and to quicken the social conscience...

...and the dignity and freedom with which these once timid and undemanding workers voice their views, is demonstration how profound has been the reaction upon them...

...Now the principle which animates this notable achievement is allied with the wage board movement...

...Ownership of the chance to work comes' near ownership of the chance to live...

...Under these circumstances, timidity in the demands' of dependents is inevitable...

...The phrase minimum wage—recently a novelty in our vernacular— (now passes unchallenged as current coin...

...INFORMATION reported in The New States-man for November 1st and 8th, concerning the operation of the minimum wage law of England illustrates both the modest character of immediate wage advances secured through the operation of the law, and the far-reaching indirect effects with which the measure is fraught...

...The absolute autocracy of the employer's rule against which labor has so long and so courageously contended, gives way to agreements formally drawn up between the employers' association and the union as between high contracting parties...

...ERTAINLY there is a grave confusion in the public mind as to just what minimum wage legislation can accomplish and how it is to accomplish it,—a confusion that finds expression both in the hopes of advocates and the fears of opponents of the measure...

...Under a prescribed minimum wage which had been in operation since last February in the wholesale tailoring trade, the wages of only 134 persons out of a group of 3000 in a given locality were immediately affected, of whom 111 had previously received less than the prescribed minimum, while 23 were advanced beyond the minimum because they were conceded to be worth more than their lower paid fellows...

...J. J. Mallon, the secretary of the Anti-Sweating League in England to whose untiring efforts the success of the law in that country is largely due, set forth his estimate of minimum wage laws as follows: "The sweated worker is one who has been knocked down in the indus trial struggle...

...The rate will itself release forces making for its progressive increase...

...A legal minimum wage is an...

...These wage boards work much as arbitration boards work which from time to time are set up as the result of an industrial struggle,—with this difference, that the excitement of the fight which emboldens workers to excessive demands is lacking in peaceful arbitrations...

...Business men to whom it never before occurred that the conduct of what they conceived to be their private affairs involved any public element, are stirred by a new sense of responsibility...

...Not until the fact is thoroughly grasped that minimum wage regulations, in communities where they have operated successfully, are simply the recommendations of boards made up of employers and employees who sit in some selected industry, is it realized how narrow is the limit within which wage rates are likely to be directly affected...

...It need not be a high rate...

...Within less than two years, nine states enacted some kind of minimum wage laws...

...This fact, however, is by no means discouraging to the more thoughtful advocates of the system, who see in it possibilities far more important than mere wage advances, whether great or small...

...If it will work, the minimum wage movement will surely ally itself with other fundamental forces which are making swiftly for a new social order...

...Meanwhile during the brief months since the wage board began its sittings, workers who had been unorganized and sweated to the last degree, flocked into the trade union in such numbers that presently three-quarters of the labor was organized...

...They are sensitive to the assumption that their wages may be less than those paid by other employers or in other trades...

...For wage boards embody at least an element of industrial democracy...

...And the discovery of community after community that in our vaunted land of plenty large numbers of women workers were earning less than a bare existence wage, caused a swift revolution in the public mind...

...Judged by that standard, minimum wage boards stand approved...

...All of which was accomplished by the simple device of the government summoning employers and employees to sit down and reason together upon a wage board...

...The advances varied from one to eight shillings a week and averaged three shillings...

...Whereupon, the employers' association negotiated a collective bargain with the union, fixing a wage scale for all the grades and processes of labor within the whole trade, and fixing 52 houre as a standard week's work where from 57 to 58 hours had previously prevailed...

...They summon him to sit as of equal rank with his employer in regulating the industry of which both are integral parts...

...attempt to pick him up and keep him standing...

...Aside from the various forms of purely cooperative enterprise in which workers own the capital and employ their managers, these protocols set the high water mark of self-government in industry...

...Does it mako for democracy...

...It is in the forces released by minimum wage laws that their true significance lies...