The Real Minimum Wage.

The first provision of the Minimum Wage Law would be one for the ascertainment of the minimum of food and clothing necessary for the healthy subsistence of (a) an average family, reckoned as consisting of a man, his wife, and three children; and (6) an adult woman living by herself. This could be made the duty of either a Special Commission appointed for the purpose, or of the Labor Department of the Board of Trade. The researches recently conducted by the Labor Department into working class budgets would form an admirable basis for the prosecution of the necessary enquiries. The task would not be one of extreme difficulty. Mr. B. S. Rowntree, in his book on Poverty in York, goes very carefully into the matter, and has drawn up tables of the minimum amount of food needed for adults and children for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. He bases his estimates upon the results of the scientific experiments of Professor Atwater, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and of Dr. Dunlop, who made a series of studies upon the dietaries of prisoners in Scotland. Mr. Rowntree's tables follow in some respects the dietaries for paupers framed by the Local Government Board; but they are not so generous, nor would they cost as much. His figures as to the amount of poverty which festers under the shadow of York Minster, have been criticized as exaggerated, but no one will accuse him of asking for a highly luxurious diet as a minimum. The question of clothing and indispensable household necessities would be less easy to settle. Mr. Rowntree bases his estimate upon enquiry among those who know what poverty means, and he arrives at the conclusion that an adult cannot be decently and fairly warmly clad under 6d. per week, nor a family of five under 2s. 3d. per week. Household necessities (including fuel) he estimates at 2s. 8d. per family per week.

The investigations which would be made by the suggested special Commission or by the Labor Department might lead to a higher standard being fixed. It could hardly be put lower. The Postmen's Federation, in making elaborate calculations in connection with this subject some time ago, for the purpose of convincing the PostmasterGeneral that many of their number were unable to maintain physical well-being on the wage they received, naturally took a less modest basis than that adopted by Mr. Rowntree. Its figures total up to 50 per cent. more.

The minimum of food, clothing and indispensable household necessities having been determined, the law would enact that the national minimum wage in its two categories should provide for these, plus the rent of house room complying with the legal requirements of sanitation and accommodation.

The Minimum Wage in Cash.

The translation of the national minimum of real wages into money wages according to the local variations in prices and rents, would be made a part of the duties of county councils and of borough

and urban district councils with populations of not less than 50,000. In London the county council should be the authority for this purpose.

There are good grounds for believing that in regard to the main items of the real wage, local variations in price will be found not to be very great, except, of course, in the case of rent and rates. The report of the enquiries made by the Postmen's Federation, to which reference has already been made, included definite returns as to the cost of living from 412 towns throughout Great Britain and Ireland, and these show that the prices of food stuffs do not vary to any considerable extent. The report adds that although an article of daily consumption may be cheaper in one part of the country, this advantage is usually counterbalanced by the higher cost of another article of common use.

By way of illustration, let us take Mr. Rowntree's estimate. In York, where rents are evidently low, the money wage for an adult man, reckoned as the responsible head of an average family, works out at 21s. 8d. per week. The rent in this case is put at 4s. per week. In London, house-room, satisfying legal requirements as to sanitation and accommodation for an average family, could not be obtained for less than 7s. 6d. per week. Certain is it that it cannot be built for less. This would bring the cash minimum wage for the metropolis to just about 25s., which robs the London County Council's "moral minimum" of 24s. of its austere virtue. These figures are given simply as illustrations, and must not be taken as representing the amount which ought to be fixed as the minimum cash wage. Mr. Rowntree's budget of food, clothing and shelter would most likely be rejected as being far too meagre.

Besides the duty of fixing the cash minimum wage for the district, the local bodies mentioned should be given the authority to enforce it. For this purpose a staff of local inspectors would be required. It would be well if these inspectors, although officials working under the direction of the local authority, were appointed and dismissed only with the sanction of the Labor Department, which should also be empowered to settle the qualifications required for the positions. A certain proportion of the salaries of the inspectors should be paid out of the Imperial Exchequer, as a return for the powers exercised by the Labor Department in connection with these officials.

Trade Boards.

A necessary part of the administrative machinery would be trade boards in each acting local authorities' area for each trade or group of trades. The constitution of these boards would be on the lines of the Special Wages Boards of Victoria-say two or three representatives of the employers and an equal number of the employees, with a chairman. As the workers in trades within the scope of the Minimum Wage Law would in the main be without enough organization to elect representatives it should be the duty of the local authority to nominate them. In default of suitable persons inside a trade persons of ability and impartiality should be chosen from outside.

The chief function of these boards would be to translate the weekly minimum wage into piecework rates: that is to say to determine the number of articles to be made or the quantity of work to be done in an hour. This task implicitly involves the fixing of the length of the normal working week. There would be little difficulty in the case of factories and workshops where the number of hours is already fixed at 56 per week, but in domestic workshops it is impossible to regulate hours of labor. Domestic workshops must be placed on an equality with factories and workshops, unless we wish to put a premium on sweating; and the only way to do this is to enact that the boards shall convert the legal weekly wage into piece rates on the basis that for all classes of factories and workshops 56 hours constitute a normal week. Whatever the minimum wage may be one-fifty-sixth of it will be an hour's pay, and what the boards will have to do is to fix the number of articles to be made in an hour.

We might very well go a little further in imitation of Victorian precedents by making the rates for homework higher than those paid for work done in the employer's workrooms, and thus compensate the homeworker for the cost of rent, light, etc. Incidentally this would help to drive work out of the home into the workshop. In addition, the boards would deal with the proportion of children and young persons that might be employed, and the minimum wages to be paid to them, and with any other question relating to hours of labor and to wages arising through the operations of the Act and not already covered implicitly or explicitly by other industrial legislation.

These determinations-to use the term adopted in Victoria-of the trade boards would be sent to the Labor Department for ratification. Before ratification they would be checked by the Department for the purpose of amending any too great local variations in working hours, piecework rates or other details, and to ensure the greatest possible uniformity in the minimum conditions of any widely distributed trade. The Labor Department should also be empowered, in conjunction with the local authority, to assist in drawing up a determination when a trade board found it impossible to arrive at an agreement. When ratified by the Labor Department the determinations should have the force of law, and any employer not complying with their provisions should be liable to a heavy fine or imprisonment. Where collusion between employer and employed was discovered both parties should be punished proportionately. Inspectors would have the power to inspect the wages books of employers, and to institute proceedings under direction of the local authorities for any breaches, or suspected breaches, of the Act. Homework employers must now keep registers of the names and addresses of persons so employed and would further be compelled to take receipts for wages, showing the work done and the rate paid. The difficulties of enforcing a minimum wage for homework are certainly formidable; but they appear to have been surmounted in Australasia. With the occupation of those engaged as shop assistants, waiters, waitresses, and the like, or as domestic servants, the complications of

a wage paid partly in cash and partly in food and sleeping accommodation, and sometimes clothing, will be troublesome. But here, as in many other spheres of employment, much of the apparent difficulty in fixing a minimum wage arises from the present lack of systematization. By means of the trade boards it should be possible to evolve improved conditions for labor even out of the chaos of sweating in cheap retail drapery, or the over-worked life of the general slave to suburban snobbery or boarding-house brutality.

The Minimum Wage Law in Operation.

It will have been noticed that the proposed law is not intended to be of immediate universal application. The Act would have to be applied gradually but systematically. The procedure would be as follows: Directly the minimum of real wages had been fixed by the Special Commission, or the Labor Department, the county council, borough council, or urban district council, as the case might be, would transform this wage into a local cash equivalent. It would then appoint its inspectors, who would enquire into the conditions of the local industries. This enquiry would not take up much time, as sweated industries are always well known. Taking the trades with the worst conditions first, the local authority, acting on the information and advice of its inspectors, would appoint trade boards in these Occupations. This might be called scheduling a trade under the Minimum Wage Act. Directly the boards were appointed, the local authority would inform the Labor Department of the fact. The Labor Department would send the information to all other local authorities, instructing them at the same time to take immediate steps for the formation of trade boards in these scheduled trades, if any existed in their districts. This would systematize and hasten the work of arriving at determinations applying to the whole country. Directly such a determination had been made, public notification would be given of the date when it would come into operation. It would be necessary to arrive at determinations for the whole area of an industry before action was taken for enforcement, otherwise those portions of the country in which local authorities neglected or delayed their work might for a time undersell districts in which local authorities were active and conscientious. In cases of undue delay or culpable negligence on the part of any local authorities, the Labor Department should have the power to apply to their areas the determinations already made by other local authorities.

Proceeding in this way every trade could be brought under the operations of the Act. In practice there might be no necessity for the institution of trade boards in some industries owing to the prevalence of satisfactory conditions; and these industries might not therefore be scheduled. Still in connection with nearly every trade or group of trades there is a fringe of so-called unskilled labor which is not receiving sufficient for the maintenance of healthy existence. Hence it is likely that few occupations would remain outside the scope of the Act were it efficiently administered.

Probable Effects of the Law.

As there will be local variations in the minimum cash wage owing chiefly to variations in rent there will be an increasing tendency for industries-so far as greater cost in wages is not compensated by market advantage, or proximity to sources of raw material—to move from the high rent to the low rent districts, that is to say, from the large and crowded manufacturing cities to the small town or to the country. Migration of this kind, which is already going on, is to be welcomed for obvious reasons. Homework, under a strict administration of our Minimum Wage Law, would tend to become more expensive than that carried on in the factory, and this handicapping of domestic industry would be a great social advantage. The institution of the trade boards would bring to the weakest sections of the workers a sense of the power of organization and combination which, it is not too much to predict, would induce them to use the minimum wage as a stepping-stone to further improvements in industrial conditions. That there would be at first a great deal of friction aroused by the minute inspection, especially of wages books, required by the law, is highly probable. But it must be remembered that to-day many public bodies, in order to investigate charges of breach of contract in matters of wage payments, insist upon the right to examine the books of firms who carry out public work. The higher the standing of the firm the less trouble there is in exercising this right. It is certain that in England, as in Australia, when the first horror of the shock caused by State interference with the cash nexus is over, the better employers will heartily welcome the means of ridding themselves of the competition of those who employ parasitic labor.

As to the effect of the law upon our foreign trade, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb have shewn that the abolition of parasitic labor would not necessarily lead to a reduction in the volume of our export trade; and, moreover, that a sweated trade will not be lifted from its degraded position by a protective tariff on the products of a foreign, competing trade. But with the institution of a national minimum wage a new question arises, which is not altogether one of abstract economics. Under a Minimum Wage Law the manufacture of goods in England under sweated or parasitic conditions becomes unlawful, and by inference the sale of such goods ought to be made a breach of the law in the same sense as selling illicit whiskey. Therefore, it follows from a Minimum Wage Law that the importation of goods made under sweated conditions abroad must be prohibited. The difficulty of deciding what is the foreign equivalent of sweating, and the impossibility in many cases of tracing the foreign goods through all the processes of their manufacture, are obstacles to the complete enforcement of such regulations; but this is not a sufficient reason for abandoning the attempt.

The National Dividend Increased.

What is the number of persons who would immediately feel the effects of the enactment of a legal minimum wage? If we take Mr.