34 MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

ing for the employer the amount of the minimum wage are not employed.
 Public charges can thereby increase to a certain extent.
Webb believes, however, that this is preferable to half-hearted employment
 of unclever workers at low wages. Weak bargainers who
formerly accepted less than they were worth now receive what they
are worth.
Examining the question whether businesses close down on account
of the obligation to pay minimum wages, Webb finds that in five
sweated trades from 1907 to 1912, while wages increased from 12 to
85 per cent, the number of workers employed by these industries
relatively to the general population of the country also increased.
Webb shares in no way the fear expressed by Samuel Gompers, late
president of the American Federation of Labor, that the State, having
 fixed minimum wages, may compel workers to work at that rate.
According to Miss Sells '* there seems to be slightly less unemployment
 in trades regulated by the trade boards act than in other trades,
which does not seem to confirm the opinion of Webb as to the extension
 of the range of the unemployable. A need for administrative
improvement, so she states, is rather generally admitted, but the feeling
 in favor of repealing the act has been insufficient for its realization.

While most students of the subject examine it from long-range
viewpoint and are mainly interested in general class or community
interests, Mildred E. Bulkley investigated tangible results from a
short-range viewpoint and helps to visualize the influence of the law
on the feeling and well-being of the people immediately concerned.
In a summary of some of her observations may be found basic material
 for a more concrete formulation of general considerations.
Miss Bulkley, in a study of legal minimum rates in the box-making
industry ** explains the arguments of employers against the law.
In particular, the employers in small cities were against a uniform
standard for the whole country. They claimed that they had greater
general costs than their competitors in the big cities, who were
established near the industries to which they delivered the boxes.
They claimed also that working women in the small cities have fewer
opportunities to spend their money, and that if a high minimum wage
were fixed, they would have no incentive to earn more. The wages
board did not consider these complaints justified. The board was of
the opinion that the slightly more difficult situation of the manufacturers
 in the small cities (a difficulty exaggerated by the complaints)
 in no case justified sweating of the girls, as the wages boards
are established for the very purpose of making these abuses imossible.
 Other employers claimed that the working girls who were
fess well paid were the ones who were not clever. Miss Bulkley believes
 that lack of efficiency is caused by poor nourishment, resulting
 from too low wages. Increases in salaries should enable the
girls to do better work. The board was not overactive. Time wages
had been fixed, but no data had been prepared to show, for particular
boxes made less frequently, whether the piece-rate wages really made
it possible for the workers to earn the time rates.

1 Sells, Dorothy M.: The British Trade Boards System. London, 1923, p. 222.
12 Bulkley, Mildred E.: The Establishment of Legal Minimum Rates in the Box-Making
industry under the Trade Boards Act of 1909. London, 1915.