15 MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES
Application of the Laws

THE laws of the different States have stood in different ways the
test of practical application, and a brief examination of that
experience may shed some light on their comparative usefulness and
on the outlook for further development. The analysis in the preceding
 chart serves as a framework for the following extended comment
on the present status of the laws.

Legal Situation

The compromise reached in most of the States with mandatory
laws has been heretofore described (see pp. 40 to 43). The only law
which remains on firm legal ground is the recommendatory law of
Massachusetts. The supreme judicial court of that State has twice
sustained it—in 1918 and in 1924—after the decision in the District
vf Columbia case.’ The court, while rendering somewhat more difficult
 the application of the law through the medium of public opinion
by declaring that newspapers could decline to publish the list of
noncomplying firms, stated, on the other hand, that the adverse deci
sion of the United States court in the District of Columbia case does
not affect the Massachusetts law, as that law is not mandatory but
recommendatory.
This judicial situation has attracted the- attention of Governor
Smith in New York. In his message to the New York Legislature
this year he proposed the enactment of a minimum wage law of a
recommendatory nature, as this will meet the objections of the
Supreme Court.'®

Scope of the Laws

The great controversies over minimum wage laws in other countries,
 such as those regarding the scope of the laws, do not seem to
touch the United States. Minimum wage legislation for men has
never been attempted. There is therefore no problem as to whether
to apply it to “insufficiently organized” trades only or to “all”
trades. The women’s trades to which the law applies practically all
fall into the first group—that of incomplete unionization. The distinction
 between enumeration of trades to come under the law, as in
South Dakota, and the more general wording of the laws elsewhere
has no great importance, as the authorities are empowered to select
for practical application only those women’s trades where conditions
seern particularly to warrant it. Massachusetts decrees, for instance,
apply to only 19 trades, employing about 90,000 women,** while there
are about 500,000 women gainfully employed in the State.
The only controversy involving considerations of principle refers
to the question whether or not home-work trades, which have been
the starting point of Australian, European, and British legislation,
12 ¢ Fifteen Years of Minimum Wages in Massachusetts,” by Ethel MM. Johnson, assistint
 commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Labor and Industrics. Boston, 1928, p.
12. (Typewritten.)
18 Idem, p. 2. a
14 ¢ Massachusetts Minimum Wage Law: Recommendations and Outlook for the Future.
submitted by Kthel M. Johnson, assistant commissioner, Massachusetts Department of
,abor and Industries, for annual report, 1928. Boston, 1928, p. 5. (I'ypewritten.)