CHAP, 6.—MINIMUM WAGE FOR WOMEN IN UNITED STATES 47

should be brought under the minimum wage laws of the United
States. Home work is less extensive and its evils are less developed
in this country than elsewhere, but it does exist. An inquiry of the
Consumers’ League of Eastern Pennsylvania and of various childlabor
 organizations in the spring of 1924 showed that in 599 families
where children were illegally employed the family earnings in about
62 per cent of the cases were less than $6 a week.’* An inquiry in
Massachusetts under the joint direction of the Massachusetts Bureau
of Statistics and Miss Amy Hewes, in 1915,® brought to light that
50 per cent of the home workers investigated earned less than 8 cents
an hour.
A committee appointed in 1925 by the Association of Governmental
Labor Officials of the United States and Canada reported at the 1926
meeting of the association that it had not given serious consideration
to the establishment of minimum wage legislation, expressly for home
workers, because of the constitutional difficulties. It recommended
that home workers should not be excluded from general minimum
wage provisions. The association approved these recommendations.*’
In Massachusetts, home work is carried on in several industries
covered by decrees, particularly in the manufacture of jewelry,
stationery, toys, games, sporting goods, and knit goods, nd in the
garment trades ® The assistant commissioner of labor states, however,
 that “the decrees have never been applied to home workers,
although the rates for home work are generally much below those for
factory workers.” The result is a tendency to depress the factory
rates and to make more difficult the acceptance of the decrees. The
report states that nothing in the Massachusetts law prevents such
application and that the necessity of establishing piece rates, although
 somewhat difficult, does not constitute a valid argument
against application of the law. The very fact that shop work and
home work are carried on in the same industry and that shop workers
are protected by fixed minimum wages and home workers are not,
creates irregular conditions of competition.
Even application of the above-cited resolution of the committee
of the Association of Governmental Labor Officials would imply
acceptance of the proposals of the assistant commissioner of labor for
Massachusetts.
The only State from which an express minimum-wage order for
home work is reported is Wisconsin. The order was enacted in 1921.
An investigation showed that of 28 cases inspected 4 women depended
 entirely on home work for subsistence and 9 depended partly
thereon. "The board of health found that out of 166 cases examined
14 workers depended entirely upon home work for subsistence and
139 were partially dependent thereon? An investigation into the
increase of earnings after the minimum wage law was applied showed
that in the plant of a pearl-button company, for instance, wage
rates were raised from 6 cents an hour to a minimum of 22 cents;

4 Monthly Labor Review, January, 1927, p. 129.
8 Magsachusetts. Bureau of Statistics. Industrial Home Work in Massachusetts.
Boston, 19015, p. 48. .
1 In{ernational Labor Office. International Labor Review, Geneva, April, 1927, p. 599.
18 4 Nacsachuscetts Minimum Wage Law : Recommendations and Outlook for the Future.”
Submitted by Ethel M. Johnson, assistant commissioner, Massachuseits Department of
Labor and Industries, for annual report. 1928. Boston. 1928. p. 4. (Typewritten.)
¥ Rrankfurter, Felix; Dewson, Mary W.; and Commons, John R. : State Minimum Wage
Laws in Practice, New York, National Consumers’ League, 1924, p: 120.