56 ~~ MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

licenses may be issued to aged or otherwise handicapped workers
eliminates, however, the main difficulty, and there remains only the
question whether the issuance of these licenses is broad enough to
meet all worthy cases.
Miss Ethel M. Johnson, assistant commissioner of labor of Massashusetts,
 has stated that in that State there has been only a small
percentage of dismissals. In other cases workers could be put on
piece rates and the slow workers earning less kept their jobs. From
the experience of Massachusetts, Minnesota, and the District of
Columbia it appears that discharges have happened but were not
Erequent.*®
Statements from the employers’ associations of California diverge
rather seriously on this point. Preston McKinney, the vice presldent
 of the Canners’ League of California, says: *
The canning industry operates under a pay-roll audit system which provides
that at least 50 per cent of the adult women working upon piece rates receive
not less than 3314 cents an hour. Elderly and infirm canners are classed as
“ slow workers" and work under permits issued by the industrial welfare commission.
 These “slow workers” are eliminated from the audit. Due to the
fact that most of the women employed in the canneries work on a piecework
scale, the more competent ones may earn more than the same class of workers
in other industries.
On the other hand, S. C. Simons, of the Los Angeles Chamber of
Commerce, makes the following statement: °°
We are informed that it has been necessary to dismiss a large number of slow
amployees, frequently those who would be perfectly satisfied to work at a lower
wage than the minimum established.
Mrs. Catherine Philips Edson, chief of the division of industrial
welfare of California, states &gt; that slow workers have not become
unemployed because of the law, as the commission is generous 1n
meeting the demands of employers to employ these women at less
than the minimum wage. These demands, however, have not been
great, and the commission has been generally able “by discretion
and a little persuasion ” to keep all such types of women employed.
Whether there are any who refuse employment to them because of age we
have no means of knowing, although no such complaint has ever been made
to us.
In the canning industry, which is the industry to which the largest number
of unskilled workers gravitate, we have a much larger number of slow workers
or “infirm workers,” as we call them. We have a very elaborate system of
defining what is a fair minimum piece rate. It requires that a piece rate to be
fair must yield to 50 per cent of the woman workers not less than 331% cents
an hour. To prevent the nonemployment of these elderly and infirm workers
we give a permit to have them eliminated from the audit, so the audit is made
np of more nearly normal workers. However, if an adjustment is necessary to
make the piece rates yield 8314 cents an hour to 50 per cent of the women
working upon it, that adjustment is given to the slow workers as well as to
‘he normal workers in the establishment.
In Wisconsin in 1923 863 establishments answered an inquiry
whether any minors and women had been discharged on account of
the minimum wage law, 37 firms answering “ yes,” and 826 answering

«8 International Labor Office. International Labor Review, Geneva, January, 1928.
3. 42 : “ Minimum Wage Legislat'on in the United States,” by R. Broda.
4 Letter dated Mar. 30, 1928
5 Letter dated Mar, 19, 1928
5 [etter dated Mar. 24, 1928