0 MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

July where strong trade-unions backed the determinations of wages made by
‘he committees; that no minimum wages were determined or that the determinations
 were not observed in practice whenever the workers were not
organized. But the organization fails where the pressure of poverty is too great.
Elisabeth Landsberg *! refers to the difficulty resulting from the
fact that in Germany home work is distributed through middlemen.
A minimum is fixed for the wages of the home workers but not for
the prices to be paid by the employers to the middlemen. That
made the law sometimes inapplicable, and in the apron branch in
Berlin middlemen and female home workers had to organize a
combined strike, in order to compel the employers to pay to the middlemen
 the workers’ wages plus a reasonable supplement. Miss
Landsberg also states that the trade depression, with the specter
of unemployment, hampered the application of the law. The
home workers themselves seemed not to insist, in order to avoid
unemployment.
Nevertheless there have been considerable increases of home workers’
 wages.** In the women’s clothing industry in Berlin the earnings
 of women working in shops (50 pfennigs)- have been fixed as
the minimum for home workers, and their piece rates have been
determined accordingly.
In Silesia the hourly earnings have been increased by 50 per cent—
to, 15-29 pfennigs. "The committees have preferred to fix these
minima (too low, of course, from a humanitarian standpoint, but
corresponding to the capacity of the industry to pay) rather than
to abstain from action entirely.
The results of the German law so far are limited, but extraordinary
economic circumstances are responsible for this fact. There has
been some useful work inside the limits of prudence. Many signs
tend to show that under normal industrial conditions the German
law will do much good.

SPAIN

A ROYAL legislative decree of July 26, 1926, provides for the
"7 establishment of a home workers’ protection board, which is
authorized to create wage boards for home industries, to be composed
 of representatives of employers and of workers, under an
unpartial chairman. These boards shall have authority to equalize
home workers’ wages with the wages of shop workers in the same
industry in the same district. More comprehensive steps, obviously
inspired by the example of the Italian Corporate State, have been
taken by two royal decrees of November 26, 1926, and June 18, 1927.4
Local boards, composed of delegates of employers and employees,
shall be called upon to determine wages and conditions of labor and
to settle industrial differences. +

1 Soziale Paraxis, Berlin, 1926, No. 49.
#2 Tdem, Nos. 27, 28, 49.
International Labor Office. Studies and reports, serles D (wages and hours of work),
No, 17: Minimum Wage-Fixing Machinery, Geneva, 1927, p. 152; and Spain. Ministerio
4 Frage, 2 2etelo e Industria, Direccion General de Trabajo: Trabajo, a Domicilio.
Madrid, 1927.
# Ministerio de Trabajo, Comercio e Industria, Direccion General de Trabajo y Accion
Social : Organizacion Corporativo Nacional, Madrid, 1927.
Ministerio de Trabajo, Comercio e Industria. Direccion General de Trabajo : Reglamento-tipo
 a que han de sujetarse los comites paritarios. Madrid, 1927, p. 5.