04 MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

of the minimum wage and then in the nonapplication of decrees
seeming to endanger the existence of particular trades, in order not
to deprive the home workers of their tangible means of subsistence
and not to throw them into unemployment. But there. are also
tendencies in the deliberations of the home-work commissions toward
somparatively high minimum wages.*
The interests of the home workers are not presented by the home
workers themselves but by secretaries of trade-unions who desire to
equalize earnings of home and shop workers in order to free the lastnamed
 group of workers from oppressive competition. They ask
for important increases of wages. Most of the employers’ representatives
 are executives of companies of standing who pay wages above
the average and can not well afford, for reasons of prestige, to defend
wages so low as to distress human feelings. They are inclined to
gree with considerable increases of wages over the customary level.
Application of the Law

PERSONAL inquiries in 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, and again in 1927,
of the home workers’ trade-union in Vienna and from individual
home workers elicited the information that the letter of the law has
been fulfilled ; central home work commissions for the main industries
and numerous regional committees have begun fixing minimum wages,
but these wages are not paid in actual practice.
This information is confirmed by an inspector, Miss Hedwig Lemberger.
 She states that the inspectors did not see their way to
enforce the awards of the commissions on a broad basis because of
the economic crisis. Enforcing the rules in particular cases, so she
states, would have meant throwing the particular workers out of their
employment; enforcing them generally would have destroyed the
ability of the Austrian industries to compete with foreign competitors.
 Even Chinese competition is mentioned in that respect.
These views are strongly criticized even in Central Europe. The
point is made that industries should be allowed to disappear rather
than that the workers’ standards should be lowered to those of the
Chinese. But the economic crisis obviously fetters all parties concerned,
 and the inspectors evidently believe themselves to be acting
‘'n accordance with humanitarian considerations when disregarding
the letter of the law. The Austrian experience, stronger even than
the German experience, shows the weakness of these recent laws.

Absence of Results

D R. KAETHE LEICHTER, of the Viennese Workers’ Chamber,
told an inquirer * that “the law seems to be inapplicable. The
control does not work. [The reason has been explained.] Unemployment
 among the home workers has not increased because the
Jeterminations are not applied. But the unemployment among the
factory workers has been increased through the competition of the
low-paid home workers.”

4 Arbeit und Wirtschaft, Vienna. September, 1926: “ Die Wirksamkeit autoritiirer
Lohnfestsetzungen fiir die Heimarbeiterschaft,” by Hedwig Lemberger,
© Statement to Engelbert Broda in Vienna, who was asked to inquire into the facts.