CHAP. 8.—WAGE REGULATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

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Ing, and confectionery industries. The judgment is based on the CL
ground that the procedure laid down by sections 5 and 7, (i. e:; time. i
Limits for publication of determinations in the press) was notic . 7
complied with.’* The judgment, based on these technical points, ~
does not foreshadow any steps against the law itself on grounds of ;
unconstitutionality. LRG
"Ew
General Conclusions

THE procedure under wage act 1925 is still in its formative
period. The experience obtained so far emphasizes, however,
the flexible nature of the legislative provisions, which adapt themselves
 to different stages of organization of industry. Sweated and
entirely unorganized trades are provided for by boards consisting
of appointed officers only. Where there are rudimentary tradeunions
 their delegates are added to the board ; where the trade-unions
are fairly strong they can cooperate further by requesting the board
to issue minimum-wage legislation. Where the trades are well
organized collective bargaining, regulated by the industrial conciliation
 act, is preferred to minimum-wage legislation, with which this
study is concerned.
South Africa, more so even than Australia, had to face the competition
 of white and colored workers. Australia, confronted particularly
 with the work of the Chinese in the laundry industry, has
expressly applied minimum wages to the Chinese, in order to prevent
their lowering, by competition, the standard of living of the white
workers. In South Africa minimum wages have been declared,
partly for the same reason, for colored and black workers, but no
effort has been made to amalgamate their standards entirely with
those of the whites. Various callings have been potentially reserved
for them, by abstaining from making the wage rates attractive for
whites, but a serious effort is being made to decrease the gap gradually.
 Education, especially among the mulattoes, is spreading
rapidly; color and degree of skill no longer coincide and the vast
gap between the wages of skilled and of unskilled labor comes more
and more into contradiction with general economic laws. The South
African minimum wage law not only ministers to the necessities of
humanity and industrial peace, as in other countries, but also plays
a great role in the gradual growth of an economically homogeneous
nation. The South African experience is therefore unique as an extension
 of the minimum wage principle to an essentially aristocratic
society, divided into a dominating racial minority and a servile racial
majority.

8 Union of South Africa. Department of Labor. Social and Industrial Review, Pretoria,
 June, 1927, pp. 607 and 612; January, 1928, pp. 63 and 64.