J6 MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

commission “ had some influence on wage rates.” For instance, the
central commission for the glass industry fixed a wage scale on the
occasion of a dispute in the glass-polishing industry.
The Minister of Social Insurance of Czechoslovakia ® states that
5 central and 30 district commissions were in existence at the end
of 1926. The glass industry had 5 district commissions and the
textile industry had 10. In general, the wage rates fixed are for
the whole Republic, though in certain cases different rates have been
fixed in the different Provinces,
From information available in the Ministry of Social Insurance
the number of home workers in that part of the Republic which
belonged formerly to Austria has decreased from 276,000 (latest
Austrian statistics) to 103,000 in 1924. The reduction applies particularly
 to the textile industry. As minimum wages had not, up to
1924, been fixed in that industry, the new legislation can not, however.
oe held responsible for this development.
So far tangible results seem to be nearly as restricted as in Austria.
The double relative failure (in two countries where practically the
same law is applied but where industrial and psychological conditions
of application vary so drastically, one country being poor and the
other prosperous) “would lead to the supposition that the law is to
olame. But the same type of wage boards functions reasonably well
in the home-work trades of Germany, Norway, Argentina, and ‘above
all in Great Britain and Victoria.
We seem to come nearer the truth in concluding—pending further
developments in both countries—that the articular conditions inherent
 in both countries are responsible fr that puzzling double
coincidence.

® International Labor Office. Studies and reports, serics D (wages and hours of work),
No. 17: Minimum wage-fixing machinery. Geneva, 1927, Pp. 151.