CHAPTER 6.—MINIMUM WAGE FOR WOMEN IN
THE UNITED Z™* TES*®

Forces For and Against Minimum Wage

TMANITARIAN impulses for relieving conditions of underraid
 workers have made themselves felt in the United States in
the same way as in Australasia and England. The humani-‘arian
 character of the movement has been even more accentuated
ind more isolated from other factors then elsewhere, and has practically
 played an exclusive role in bringing about minimum wage.
The initiative came after the action of the International Conference
of Consumers’ Leagues which took place in Geneva in 1908, when
the American Consumers’ League put minimum wage on its program.?
While the Women’s Trade Union League cooperated in the agitation
for the pioneer law in Massachusetts, enacted in 1912, the influence
of organized labor generally was not strongly in favor of the legis
lation. Minimum wage for mén was opposed by the American Federation
 of Labor as interfering with the role of the trade-union movement.
 It is excluded also by constitutional provisions, as interpreted
 by the courts. That being so, minimum wage as a factor for
industrial peace in the organized men’s trades, which aroused so
much public opinion in other Anglo-Saxon countries, was not advo-*ated
 in the United States from any responsible quarter.
Humanitarian minimum wage legislation in Australia, England,
and on the Continent of Europe was directed first, both in time and
attention, toward conditions of home workers. But in the United
States industrial home work as an exclusive basis of subsistence does
hot play anywhere near the important role that it does in the abovementioned
 countries. As wage legislation for males was generally
Opposed, there remained only one fairly numerous group of workers
whose difficult struggle for existence attracted wide public attention,
ind where efforts for a minimum wage were not precluded by the
above-named influences—self-supporting women in shops and stores.
As it seemed difficult to care for them without at the same time caring
for women living with their families, female workers generally beame
 the object of minimum-wage legislation. The economy of the
family unit, which largely relieves such difficulties for women living
with their families, has been strongly emphasized by opponents of

‘The subject of minimum wage legislation in the United States was treated by the
writer in an article written in 1927 and published in the January, 1928, number of the
International Labour Review (Geneva, pp. 24-30). While many facts of the American
situation, familiar to students of the-problem In this country, had to be explained to the
foreign readers, the emphasis of the present article is rather on interpretation of the
facts to American readers. A great number of recent documents, rendered available in
the meantime, has made it possible to base conclusions nuitiuly on the new material,
though some cardinal points, indispensable for the understanding of the problem, had, of
tourse, to be reitirated. i) . .
* National Industrial Conference Board. Minimum Wage Legislation In Massachusetts.
New York, 1927, p. 11.