MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

General Increase in Wages

J. W. Macmillan, chairman of the Wages Board of Ontario, states
that in that Province “the whole pillar of wage structure rises,
although the top less than the bottom.” Reports from Great Britain
and the United States show that the minimum does not become the
maximum. It is to the interest of the employer to attract more highly
skilled workers to his shop, and for that reason he offers wages above
the minimum to people who produce more than the less efficient
workers in these unorganized trades do.
Reports from Australia and New Zealand give us a picture of a
far-reaching standardization of wages; of slow increases, but stabilization,
 even in the face of industrial depression and falling prices,
preventing thereby decreases of purchasing power of the laboring
classes and further stringency of the crisis.
Australia and New Zealand offer, of course, minimum wages to
a much wider range of workers—not only to women, as in the United
States, or to unorganized trades, as in Great Britain, but to all trades.
As in the case of collective bargaining generally, uniformity of wages
seems to be favored by minimum wage legislation applied to highly
organized trades, particularly where arbitration courts render decisions
 of a general binding character. The main factor on which the
wage depends is not the importance the employer. attaches to the
hiring of an individual worker but the agreement between collective
groups fixing wage scales valid for all. It remains, however, in the
logic of the situation that foremen and workers of particular skill are
compensated by higher wages,
Piecework achieves that frequently, in a quite automatic way.
With the home-work legislation of France, Norway, Germany,
Austria, and others, piecework also dominates and clever workers
earn more than others. The statement that the minimum does not
become the maximum remains therefore true for all these countries.

Legitimacy of Such Increase in Wages

As to whether the increase in wages resulting from minimum wage
fixation is legitimate the problem is of course relative, and the
answer depends on our standards. On the basis, however, of the
prevalent Christian and humanitarian standards of our civilization,
increase of “sweated ” wages (mainly of home workers) to living
wages is imperative, and minimum wage legislation is highly valuable
 in that respect. The interests of public health and of the upbringing
 of healthy children influence public opinion in the same
direction.
In Great Britain the increase of wages in the unorganized trades
and in agriculture has been accepted by public opinion—by the
mass of the consumers, although they have ultimately to pay the
costs (increase of wages less economies by more efficient work) in
the form of higher prices. Even on the Continent of Europe, impoverished
 by the war, no objection has been raised to the ultimate
ratio: higher wages of home workers and slightly increased cost
of living of the mass of the population, which buys the goods produced
 by home workers.