Fabian Tract No. 128. 


THE CASE FOR 
ALEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 


PuBLISHED AND SoLD BY 

THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 

PRICE ONE PENNY. 

LONDON: 
THE FABIAN SociETY, 3 CLEMENT's INN, STRAND, W.C. 
]ULY, 1906. 



The Case for a Legal Minimum Wage. 

h; a discussion of the institution of a National Legal Minimum 
Wage there is no need to deal with the fascinating but abstract subject 
of the right of the State to interfere with the conditions under 
which persons employ, or are employed. The development of factory 
legislation and its effects upon national life and industry have settled 
the question as to the limits of State regulation in this sphere once 
and for all by proving that experience alone can shew where these 
limits ought to be fixed. The only real criticism to which industriaL 
legislation is now subjected is not on the ground of principle but on 
the practical question of effectiveness in points of detail, and such 
criticism leads to continual demands being made for the extension of 
legislation to secure a standard minimum of leisure and safety for an 
increasing number of the workers. 

State Minima. 
But not only in matters of safety and leisure has the State 
assumeQ, with general approval, the duty of fixing a standard. 
All normal children, and many who are abnormal, are legally requiredin the interests of national mental efficiency to receive a minimum 
of instruction ; e\·ery person is supposed to be compelled to conform 
to a certain sanitary minimum ; and in housing the State is 
gradually feeling its way to the enforcement of a minimum of 
health and comfort. These measures, aiming at the protection of 
the masses from the evil effects of anarchic industrial conditions, 
are, however, limited to a considerable extent in their utility by the 
failure of the State to secure sufficient remuneration to those 
industrially employed. There appears to be a superstition held byeconomists and politicians, even by those who have no prejudiceagainst State regulation in itself, that the cash relation between 
employer and employed is so sacred that to interfere with it by law 
is to commit the unpardonable economic and political sin. Moreover, 
it was thought that the worker would become educated through 
compulsory Education Acts ; healthy through Public Health Acts; 
comfortably housed through Housing Acts ; and that the inevitable 
result of this education, health and comfort would be increased mental 
and physical efficiency capable of eff~cting a dead lift in wages all round. 
This expectation has not been realize'd, as may be easily gathered from 
recent well-.k~9wn enm1iries in~p. ~ci11l conc;l:itions . ..It .is g!~ingly 
apparent that an alarming proportio-n of the mass of the people, in 
spite of the efforts of the St<rte by. indirect and partial means to 

' A. 


'3 

raise the standard of life, do not receive sufficient wages to provide 
for a healthy physical existence. The researches of Mr. Charles 
Booth and Mr. B. S. Rowntree indicate that it is probable that 
at least twelve millions of our population are living just on or 
below a level of bare subsistence. This estimate appears to be so 
well founded that a responsible politician, Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman to wit, adopted it as an argument in favor of the 
return of the Liberal Party to power. It is true that according to 
Mr. Rowntree a good deal of this degrading poverty arises from the 
careless and unscientific expenditure of incomes, which, if carefullyand scientifically expended would be just sufficient to maintain 
physical efficiency. The class which suffers through this cause 
would not be directly assisted by the enforcement of a legal 
minimum wage of the kind we shall discuss, but below it there is 
another class which does not receive enough to maintain physical 
efficiency, no matter how wisely the family expenditure may be 
regulated. Nothing but a rise in family income can help this lower 
class. 

Wages Clauses in Public Contracts. 

In spite of the protests of old-fashioned economists against the 
legal regulation of wages, the State, both central and municipal, has 
begun to act upon the principle that no sweating or underpayment 
must be allowed in its direct or indirect service. The adoption by 
public bodies of a " standard," " fair," " agreed," or " trade union " 
rates of wages clause in forms of tender for their work is undoubtedly 
a small step in the direction of the regulation of wages by 
the State, even though it may be simply a public endorsement of a 
private agreement arrived at between employers and a trade union. 
And when a municipal body goes further and, finding that there is 
no "standard," " fair," "agreed," or " trade union " rate in a particular 
trade, proceeds to fix a minimum wage for members of that 
trade when it is engaged upon public work, either directly,~ or 
through the medium of a contractor, a ' longer and still more 
important step in the same direction ·has been taken, and the 
infringement of the right of free contract in matters of wages 
becomes extremely flagrant. The London County Council fo(
several years has fixed minimum rates to be paid by contractors 
who carry out its tailoring work ; and, recently, the companies who 
take the contracts for keeping clean the acres of glass in London's 
educational and other public buildings have been bound by the 
Council to pay a minimum rate per hour to the men engaged uponthe work. Along these lines something has been done to help weak 
and unorganized sections of labor to attain a higher standard of 
comfort. But there are strict limitatioqs to the efficacy of. wage 
clauses in contracts for public work. It is very difficult in an occupation 
which is either badly organized or wholly without a trade 
organization to make certain that the clauses are observed. In 
those trades where unionism is strong the natural tendency of the 
contr.actOI: to try to get. round t}:le labor conditions•of his contract. 


4 


can be more or less effectively checked. Where unionism is either 
absent or weak the way of the transgressing contractor is easy.
Moreover, the number of persons employed directly or indirectly 
upon municipal or State work under regulated conditions, while 
increasing, is at present comparatively small, and although the 
number of contractors who carry out such work is large the regulated 
conditions do not apply to all their employees but only to 
those engaged in executing the public contracts. Hence we find 
that the tailoring contractor to the London County Council will paythe minimum rate for the Council work ; but it is understood that 
the worker who is given a park-keeper's suit to make up is compelled 
to balance the advantage in wages accruing therefrom bytaking a certain quantity of other work for her employer's private 
customers at a far lower rate of pay than the County Council's 
minimum. To parody the showman's classic phrase, what she gains 
on the regulated municipal uniform she loses on the unregulatedprivate overcoat. 

Therefore, although the introduction of wage clauses and the 
fixing of minimum rates in connection with public work are 
extremely desirable and useful they do not promise to be either 
efficient or speedy as a means of improving the lot of those for 
whom an immediate rise in income is the only sah·ation. They are 
mentioned here simply as illustrations of the fact often overlooked, 
that the State, in spite of the serious warnings of economists, has 
begun, if only in a very ten_tative way, to take an intelligent interest 
in the terms of the cash nexus between employer and employed. 

Obsolete and Modern Economic Theory. 

"All generous minds," says the most genial of American essayists,
" have a horror of what are commonly called facts." One need not 
possess a very generous mind to have a horror of what used to be 
called political economy. It is now happily banished to Satun1 ; 
but it must not be supposed that genuine economic science has been 
banished with it. The Saturnian economy was the economy of 
middle class professional life, in which every man is his own employerand capitalist, absurdly applied to modern industrial civilization bycollege professors. It misled the nation on every practical issue ; 
and it would, if it could, prevent the enactment of a minimum wagelaw by giving yet another mistaken verdict against it. Those who 
are desirous of learning in detail the arguments in support of such a 
verdict, and also how they may be effectively demolished, are referred 
to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's I1ldustnal Democracy. But the 
professors still protest. They were against the Factory Acts ; 
against the prevention of capitalist exploitation of children of tender 
years ; against the fencing of dangerous machinery ; against trade 
combinations of the working people ; in a word against the whole 
trend of modern industrial and social legislation. Against the enactment 
of a minimum wage law they reason as they taught the individualistic 
opponents of the Ten Hours' Bill to reason sixty years 
ago. They urge that the cost of production would be increased in 


5 


the industries where the mm1mum wage was enforced, and that 
therefore they would inevitably shrink or collapse owing to the fallingoff in the demand for their products which would result from the 
rise in price caused by the increased cost of production. This would 
tend to swell the ranks of the unemployed, and the last stage of the 
sweated worker would be worse than the first. This argument is 
based upon the assumption that the industries referred to can onlyexist by the employment of sweated labor. The practical opposition 
to the abolition by legislation of insanitary, unsafe, and unhealthyfactories and workshops, and to the State prevention of excessive overworking 
of women and children was based upon similar assumptions. 
"The cotton industry will be ruined," said the Lancashire millowner 
in effect, backed up by the economic professors," if it is compelled to 
bear the expense of making decent the places in which the manufacture 
is carried on." Speaking in the House of Commons in 1855 against 
a Bill for the compulsory fencing of machinery, John Bright said 
that if the Bill passed he would advise his partners to shut up their 
mills because the legislature would not allow them to employ their 
hands at a profit.':' Needless to say there was still a handsome 
dividend to be drawn from the cotton industry after the cost of 
fencing machinery had been met ; and the Lancashire mills are still 
open, thereby shewing scant respect for college-made economics. 
We know now that the effect of stopping competition in wages at 
the expense of the vitality of the workers is, to quote from lndustr£al 
Democracy, to concentrate it upon efficiency. A minimum wagewould continue and intensify that salutary concentration. Doubtless 
a number of the weakest and least efficient workers would then be 
excluded from employment where formerly they had been able to 
keep themselves partially alive by their sweated and inefficient labor, 
inefficient because underpaid. This result instead of being deploredshould be welcomed. It would draw attention to the urgent need 
for the State to take in hand the problem of the unemployable-aproblem which arises mainly through the absence of a national minimum 
wage. Even if some occupations were unable to bear the cost 
of a minimum wage it would obviously be a national benefit for them 
to disappear rather than to continue by living upon the life capital of 
the nation. 

Wages Law in New Zealand. 
Before going further into detail with regard to the proposed law 
it will be well at this stage to consider an important practicalobjection, namely, that although it might be possible to draft on 
paper a satisfactory Minimum Wage Bill, and even get it passed, the 
Act would break down in practice owing to the immense difficulties 
which would arise in its administration. It is urged that the work 
of calculating and fixing the minimum wage rate and of inspection 
for the prevention of evasion would be so vast and minute that the 
wit of man could not devise machinery capable of coping with it. 

• Simpson, Many Memories of Man;• People, pp. 263-264; quoted by Prof. Diceyin Law and Opinion in Engla11d. 

When, however, we turn to Australasia, we find laws in operation 
there demanding a system of administrative organization more complex 
than would be required in connection with a minimum wage 
law founded on the cost of living. The New Zealand Arbitration 
Acts, the effect of which has been the institution of legal minimum 
rates of wages on the basis of what each trade arbitrated upon will 
bear, entails upon the members and officials of the Conciliation 
Boards and the Court of Arbitration a vast amount of labor in 
settling multitudinous points of great difficulty which would. not 
arise here under a minimum wage law. Some idea of what those 
labors have been may be formed from the following quotation from 
State Experz'ments in Australt'a and New Zealand, by the Ron. 
William Pember Reeves : 

''The trades that have come under the awards of the tribunals 
have been those of the bootmakers, seamen, goldminers, coalminers, 
printers, tailors, millers, carpenters, plumbers, painters, moulders, 
drivers, saddlers, tailoresses, dressmakers, sawmillers, engineers, iron-
workers, furniture-makers, bakers, confectioners, butchers, grocers' 
assistants, and others of less importance. The questions arbitrated 
upon have already included most of the hard nuts which students of 
labor conflicts know so well. Among them are hours of labor, 
holidays, the amount of day wages, the price to be paid for piecework, 
the proportion of apprentices, the facilities to be allowed to 
trade union officials for interviews with their men, the right of 
employers to engage non-unionists, or to discharge or refuse to 
engage unionists, the conduct of unionists in refusing to work side 
by side with ' free laborers,' and pressure exerted by employers to 
induce them to join a private benefit society." 

Yet, in spite of the hardness of the nuts mentioned by Mr. Reeves, 
they have been successfully cracked without any serious strain uponthe machinery provided for the purpose, or any strong or widely-
spread dissatisfaction arising with the methods adopted. 

State Action in Victoria. 

Again, the Shops and Factories Act of the State of Victoria, 
Australia, which so far is the boldest experiment entered upon for 
the stamping out of sweating and industrial parasitism, necessitates 
an elaborate system of enquiry and inspection in each trade brought 
under the Act. The measure, besides being one for the regulationof factories and shops on the ordinary lines, also contains clauses 
which make it an actual minimum wage law, and accordinglydesen·es special attention. 

The Act as passed in I 896 provided for the appointment of special 
boards to fix wages and piecework rates for persons employed either· 
inside or outside factories in making clothing or wearing apparel or 
furniture, or in breadmaking or baking, or in the business of a 
butcher or seller of meat. Special boards might be appointed for 
any process, trade or business usually or frequently carried on in a 
factory or workroom, provided a resolution had been passed byeither House of Parliament declaring it to be expedient to appoint 


such a board. The special boards were to consist of not less than 
four or more than ten members and a chairman, and to hold office for 
two years. Half the members (elected as prescribed) were to be 
representatives of employers and half of employees. If the employers' 
or employees' representatives were not elected the Governor 
in Council was given the power to appoint representatives. He 
was also empowered to fill all vacancies. The members of a board 
might elect a chairman (not being one of such members); if they did 
not elect a chairman the Governor in Council might appoint one. 
The members of these boards were to be paid lOS. per full day, 
ss. per half day, the chairman £I per day with travelling allowances. 
A board might fix either time rates or piecework rates, or both ; 
must also fix the hours for which the rate of wages was determined, 
and the payment for overtime, and in fixing wages might take into 
consideration the nature, kind, and class of work, and the mode and 
manner in which the work was to be done, the age and sex of the 
workers, and any matter which might be prescribed by regulation.
A board could settle the proportion of apprentices or improvers to be 
employed in any process, trade, or business, and the wage to be paid 
to ·them ; and in fixing such wage might consider age, sex and 
experience. The determination of a special board was to apply to 
every city and town and might be extended by the Governor in 
Council to any borough or shire or part of a shire. A board could 
determine that manufacturers might be allowed to fix piecework 
rates based on the minimum wage. That is to say, the board, after 
fixing time wages itself, might leave it to employers to pay a fair 
equivalent to their pieceworkers. The Chief Inspector might, however, 
challenge any rate so paid, and the employer might have to 
iustify it before the board. 

The Success of the Victorian Act. 

The boards set up for the baking, clothing, bootmaking, shirt-
making, and underclothing trades, in spite of intricate complications,
found it possible to arrive at determinations which have given general 
satisfaction. The furniture trade board had the most onerous 
task, as certain sections of the trade are in the hands of the Chinese, 
whose idea of honoring Factory Acts of this kind is to contravene 
them. Though collusion between Chinese masters and their Chinese 
workpeople to outwit the inspector in matters of wages and hours 
was glaringly obvious, the cunning of the yellow man was too often' 
superior to that of the representative of the law when it became·a 
question of securing legal proof that the regulations had been broke_n. 
Yet even here sweating has been checked to a very great extent, and 
the conditions of the trade in 1 9 01 were reported as far superior to 
those prevailing before the establishment of the wages board. ' ·· 

It is important to note that the alleged tendency of a minimum 
wage .to become .the maximum has ,not shown itself. In May, 1902, 
the 'Chief Inspector asserted that whereas in the clothing trade1 in 
1901, the minimum wage for adult males was 45s. per week, the 
average .paid was 53s. 6d. For adult females the minimum was zos., 


8 

the average, 22s. 3d. He instanced similar differences in the boot, 
furniture, and shirtmaking trades. 

Owing to the favorable results of the working of these six boards, 
twenty-six other trades have been brought under the operation of 
the Act-amongst others, the aerated water trade, artificial manure 
making, bedstead making, brassworking, brewing, brickmaking,
coopering, dressmaking, jam-making, ironmoulders, pastrycooks,
plate-glass making, stonecutting, tinsmithing, woodworking, etc., etc. 

By the end of I 904 determinations had been made by the above 
32 boards, except in the case of the tinsmiths, where the fixing of 
piecework rates caused delay. In all cases rises in wages had been 
made, and in nearly every instance the staff of inspectors reported that 
the decisions of the boards had been acted upon without any serious 
friction taking place. In two industries only does it appear that 
trouble arises. One is the furniture trade, which suffers from the 
blight of yellow labor. According to the Chief Inspector's report of 
December, 1904, a case of evasion by a white firm engaged in the 
furniture trade was discovered, and the employer was compelled 
to hand over to his underpaid workmen the sum of £40 each. It 
should be mentioned in passing that a weakness of the Act is that 
no provision appears to be made for punishing the men as well as the 
employers in a case of collusion. The other of the two troubled trades 
is that of dressmaking. Here dissatisfaction has been caused by the 
low minimum wage fixed by the board, which, following the exampleof all the other boards, based its award upon the principle of givingwhat the trade would bear. 

In 1903 a court was crea~ed in order that appeals against the 
determinations of the wages boards might be heard. By December, 
1904, only one case had come before the court-an appeal by the 
employers in the artificial manure industry against a decision fixing 
a minimum wage of 40s. 6d. The employers were successful, the 
award being reduced to 36s. This dearth of employment for the 
Appeal Court may fairly be taken as further evidence that the Act 
is working smoothly.

The Victorian Act, I 896, was intended as an experiment to be 
tried for three years only. In I899 it was amended slightly and 
extended for two years plus a session of parliament. In I902, when 
a sudden dissolution of the Victorian parliament endangered it, an 
Act was got through again extending its life, this time until 1905. 
The Chief Inspector of Factories, in Dec. I 904, reported strongly in 
favor of the Act being made a permane!1t one. Last year (I905) the 
Act was again renewed.':' 

It has been urged that the successful working of Australasian 
laws affecting wages and dealing with complicated and minute details, 
throws no light upon the question as to whether similar laws 
would be practicable in England, because the population of Australasia 
is less than one-tenth that of the United Kingdom. This objection 
is easily disposed of. Melbourne, Manchester and Birmingham 

* For further details of Australasian Labor laws see Fabian Tract No. 83. 

9 

have practically the same population: five hundred thousand each. 
The notion that the experience of Melbourne is useless as a guide 
to Manchester is flatly contrary to common sense. The two cities 
resemble each other far more closely than Shrewsbury resembles 
Sheffield. 

The Proper Basis of a Minimum Wage Law. 

So far we have been discussing the objections to State interference 
with wages, and to the fixing of any kind of minimum wageby Act of Parliament. We now have to consider the form such an 
Act would take in this country. 

The Act should aim at the fixing and enforcement of a wagesufficient to enable our workers to be maintained in healthy existence. 
Therefore, the wage should be calculated on what the worker 
requires for physical health and efficiency, and not on what the trade 
will bear. The latter method, obviously resulting in the fixing of 
different minimum rates for each trade, would come under the head 
of wage regulation, which, in the interests of industrial peace, may be 
extremely desirable, but is something quite apart from the establishment 
and enforcement of a national minimum wage in the interests 
of physical and industrial efficiency. The minimum wage would 
not replace "standard" or "trade union" rates where these were 
the higher amount. 

In the second place the law must be national: that is, must apply 
to the whole country in order that no district shall undersell another 
in the labor market at the cost of national vitality. Thirdly, since 
the last condition cannot be fulfilled by equal money wages all over 
the country, the Act must be drafted on the assumption that it is 
possible to determine a national minimum of real wages : that is to 
say such a wage as, worked out in its cash equivalent will equalize 
all local variations in cost of living. 

Relative Wages of Men and Women. 
The necessity for fixing a lower wage for women than for men 
raises one of the greatest difficulties in the way of an equitable 
solution of the problem ; and it must be said at once that it is a 
difficulty which cannot be fairly adjusted without bringing the Poor 
Law to the aid of the Minimum Wage.
The reason for paying men more highly than women is that 
under our marriage institutions the man is the woman's paymasterfor her domestic work. This domestic work, including childbearingand the rearing of children, is onerous, dangerous, and absolutelyindispensable to society. But the woman is not directly paid for it : 
she is given, instead, a legal claim on her husband's means, name, 
and status. Therefore it is admitted that the man, havin~ to supportanother adult and their children, must receive a wage sufficient to 
maintain these several persons, whilst the woman is regarded industrially 
as a single woman, needing only enough to support herself. 
The objections to such an arrangement are obvious. Some men 
are not married, and are therefore receiving family wages for single 


IO 

life. What is far worse, some women are widows with children; and 
these women are receiving the wages of a single adult, and starvinga family on it. 

To novices in political science it may seem simple to establish 
two wages, one to be paid to married and the other to single workers. 
But in competitive commerce such solutions are utopian. Ifmarried 
men cost more in the labor-market than single ones, employers would 
never employ a married man where a single one was available ; and 
the married men would thus tend to be driven out of the market bythe single ones. The same would be true of women. Further, if 
women and men were paid at the same rates, men would always be 
employed in preference to women wherever possible, because, fairly 
or unfairly, male labor is considered industrially superior to female. 
The demand for "equal wages for men and women" is perfectly well 
known to trade-unionists as a device for keeping women out of 
men's trades. Any attempt to maintain two prices in the labor-
market for the same article, or to maintain the same price for two 
different qualities of the same article, must fail, because nobody will 
buy at the higher price when he can get what he wants at the lower, 
and nobody will take second quality when he can get first qualityfor the same money. Therefore, whilst the present competitive 
system of employment by competing private enterprises prevails,
the industrial minimum wage must conform to three conditions: 

(a) It must be lower for women than for men; (b) all men must have 
the same minimum wage, and all women the same minimum wage ; 
(c) the man's wage must be enough to support a family, and the 
woman's to support a single independent adult. 
This leaves the problem of the bachelor and the widow with children 
unsolved, just as they are left unsolved by our present system.
The case of the bachelor may be disregarded for two reasons ; 

(a) if the minimum wage secures enough to the married man, it is 
no evil, but only a negligible inequity, to let the bachelor have a 
little more than enough ; (b) the practice of working men at presentshows that, as a matter of fact, they do not find that they can providethemselves with domestic service and companionship more cheaplyas bachelors than by marriage. 
The case of the widow cannot be set aside in this way. Nothingcan be more deplorable than the position of a woman who, in addition 
to industrial work, has to be both father and mother to a family, and 
yet can get only the wages of an underpaid single person. It is impossible 
for her to maintain her health and self-respect under such 
circumstances. When her children grow up they are more likely to 
join" the residuum," and become a heavy charge on the community,
than to add to its resources. She must be rescued from this miserable 
and mischievous condition. But a minimum wage Jaw alone 
cannot rescue her, though it alone can make her rescue possible.
The only way of meeting her case is to give her, as a matter of right,
sufficient assistance from public funds to enable her, with the aid of 
free public schools, and free meals in them, to make up her income 
to the standard for heads of families. There is no element of charity 


II 

in this. The death of her husband has cut off the payment made 
through her husband for her services to society in bearing and rearing 
children ; and the continuation of this payment through another 
channel is no more than her due. 

One of the weightiest arguments in favor of a minimum wagelaw is that it would make such an arrangement workable for the first 
time. Without such a law, the widow's allowance would be used, as 
soldiers' pensions now are, to cheapen her labor and drag down the 
wages of her competitors to the level of what starving widows could 
be driven to accept in addition to their allowances. That is what 
happened in the case of the old parish allowances which were so 
ruthlessly cut off under the Poor Law of 1834. Wages went down; 
outdoor relief went up ; and employers got labor at the expense of 
the rates, with results that were morally and industrially ruinous. 
But the merciless and inconsiderate cutting off the allowances altogether 
without making other provision for the widow was not a 
remedy: it was a catastrophe to which we are indebted for our presentproblem of the unemployable and our physical deterioration scare. 
The cr~elties of the new Poor Law have, in their own way, been as 
great a failure as the indulgences of the old one. They stand to-daycondemned as perhaps the most disastrous of the many practicalblunders produced by the application of individualist economics to 
social problems. Had the reformers of that day looked at the situation 
from a social point of view, they would have placed the workers 
behind the bulwark of a legal minimum wage instead of abandoningthem to the horrors of unrestrained competition in a market where 
sordid selfishness was deliberately worshipped as a divine ordinance 
for insuring the spontaneous welfare of the human race. 

Public provision for widows with families will raise no difficultywhatever when it has a minimum wage for women as its fulcrum. 
Instead of a rate in aid of wages, it will become a form of State 
endowment of motherhood and orphanage. As such it might well 
have terrified the politicians of seventy years ago, who were in the 
first panic of an unprecedented increase of population. But to-day 
we are in the first panic of a most alarming diminution of our birthrate 
; and anything that promises to relieve the family anxieties 
which have so powerfully spread the artificial restriction of the 
population since 188o is on that account alone highly desirable. 

It only remains to note that the funds for such allowances should 
not come from local rates or be connected with any stigma of 
"pauperism." The burden-or rather the investment, for it would 
pay us enormously in national health-is essentially a national and 
not a local one ; and its fittest source is taxation of rent, interest 
and industrial profits. 

The Unemployable. 

A minimum wage law cannot help the unemployable. On the 
contrary, we must frankly face the fact that it will increase their 
numbers at first. For in competitive commerce unemployable is 
not an absolute but a relative term. A man who is employable 


12 

at twelve shillings a week may be unemployable at twenty-four. A 
woman who is employable at four shillings a week may be unemployable 
at twelve. On the other hand, a man who is actually employed 
at eighteen shillings may be quite employable at twenty-four, and a 
woman actually employed at twelve quite employable at eighteen.
That is, if their employer had either to raise their wages or refuse 
to employ them at all, he would raise their wages and be content 
with less profit. Consequently it must not be assumed that all the 
workers who are now receiving less than the legal minimum would 
be thrown out of employment. But some of them would. Our 
social anarchy has created not only an absolutely unemployable class, 
but a class just above them which is commercially only just worth 
employing at starvation wages in busy times. If the employers had 
to pay these a standard subsistence wage, however modest, theywould discharge them at once and add them to the ranks of the 
absolutely unemployable. What is more, there are whole industries 
dependent on sordidly cheapened labor which would be wiped out 
by the minimum wage. And there would be indignant letters to the 
press from benevolent persons shocked by individual cases of poor 
men and women deprived of their little wage and flung into destitution, 
with much furious clamor from the sweated trades and their 
landlords and shareholders. But the destruction of the trades which 
subsist only by sweating is one of the beneficent results which the 
minimum wage is expressly devised to accomplish. And it is far 
cheaper for the nation to deal with the unemployable as destitute 
persons by wisely adapted poor law methods than to allow them to 
drag down decent workers to their level by their competition in the 
labor market. Besides, it must be remembered that whereas under 
the present system there is a constant supply of unemployables produced 
by abject poverty and the physical and moral deterioration it 
creates, a minimum wage would abolish this poverty and so cut off 
the supply. We should have only one generation of ordinary unemployables 
to deal with. When they died out, we should only have the 
casual imbeciles and criminals; and even these would be enormously 
reduced in number, as they too are largely poverty products.

There is another most important deduction to be made from the 
total of temporary destitution to be apprehended from the first 
effects of a Minimum Wage Law. It is quite a mistake to supposethat all the direct recipients of starvation wages are starved. A 
large number of them are well-fed and even blooming lasses who are 
really supported at home by their parents, but are willing to work 
in a factory for the sake of five or six shillings a week pocket-moneyand the comparative gaiety of factory life. The father, having to 
support the girl in any case out of his earnings, is glad to have her 
demands for money not only stopped, but actually replaced by a 
contribution of a few shillings to the housekeeping. It seems an 
excellent arrangement to all immediately concerned; but it involves 
incalculable social mischief. Not only is the woman, when she has 
to support herself wholly, or is perhaps left a widow with several 
children, compelled by the competition of the girls to starve on five 


13 

or six shillings a week; but the trade at which she is working is not 
a genuinely self-supporting one: it is parasitic on the trades in 
which the fathers of the girls work, and produces all the industrial 
and social evils which recent economic investigations have broughthome to parasitic trades. If this practice were defeated by a Minimum 
Wage Law, the girls would not be deprived of their livelihood, 
but simply sent back to their families with the prospect of re-enteringindustrial life later on with a sufficient wage secured by law. And the 
temptation to the parents to rely to some extent on their children's 
earnings, either by resisting reductions of wage less determinedly, or 
working less, or spending more in questionable ways-a tendencywhich sometimes ends in the reduction of the wages of a whole family 
to the sum formerly earned by the father alone-would be removed. 

In short, much of the loss of employment and the bankruptcy of 
parasitic trades which the enactment of a Minimum Wage Law 
might involve would be blessings in a very thin disguise. But as 
to the unemployables, however light-heartedly we may look forward 
to a future when they shall have disappeared, we must not forgetthe first effect of the law will be to throw more of them on our 
hands, and that they must not be left to starve. As social invalids, 
they will have to be dealt with in some of the known forms of 
disciplined colonies for unemployables ; cured, reformed or trained 
as far as is possible, and treated with as much consideration as the 
nature of their case permits.

In fixing the relative wages of men and women, regard must be 
had to the fact that family life costs much less per head than singlelife. If, for instance, it were calculated that thirty shillings a week 
would be a sufficient minimum for a family of five persons, it would 
by no means follow that six shillings a week would suffice for a single 
woman. A woman with six shillings a week could live decently on 
it only by getting received into a family ; and this would reproducethe evils of parasitic trade exactly as if she were a daughter. Her 
wage must be calculated on the basis of the needs of a single adult 
living independently without any other resources. It will then be 
found that the difference between the man's wage and the woman's 
will be much less than at present, and will probably be scarcely more 
than sufficient to protect women from having to compete with men 
in the labor market at equal wages.

Finally, it must never be forgotten in dealing with the wages of 
women, that the possibility of eking out insufficient wages by occasional 
or systematic prostitution is always present, and that there are trades 
in which the employers have as little scruple in taking this into 
account in the wages they offer as a hotel-keeper has in taking tipsinto account in the wages he pays a waiter. And as the hotel 
practice has the effect of making it compulsory on a waiter to accepttips if he is not prepared to starve, so women may be, and sometimes 
are, compelled to resort to prostitution to keep themselves alive. 
Their minimum wage should, therefore, be sufficiently high to save 
them from so demoralizing an alternative, and even from having to 
escape from it by contracting clearly undesirable marriages. 


The Real Minimum Wage. 

The first provision of the Minimum Wage Law would be one for 
the ascertainment of the minimum of food and clothing necessaryfor the healthy subsistence of (a) an average family, reckoned as 
consisting of a man, his wife, and three children ; and (b) an adult 
woman living by herself. This could be made the duty of either 
a Special Commission appointed for the purpose, or of the Labor 
Department of the Board of Trade. The researches recently conducted 
by the Labor Department into working class budgets would 
form an admirable basis for the prosecution of the necessaryenquiries. The task would not be one of extreme difficulty. Mr. 

B. S. Rowntree, in his book on Poverty in York, goes very carefullyinto the matter, and has drawn up tables of the minimum amount 
of food needed for adults and children for the maintenance of merely 
physical efficiency. He bases his estimates upon the results of the 
scientific experiments of Professor Atwater, of the U.S. Departmentof Agriculture, and of Dr. Dunlop, who made a series of studies uponthe dietaries of prisoners in Scotland. Mr. Rowntree's tables follow 
in some respects the dietaries for paupers framed by the Local 
Government Board ; but they are not so generous, nor would they 
cost as much. His figures as to the amount of poverty which festers 
under the shadow of York Minster, have been criticized as exaggerated, 
but no one will accuse him of asking for a highly luxurious 
diet as a minimum. The question of clothing and indispensablehousehold necessities would be less easy to settle. Mr. Rowotree 
bases his estimate upon enquiry among those who know what 
poverty means, and he arrives at the conclusion that an adult cannot 
be decently and fairly warmly clad under 6d. per week, nor a family 
of five under 2s. 3d. per week. Household necessities (including 
fuel) he estimates at 2s. 8d. per family per week. · 
The investigations which would be made by the suggested special 
Commission or by the Labor Department might lead to a higherstandard being fixed. It could hardly be put lower. The Postmen's 
Federation, in making elaborate calculations in connection with this 
subject some time ago, for the purpose of convincing the Postmaster-
General that many of their number were unable to maintain physicalwell-being on the wage they received, naturally took a less modest 
basis than that adopted by Mr. Rowntree. Its figures total up to 
50 per cent. more. 

The minimum of food, clothing and indi pensable household 
necessities having been determined, the Jaw would enact that the 
national minimum wage in its two categories should provide for 
these, plus the rent of house room complying with the legal requirements 
of sanitation and accommodation. 

The Minimum Wage in Cash. 

The tran~lation of the national minimum of real wages into 
money wages according to the local variations in prices and rentsr 
would be made a part of the duties of county councils and of borough 


15 


and urban district councils with populations of not less than so,ooo. 
In London the county council should be the authority for this 
purpose. 

There are good grounds for believing that in regard to the main 
items of the real wage, local variations in price will be found not 
to be very great, except, of course, in the case of rent and rates. 
The report of the enquiries made by the Postmen's Federation, to 
which reference has already been made, included definite returns as 
to the cost of living from 412 towns throughout Great Britain and 
Ireland, and these show that the prices of food stuffs do not vary to 
any considerable extent. The report adds that although an article 
of daily consumption may be cheaper in one part of the country, 
this advantage is usually counterbalanced by the higher cost of 
another article of common use. 

By way of illustration, let us take Mr. Rowntree's estimate. In 
York, where rents are evidently low, the money wage for an adult 
man, reckoned as the responsible head of an average family, works 
out at 2 Is. 8d. per week. The rent in this case is put at 4s. per week. 
In London, house-room, satisfying legal requirements as to sanitation 
and accommodation for an average family, could not be obtained for 
less than 7s. 6d. per week. Certain is it that it cannot be built for 
less. This would bring the cash minimum wage for the metropolis 
to just about 25s., which robs the London County Council's" moral 
minimum" of 24s. of its austere virtue. These figures are givensimply as illustrations, and must not be taken as representing the 
amount which ought to be fixed as the minimum cash wage. Mr. 
Rowntree's budget of food, clothing and shelter would most likely 
be rejected as being far too meagre.

Besides the duty of fixing the cash minimum wage for the district, 
the local bodies mentioned should be given the authority to enforce 
it. For this purpose a staff of local inspectors would be required. It 
would be well if these inspectors, although officials working under 
the direction of the local authority, were appointed and dismissed 
only with the sanction of the Labor Department, which should also 
be empowered to settle the qualifications required for the positions.
A certain proportion of the salaries of the inspectors should be paid 
out of the Imperial Exchequer, as a return for the powers exercised 
by the Labor Department in connection with these officials. 

Trade Boards. 
A necessary part of the administrative machinery would be trade 
boards in each acting local authorities' area for each trade or groupof trades. The constitution of these boards would be on the lines of 
the Special Wages Boards of Victoria-say two or three representatives 
of the employers and an equal number of the employees, with a 
chairman. As the workers in trades within the scope of the Minifl1Um 
Wage Law would in the main be without enough organization 
to elect representatives it should be the duty of the local authority 
to nominate them. In default of suitable persons inside a trade 
persons of ability and impartiality should be chosen ·from outside. 


16 

The chief function of these boards would be to translate the weekly 
minimum wage into piecework rates: that is to say to determine the 
number of articles to be made or the quantity of work to be done in 
an hour. This task implicitly involves the fixing of the length of 
the normal working week. There would be little difficulty in the 
case of factories and workshops where the number of hours is already 
fixed at s6 per week, but in domestic workshops it is impossible to 
regulate hours of labor. Domestic workshops must be placed on an 
equality with factories and workshops, unless we wish to put a premium 
on sweating; and the only way to do this is to enact that the 
boards shail convert the legal weekly wage into piece rates on the 
basis that for all classes of factories and workshops s6 hours constitute 
a normal week. Whatever the minimum wage may be one-fifty-sixth 
of it will be an hour's pay, and what the boards will have to do is to 
fix the number of articles to be made in an hour. 

We might very well go a little further in imitation of Victorian 
precedents by making the rates for homework higher than those paid 
for work done in the employer's workrooms, and thus compensatethe homeworker for the cost of rent', light, etc. Incidentally this 
would help to drive work out of the home into the workshop. In 
addition, the boards would deal with the proportion of children and 
young persons that might be employed, and the minimum wages 
to be paid to them, and with any other question relating to hours 
of labor and to wages arising through the operations of the Act 
and not already covered implicitly or explicitly by other industrial 
legislation. 

These determinations-to :1se the term adopted in Victoria-of 
the trade boards would be sent to the Labor Department for ratification. 
Before ratification they would be checked by the Departmentfor the purpose of amending any too great local variations in working 
hours, piecework rates or other details, and to ensure the greatestpossible uniformity in the minimum conditions of any widely distributed 
trade. The Labor Department should also be empowered, 
in conjunction with the local authority, to assist in drawing up a 
determination when a trade board found it impossible to arrive at 
an agreement. When ratified by the Labor Department the determinations 
should have the force of law, and any employer not complying 
with their provisions should be liable to a heavy fine or 
imprisonment. Where collusion between employer and employed 
was discovered both parties should be punished proportionately. 
Inspectors would have the power to inspect the wages books of employers, 
and to institute proceedings under direction of the local 
authorities for any breaches, or suspected breaches, of the Act. Homework 
employers must now keep registers of the names and addresses 
of persons so employed and would further be compelled to take 
receipts for wages, showing the work done and the rate paid. The 
difficulties of enforcing a minimum wage for homework are certainlyformidable; but they appear to have been surmounted in Australasia. 
With the occupation of those engaged as shop assistants, waiters, 
waitresses, and the like, or as dom!:!stic servants, the complications of 


17 


a wage paid partly in cash and partly in food and sleeping accommodation, 
and sometimes clothing, will be troublesome. But here, as in 
many other spheres of employment, much of the apparent difficulty in 
fixing a minimum wage arises from the present lack of systematization. 
By means of the trade boards it should be possible to evolve improvedconditions for labor even out of the chaos of sweating in ·cheap 
retail drapery, or the over-worked life of the general slave to suburban 
snobbery or boarding-house brutality. 

The Minimum Wage Law in Operation. 

It will have been noticed that the proposed law is not intended 
to be of immediate universal application. The Act would have to be 
applied gradually but systematically. The procedure would be as 
follows: Directly the minimum of real wages had been fixed by the 
Special Commission, or the Labor Department, the county council, 
borough council, or urban district council, as the case might be, would 
transform this wage into a local cash equivalent. It would then 
appoint its inspectors, who would enquire into the conditions of the 
local industries. This enquiry would not take up much time, as 
sweated industries are always well known. Taking the trades with 
the worst conditions first, the local authority, acting on the information 
and advice of its inspectors, would appoint trade boards in these 
occupations. This might be called scheduling a trade under the 
Minimum Wage Act. Directly the boards were appointed, the local 
authority would inform the Labor Department of the fact. The 
Labor Department would send the information to all other local 
authorities, instructing them at the same time to take immediate 
steps for the formation of trade boards in these scheduled trades, if 
any existed in their districts. This would systematize and hasten 
the work of arriving at determinations applying to the whole country.
Directly such a determination had been made, public notification 
would be given of the date when it would come into operation. It 
would be necessary to arrive at determinations for the whole area of 
an industry before action was taken for enforcement, otherwise those 
portions of the country in which local authorities neglected or delayedtheir work might for a time undersell districts in which local authorities 
were active and conscientious. In cases of undue delay or culpablenegligence on the part of any local authorities, the Labor Departmentshould have the power to apply to their areas the determinations 
already made by other local authorities. 

Proceeding in this way every trade could be brought under the 
operations of the Act. In practice there might be no necessityfor the institution of trade boards in some industries owing to the 
prevalence o"f satisfactory conditions; and these industries might 
not therefore be scheduled. Still in connection with nearly every 
trade or group of trades there is a fringe of so-called unskilled 
labor which is not receiying sufficient for the maintenance of healthyexistence: Hence it is likely" tlJat few occupations would remain 
outside the scope of the Act were it efficiently administered. 


18 

Probable Effects of the Law. 


As there will be local variations in the minimum cash wage owingchiefly to variations in rent there will be an increasing tendency for 
industries-so far as greater cost in wages is not compensated bymarket advantage, or proximity to sources of raw material-to move 
from the high rent to the low rent districts, that is to · say, from the 
large and crowded manufacturing cities to the small town or to the 
country. Migration of this kind, which is already going on, is to be 
welcomed for obvious reasons. Homework, under a strict administration 
of our Minimum Wage Law, would tend to become more expensive 
than that carried on in the factory, and this handicapping of 
domestic industry would be a great social advantage. The institution 
of the trade boards would bring to the weakest sections of the workers 
a sense of the power of organization and combination which, it is not 
too much to predict, would induce them to use the minimum wage 
as a stepping-stone to further improvements in industrial conditions. 
That there would be at first a great c,leal of friction aroused by the 
minute inspection, especially of wages books, required by the law, is 
highly probable. But it must be remembered that to-day many publicbodies, in order to investigate charges of breach of contract in matters 
of wage payments, insist upon the right to examine the books of firms 
who carry out public work. The higher the standing of the firm 
the less trouble there is in exercising this right. It is certain that in 
England, as in Australia, when the first horror of the shock caused byState interference with the cash nexus is over, the better employers 
will heartily welcome the means of ridding themselves of the competition 
of those who employ parasitic labor. 

As to the effect of the law upon our foreign trade, Mr. and Mrs. 
Sidney Webb have shewn that the abolition of parasitic labor would 
not necessarily lead to a reduction in the volume of our exporttrade; and, moreover, that a sweated trade will not be lifted from its 
degraded position by a protective tariff on the products of a foreign, 
competing trade.. But with the institution of a national minimum 
wage a new question arises, which is not altogether one of abstract 
economics. • Under a Minimum Wage Law the manufacture of goodsin England under sweated or parasitic conditions becomes unlawful, 
and by inference the sale of such goods ought to be made a breach of 
the law in the sam'e sense as selling illicit whiskey. Therefore, it 
follows from a ¥ini~um Wage' Law that ,the importation of goodsmade under sweated conditions abroad must be prohibited. The 
difficul~y of deciding what is.the foreign eci,ui valent of sweating, and 
the impossibility in ~any cases of tr.acing the foreign goods throughall the 'processes of their·manufacture, are obstacles to the completeeUforcement of such regulations ; but this is not a sufficient reason 
~r abanp~ning the att'er:np::. ,, 

·The N"ational Dividend Increased. 

. What is the. number of pe~sons who would immediately feel the. 
effects of, the e~actm~nt of ii,tegal minimum ~ge? If we ~ake Mr. 


Rowntree's figures with regard to the primary poverty m York as 
fairly representative of the whole kingdom, we should have about 
five millions of people who are members of families that have 
incomes insufficient to maintain merely physical efficiency. This 
is the class that breeds the weak, the unfit, in a word the residuum. 
Many of its members, it is true, would not be capable of earning 
even the low minimum suggested by Mr. Rowntree. These would 
become the unemployable. To the others, the largest proportion, 
an increased wage would give the increased mental and physicalvitality which are a nation's real capital. The manufacture of human 
wreckage by the process of semi-starvation would be in great partchecked and controlled. Indirectly the classes above this lowest would 
benefit. There would be a gradual growth in the national dividend, 
arising from the greater power of production due to the increase of 
physical efficiency, and the share of each grade and each trade in the 
dividend would be increased accordingly. A Minimum Wage Law 
cannot cure the evils which arise from the foolish spending of incomes 
small or great, but it wuuld act as a palliatiYe of those evils 
which arise from the existence of incomes that are insufficient for 
the barest necessarie~ of life. 

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