MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION
FLORENCE KELLEY
Secretary National Consumers' League
Governor West of Oregon has signed a bill creating a Minimum Wage Commission. Oregon thus follows Massachusetts in this new field of industrial legislation. Minimum wage bills have been introduced in the legislatures of California, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The New York Factory Investigating Commission will doubtless be continued and empowered to investigate wages.
The Oregon law and all the pending bills have one characteristic in common: they are alarmingly undemocratic. They fail to afford to American employees in underpaid industries those democratic safeguards which characterize English and Australian legislation. They apply to women, oblivious of the fact that wives and daughters work because their man breadwinner does not earn enough to support the family. These laws and bills ignore the youth and shifting nature of the working force in the underpaid industries which is so largely made up of young girls. They need the moral support of their men fellow-workers in negotiating about wages.
In America the governor appoints the commission, and the commission selects the wage board. The board determines the lowest wage and the women and girls take what they get. The recipients of the wages are not allowed to elect representatives to the boards. They are, in fact, not represented at all. The Kansas bill was killed by the legislature. It substituted "an adjuster" for commission and boards.
If these other ill-considered bills become laws, it will be the work of years to remodel them on more democratic lines, and on wise and just principles in the light of the experience of Australia and England.
"THE HAND OF THE POTTER TREMBLES"
SOLON DE LEON
To lead poisoning among lead smelters, white lead workers and painters, we have grown accustomed. Now comes the revelation of wide-spread plumbism, or "potters' palsy," among workers in the potteries.
Trenton, New Jersey, the third largest pottery center in the country, has recently been the scene of a brief study conducted by the American Association for Labor Legislation. Brief as was the study it revealed many cases of this disease.
One case was that of a fifteen-year-old orphan, as dipper's helper in a pottery. He handles cups and saucers after they have received their coat of glaze and before they are taken to the kiln. He gets his hands covered with glaze. There are no washing facilities at the plant where he works. When visited at home he had spots of white lead over the front of his shirt. After nine months as dipper's helper he began to complain of general ill health, with pains in the stomach. He worked interruptedly for another month, and finally came down with an attack of acute and excruciatingly painful poisoning which required a week's hospital treatment.
A young girl, now married and a mother, worked in a tile plant for six years, the last three of which she was a dipper. Within three months after starting the latter work she suffered a typical violent lead colic attack, accompanied by nausea and digestive derangements. The attack lasted a week, and was followed by three more at intervals of several months.
A former glost kiln-man of forty-five had worked in the Trenton potteries continuously for upwards of twenty years. Five years ago he was stricken with complete double wrist-drop and for two years was totally incapacitated.
Another practically useless pair of hands belongs to a workman forty-nine years old. Lead poisoning crippled him and deprived him of his trade at the age of thirty-three. He used to be a "ground layer." That is, he rubbed lead colors with a short brush into the surfaces to be decorated. In the course of fifteen years he had eight or ten severe attacks. In the last one, sixteen years ago, both arms were paralyzed. For two years he had to be clothed and fed. Now his arms have recovered their flexibility, but his hands still hang shrivelled and powerless to open or straighten themselves. For a livelihood he has been forced to take up an unskilled job requiring no manual work, but seven days' labor a week.
A color mixer in a tile works began after ten years to suffer from cramps in the stomach, nausea and biliousness. A number of physicians told him it was lead colic. He grew steadily worse, and four years later he died. The death certificate gives pulmonary tuberculosis as the cause, but the physicians on the case agreed in stating that lead formed at least a considerable complication.
So run the records of a few of the cases.
There are about 21,000 potters, the makers and enamelers of iron sanitary ware in the United States. Of these, 2,500 or over 10 per cent are declared by Dr. Alice Hamilton in her report to the United States government to be exposed in the regular course of their work to the risk of lead poisoning. Within two years 510 cases of poisoning were found.
It is now generally accepted that the one word "cleanliness" sums up the requirements for the abolition of such occurrences. Yet the workshops in the pottery and allied industries are at present almost without exception run with utter disregard of this fundamental consideration. They are as a rule dusty, ill-ventilated and poorly lighted. Washing facilities are almost unknown.
In New Jersey and in seven other states the legislatures have now pending before them the aptly christened "cleanliness bill," drafted by the Association for Labor Legislation after careful study to counteract just these conditions. The proposed measure establishes strict sanitary provisions in potteries and all works making or handling lead salts. It takes a leaf from successful English and German legislation by establishing "duties of employees" as well as "duties of employers," and by fixing a fine for failure to comply. The bill has passed the lower house in Missouri, and has been reported favorably by the lower house committee to which it was referred in Ohio and in New Jersey. A similar law has been in force in Illinois for two years with excellent results. Many progressive manufacturers admit the wisdom of these regulations and will not oppose them. Others are actively in favor.