Austria, Italy, Norway, and Denmark in 1901 had also state insurance systems.
The minimum-wage idea has so far been attempted only In New Zealand and in Great Britain.[1] (See above, p. 160.) The New Zealand law of 1899 provided a minimum wage of four shillings per week for boys and girls, and five shillings for boys under eighteen, but the principle has been much extended by a more recent statute. The English law is not yet in active operation, and may or may not receive great extension. It provides in substance for the fixing of a minimum wage in the clothing trade or any other trade specified by the Home Secretary. The obvious probability is that it will, as in New Zealand, soon be extended to all trades. This wage is to be fixed by a board of arbitrators with the usual representation given to each side, and it will doubtless work, as it does in New Zealand, for the elevation of wages, as such commissions rarely reduce them.
[Footnote 1: This, the Trade Boards Act, the 22d chapter of the ninth of Edward VII., enacted October 20, 1909, took effect January 1, 1910. The act applies without specification to ready-made and wholesale tailoring, the making of boxes, machine-made lace and chain-making, and may be applied to other trades by provisional order of the Board of Trade, when confirmed by Parliament. The Board of Trade may make such provisional order applying the act to any specified trade if they are satisfied that the rate of wages prevailing in that trade is exceptionally low as compared with that in other employments, and that the other circumstances of the trade are such as to render the application of the act expedient; and in like manner they may make a provisional order providing that the act shall cease to apply to any trade to which it already was applied. Section 2 provides that the Board of Trade shall establish one or more trade boards for any trade to which the act is to be applied, with separate trade boards for Ireland. These trade boards (section 11) consist of members representing employers and members representing workers in equal proportions, and of certain appointed members. Women are eligible, and the representative members may be elected or nominated as the regulations determine. The chairman and secretary are appointed by the Board of Trade. Such boards are given power to fix minimum rates of wages both for time and piece work, which thereafter must be observed under penalty. There is further a machinery for the establishment of district trade committees. All regulations made by such Boards of Trade shall be laid as soon as possible before both houses of Parliament; but there does not appear to be any other appeal.]
Co-operation and profit-sharing, the great hope of the middle years of the nineteenth century, has made little progress in England or the United States since. Such successful experiments as now exist consist principally in offering to the employees the opportunity to buy the stock of the company at a reasonable rate, as in the case of the Illinois Central Railroad and the United States Steel Company. Many mills, however, give a certain increase in wages at the end of regular periods proportionate to the profits. This technically is what we call profit-sharing. The word "co-operation" should be reserved for institutions actually co-operative; that is to say, where the employees are partners in business with the employers. Of such there are very few in the United States, although there are quite a number in England. In 1901 there were only nineteen co-operative establishments in the United States, most prominent among which are the Peacedale Woolen Mills in Rhode Island; the Riverside Press in Cambridge; Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago; the Century Company, of New York; the Proctor & Gamble Soap Co., of Cincinnati; the Bourne Mills, of Fall River, and the Pillsbury Flour Mills, of Minneapolis. Yet these institutions are really profit-sharing rather than co-operative, for the return is merely an extra cash dividend to employees who have no voice in the management. Mr. Oilman in his book, "A Dividend to Labor," tells us that there are thirty-nine other cases at least where profit-sharing once adopted has been abandoned. On the other hand, in Great Britain there were in 1899 one hundred and ten important co-operative productive establishments. There are many more on the Continent.
Arbitration laws are also far more developed and successful in European and Australasian countries than in Great Britain or the United States, although the first English act concerning arbitration was passed as early as 1603. In the first year of Queen Anne, 1701, was the first act referring specially to arbitration of labor, and the next, Lord St. Leonard's act, in 1867, which attempted to establish councils of conciliation, something after the pattern of the French conseils de prudhommes; but in 1896 these acts were repealed and the Conciliation Act of the 59th Victoria, chapter 30, substituted. It provides that the boards of arbitration may act of their own motion in so far as to make inquiry and take such steps as they deem expedient to bring the parties together, and upon application of either side may appoint a conciliator, and on the application of both sides, appoint an arbitrator. Their award is filed of record and made public, but no provision is made for its compulsory enforcement. In France, the legislation is much more intelligent. There the distinction between individual and collective labor is clearly made and within recent years there is elaborate legislation for the settlement of strikes, disputes of the collective class, which we will later describe. For the adjustment of individual disputes, France has long had in her conseils de prudhommes a special system of labor courts that constitutes one of her most distinctive social institutions.[1] These are special tribunals composed of employers and workingmen, created for the purpose of adjusting disputes by conciliation if possible, or judicially if conciliation fails. Appeal from their decisions is made to the tribunals of commerce. The first such council was created in Lyons in 1806, but since they have spread through all France. When the amount involved does not exceed two hundred francs, the judgment of the council is final; above that sum an appeal may be made to the tribunal of commerce. The most important element of all, perhaps, is that these councils have to some extent criminal powers, or powers of punishment. They can examine the acts of workingmen in the industries under their jurisdiction tending to disturb order or discipline, and impose penalties of imprisonment not exceeding three days, having for this concurrent jurisdiction with the justices of the peace. Elaborate arbitration laws also exist in France, and whenever any strike occurs, if the parties do not invoke arbitration the justices of the peace must intervene to conciliate. Still there is no compulsory arbitration except by agreement of both sides.
[Footnote 1: See the author's Report to the U.S. Industrial
Commission, vol. XVI, page 173.]
Similar laws exist in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Holland,
New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.
The apprentice system still exists in perfection in all European states, including Great Britain, although there most of the unions restrict the number that may be employed. In the United States it has, unfortunately, fallen entirely into disuse.
It has already been mentioned that the factory laws, laws regulating the sanitary conditions, etc., of factories and sweat-shops, are far more complicated and intelligent upon the Continent, and even in England, than in the United States of America.
Coming finally to what most persons consider the most important line, that of strikes, boycotts, and intimidation, the legislation of the Continent of Europe where common-law principles of individual liberty do not interfere, is, of course, far more complex and far more effective than that of either England or the United States. The principle of combination we leave for the next chapter. In European legislation, where we are met with no constitutional difficulties, we shall expect to find a more paternalistic control by the state, although in France the decree of March 2, 1791, provided that every person "shall be free to engage in such an enterprise or exercise, such profession, art or trade, as he may desire." In Germany an elaborate attempt has been recently made to re-introduce the old guild system made over from its mediaeval form to suit modern conditions, and in other countries where the government does not interfere, the trade guilds, or unions, present insuperable obstacles to any one engaging in their industry who is not a member of the guild or has not gone through the required apprenticeship.[1]