[81] P. S. Collier, "Minimum Wage Legislation in Australasia," Fourth Report of the Factory Investigation Commission, N. Y. State, 1915, page 8243.
[82] See pages 172-5, Chapter VIII.
[83] See for examples, the reports of the Minimum Wage Commissions of The District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Oregon. Also the studies by R. H. Tawney and M. E. Bulkely on the English experience. Those of P. S. Collier and M. B. Hammond, on the Australasian experience.
[84] Decision as to wages, etc., in North Atlantic & Hudson River Shipyards, Shipbuilding Adjustment Board, reported in U. S. Monthly Labor Review, May, 1918, page 136. See in same issue of the review, "Decision for Shipyards of San Francisco Bay and Columbia River, and Puget Sound Districts," pages 68-78. Also report of Benjamin M. Squires in the Monthly Labor Review, 1918, Sept., on the "New York Harbor Wage Adjustments."
CHAPTER VIII—THE STANDARD WAGE
(Continued)
Section 1. What variations or limitations should be introduced into the principle of standardization in view of the great area and economic diversity of the United States?—Section 2. Differences in natural or acquired advantage between different enterprises as a reason for modification and limitation of the principle.—Section 3. Differences in the character of the work performed by any large group of wage earners as a reason.—Section 4. Differences in the cost of living at different points within the area of standardization as a reason.—Section 5. The grounds for "nominal variations" in standard wage rates. The policy to be pursued in regard to payment for irregular employment.—Section 6. The possibility of maintaining standard wage rates over a large and diversified area considered.—Section 7. Up to the present, the progress of standardization has not proceeded in accordance with reasoned conclusions as to the results produced.—Section 8. Where should level of standardization be set? The doctrine of "standardization upward."—Section 9. The importance of the principle of standardization in wage settlement.
1.—We have now completed our analysis of the general effects to be expected from the enforcement of wage standardization throughout industry. That analysis was carried out on the underlying assumption that the general economic position of the industrial enterprises which would be included within any area of standardization was substantially alike. That assumption must now be given up. A further question must be faced. That is whether the principle of standardization, as put forward up to this point, should be limited or varied in any way because it would have to apply, as a matter of fact, to an area so great and so diversified in economic character as the United States, and to an industrial situation which is the product of a great number of separate impulses, and which is made up of a vast number of separate interests.
2.—We will consider in order the grounds upon which limitation or variation of the principle of standardization has been argued for in the past—limiting ourselves, as we must, to the most important. The first that may be taken up has arisen almost every time that wage standardization has been introduced into a craft or industry. It is the contention that, due to differences in natural or acquired advantage possessed by different enterprises in the same industry, certain going enterprises will be forced to cease production, if all are compelled to pay the same wage rates for the same work.[85]