Social and church workers, let the town constable know that he is appreciated, let him feel that good work is recognized, that if he is attacked because of fearless discharge of his duty, he will have behind him an unflinching body of men who will make his trouble theirs and fight for a righteous cause as well as talk at church meetings.
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.