one of England's leading economists. Mr. Hobson points out that the Trade Boards Act has been successful in the four trades where it has been longest in operation, namely, in chainmaking, machine-made lace finishing, box-making, and tailoring.1

Conclusion. Other aspects of this phase of the minimum wage problem could be discussed, but as the cardinal points have been covered, it is doubtful if further discussion would influence the reader to change his conclusions one way or the other. The main purpose of the discussion has been to show that the plan to regulate the rate of wages by law, in Australasia and Great Britain, works; and that it has not proven prejudicial to the highest commercial and industrial development of the state, but, on the contrary, results would seem to indicate that it has materially promoted such development. What the results will be when the principle of regulation is applied to American conditions is a matter that should be determined by experience. Why not determine the expediency of regulation in the simplest and most efficacious manner-by giving it a trial? Why allow the already grievous conditions, which such regulation purposes to remedy, to aggravate, while the state engages its attention and energy in extended and futile discussion? Playing hide and seek with the letter and the spirit of the Constitution may be good politics, but it is poor statesmanship.

1 Survey, February 6, 1916. John A. Hobson, "The State and the Minimum Wage in England."

CHAPTER IV

A RÉSUMÉ

The whole contest over minimum wage legislation resolves itself into the inevitable struggle between the positive and the negative forces of society over a proposition to change the present rules of the game of life. It is a clash between vested property rights and humanity—a contest on the one hand for profits, and on the other for a few crumbs of the comforts of life. Labor, grown

...

weary with dragging the crosses

Too heavy for mortals to bear,"

is praying to be allowed to enjoy enough of the fruits of its own toil to live; and with the labor forces stand those whom history has taught that those who toil shall inherit the earth, and who, therefore, believe that it is suicidal for society to pay its potential mothers and fathers less than a living wage. Hence the wage problem has become affected with a public interest.

Unlike England and Australasia, the United States do not include men in their wage determinations; they draw a distinction between male and female workers' that will not stand the test of time. The lowest stratum of male labor is little better organized than are women workers, and is almost as helpless. Also, the unborn generations need protection on the paternal side as well as on the maternal. And furthermore, a great many women and minors are in industry only because the wages of their male bread-winners are not sufficient for the support of the family; and, on the other hand, because they are in industry they are, by their competition, forcing the wages of male labor still lower down the starvation scale. That the further step, the inclusion of men, will be taken, should the courts sustain the present legislation, seems almost inevitable. It is vain to hope to perpetuate the existing order of inequality between the employer and the employee by an appeal to the Constitution-by an appeal to the familiar "laissez faire, laissez passer" philosophy.2 Modern economic conditions have forced upon us a new philosophy of lib

1 Muller v. Oregon, 208 U. S., 412; Stettler v. O'Hara, Oregon Supreme Court, 1913. 2 That is, let things alone, let them take their course.

eralism. We are being compelled to abandon the eighteen century philosophy of individualism for that of collectivism. Society is becoming more and more integrated, socialized, and the inevitable result is that individual action must be more and more tempered and governed by due considerations for the effect of such action upon the public. Unregulated individualism in industry is untenable, for it means the establishment of a vicious system of industrial slavery. To say that the extension of the police power of the state to the regulation of the maximum hours of labor and the minimum compensation, in certain industries, is one of the prime functions of government. Non-interference virtually means the sanctioning by law of conditions of gross an arbitrary interference with personal liberty, is a denial of inequality between the employer and the employee, which conditions are the very converse of freedom. Modern freedom does not mean license to exploit one's fellows-it means the proper co-ordination and correlation of all the parts of the social machine, so that social friction is reduced to a minimum and social efficiency raised to a maximum. To this end certain individual impulses must be held in check by community action, lest the ignorance and the weakness of the many be capitalized by the few for their own personal aggrandizement. To protect society from the direful consequences of such practices, is the purpose of our labor legislation, and particularly of the minimum wage laws. When a capitalist argues that this legislation takes his property without due process of law and without compensation, he is employing the odious argument of the Southern slaveholder. Are human rights less sacred than property rights? Furthermore, the experience of Australasia seems to indicate that a minimum wage, instead of depriving an employer of any property, does, in truth, increase his profits through an increased efficiency of the employee. The employer who suffers in consequence of an enforced payment of a living wage is parasitic and of questionable social value; he is in receipt of the working energy of human beings at less than its cost, and to that extent he is parasitic. The balance must be made up somehow. Sometimes it is paid in part by some other industry which may be employing another member of the family; generally part is paid by the worker in the form of a deteriorated physique, intelligence and character; in many cases the family or friends of the worker assume part of the obligation; and ultimately a part may

be contributed in the form of private and public charity. In other words, this employer is receiving a subsidy from some source a practice that has been condemned by an enlightened public opinion as thoroughly reprehensible, and let us hope that the time has come when the courts will no longer permit the Constitution to stand between this social parasite and the public welfare.

The elimination of this parasite from industry should be looked upon with favor by the enlightened and efficient employer —as is the case in Australasia.1 A subsidized employer, by exploiting an unlimited amount of cheap labor, is able to undercut the prices of his more fair-minded competitor and can thus carry on a vicious cut-throat competition that is bound to keep wages down all along the line. If, however, the labor cost to this inefficient or unscrupulous employer is raised by the requirement that he pay a minimum living wage, which requirement is made standard for all, it becomes evident that he can no longer undercut prices unless he becomes even more efficient than his competitors. Thus competition is raised from the sordid depths of wage-cutting and "sweating" to a high plane of intelligence and business efficiency.

To protect the lives, health and morals of the present generation, and the health of the generations yet unborn, is the avowed purpose of minimum wage legislation. The lower stratum of male labor, and practically all female and child labor, constitute a vast fund of unorganized and cheap potential energy from which certain industries draw practically their entire working forces. The practice of the past has been to look upon this labor as so much available mechanical energy to be consumed in the productive process without thought for the fearful physical and spiritual sacrifices which it entailed. But an awakened and sturdier social conscience has served notice upon private and corporate greed that public policy will no longer tolerate a condition which invites parasites to live off the social body, or which makes it possible for the silk-gloved hand of Wealth to pick the threadbare pockets of Want.

America has long been an asylum for the oppressed of other

1 Victor S. Clark, in Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 56, p. 73, 77. Victor S. Clark, in Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 49, p. 1231. Philip Snowdon, "The Living Wage," p. 7, 8, 147. Louis Brandeis, "Appendix to Brief Filed on behalf of Respondents in Stettler v. O'Hara, Supreme Court of Oregon, October term, 1913, p. 192,

199.

lands. We have been boastful in advertising our opportunities and the unlimited wealth of our resources, and have welcomed all comers to share our blessings. Yet, in spite of our boasted wealth and opportunities, thousands of children go hungry to school every day; thousands of children are daily sent to our factories to be sacrificed upon the altar of an insatiable god of greed; thousands of girls, and for sheer want of the means of livelihood, are being robbed, while yet in their teens, of the bloom of girlhood and the charms of womanhood, and thus doomed to a loveless, homeless and childless life; scores of girls are daily subjected to the ignoble choice of starvation, or suicide, or shame yes, scores of them are being frightened by the threatening specter of abject poverty into either ending it all in violence, or into breaking nature's holy law of sex by capitalizing their virtue and thus poisoning life and morals at the very fountain head.

President Wilson, whose heart is as right as his vision is clear, spoke these significant words in his inaugural address: "We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen piteously the years through. The groans and agony of it all has not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. . . . There can be no equality of opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure-food laws, and laws determining the conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency."

One of the hopeful signs of the times is the fact that we are beginning to hear and to understand this "solemn moving undertone of our life," and our social legislation shows signs of