The Survey, Volume 30, Number 1, April 5, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 1, April 5, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
The commission is authorized to call a conference of representatives of
the employers, the employees and the general public to investigate and
make recommendations as to the minimum wage to be paid in a given
industry. If the commission approves these recommendations they become
obligatory. The powers of the Oregon commission to determine hours and
conditions of health and morals are more extensive than those delegated
to an industrial commission by the legislature of any other state. The
members of the commission are to be appointed by the governor.
The successful campaign for this law and the drafting of the bill itself
was based upon an extensive investigation conducted by the Social Survey
Committee of the Oregon Consumers' League. Wages, work conditions, and
cost of living were studied in Portland and elsewhere throughout the
state. The inquiry was directed by a trained investigator, Caroline J.
Gleason of Minneapolis, formerly a student of the Chicago School of
Civics and Philanthropy. The work was started in August 1912 and the
information covered 7603 women wage earners in Portland and 1133
throughout the rest of the state. Wage statistics were tabulated for
4523, and are particularly valuable in the cast of the department stores
which placed their pay rolls at the disposal of the survey committee.
Generous co-operation from committees in twenty-five counties of the
state was secured.
In the drafting of the bill the experience of the Massachusetts Minimum
Wage Board was studied. Legal advice was secured and the
constitutionality of the measure is upheld in an opinion by the attorney
general of the state.
Social workers from Washington and California have been in touch with
the investigation and the preparation of the bill. They have arranged to
have bills drawn up on the same lines introduced as soon as the
legislatures of their own states convene. The passage of the same
measure by the three coast states is regarded by the social workers in
each as a desirable and important piece of uniform legislation for an
area in which industrial conditions and problems are similar.
The Social Survey Committee in its report gives the principles and facts
which form the basis of the demand for the legislation as follows:
1. Each industry should provide for the livelihood of the workers
employed in it. An industry which does not do so is parasitic. The
well-being of society demands that wage-earning women shall not be
required to subsidize from their earnings the industry in which
they are employed.
2. Owing to the lack of organisation among women workers and the
secrecy with which their wage schedules are guarded, there are
absolutely no standards of wages among them. Their wages are
determined for the most part by the will of the employer without
reference to efficiency or length of service on the part of the
worker. This condition is radically unjust.
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