The Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1912-1917, 1913-03-07
Minimum Wage for Workers.

Madison, Wis, March 5.-(Special)-
One Of the reforms proposed by this leg
isiature which is attracting wide atten-
tiOn, not only in this state but elsewhere,
il the minimum wage scale for women.
In the last few years, since woman's
entrance into the working field. there
has been d constantly growing demand
for better monetary recognition of
their work and interested people have
gone to the trouble to collect loads of
statistics showing that the average wage
paid women is not sufficient to decently
clothe and feed them.
The results of the underpayment of
women, it is said, is an alarming moral
condition, especially in the larger cities
and it is to improve that condition that
all of the various minimum wage bills
now before the Legislature, were drawn.
The ridicuously low wages paid women
and the extremes to which female work
ers are driven to secure livelihood has
prompted many latter day authors of
fiction and social writings and within
the Law, recognized as one of the great
est of modern dramas, had its inception
in the beggardly wages paid shop girls.
The question is one that is of national
as we'll rs state interest and at present
a committee of the Illinois state senate
is investigating wages paid women as
a possible solution OF the white slave
traffic, at present such big question in
that state. The Illinois legislature pro-
poses to demand the appearance of the
employers of female labor to secure the
actual amounts paid the average girl
worker.
A minimum wage Is in accord with
the progressive policy already adopted
by Wisconsin and is but another step in
the improvement of working conditions,
the first step If which was taken when
the 1911 legislature passed law limit
ing the hours of labor for women to 55
hours per week.
In an address before the members
of the legislature, Mrs. Florence
Kelley, e2 ecutive secretary of the Ma
tional Consumers league, vigorously 0p
posed the elimination of men from the
minimum wage program
although the minimum wage bill
now before the Legislature is the best of
al those pending in thirteen states of
the Uaion,' she declared, ''it has one
fundamental weakness-it applies only
TO women and minors and does not in
cluGe men employed in the trades which
are generally recognized as being under
paid.
However, the Wisconsin bill is the
most democratic a d m ost wisely
planned of all bills of this nature and
cannot but hope that it will be made to
include the men workers, thus becoming
as effective as the Australian and Eng
lish laws which are the best examples
of minimum wage legislation in exist
ence."
The speaker explained that her rea-
sons for opposing the elimination of men
was the fact that foreigners, especially
recent immigrants. were frequently en-
ployed at trades and paid a less wage
than the American wOrkmen.
"A good feature of the minimum wage
bills all over the country she said, sis
that they tend to eliminate the trades
that cannot pay living wage / have
seen, during my time, the disappearance
of the cash girl trade and of the employ
ment of children in some of the glass
manufactures because these trades are
not of sufficient industrial value TO war
rant anything but a subsistence wage
and sometimes not that.
The minimum wage bill will be an in
estimable aid to the working class be-
cause it will secure rational dealings in
stead of strikes and will secure wage
earners livelihood obviating the priya-
Iions and anxieties that do much to i'm
pair their efficiency"