The Washington socialist. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1914-1915, 1915-03-18
MICHIGAN'S WAGE COMMITS
SION MAKES REPORT
70 Per Cent. of Women Workers
Get Less Than SO Weekly

Usually when commission Is APP
pointed to investigate some matter
pertaining to social conditions, 1t fin
ally returns lengthy report describ
ing facts at length which were vel
known before, and winding up with o
recommendation of some kind of legis
lation designed to deal with superficial
symptoms only Such investigations
never get anywhere. When the legis
lation, which they recommend, is en-
acted, there follows more or less
energetic effort at the useless task of
strictly enforcing it. It either proves
unenforceable or its enforcement pro.
duces other evils, unknown before
which again call for new legislation,
and so it goes. The final result is
some change In the form of human
misery, but none whatever in the
amount.
The Wage Commission of Michigan,
appointed to investigate conditions
among women wage workers, and to
recommend methods for improving the
conditions of women wage workers has
made public some suggestive facts,
besides recommending a radical, II not
entirely effective, remedy for unem-
ployment and poverty. 1t finds condi-
lions about as other commissions in
other places have found them, about
as nearly everyone in Michigan, who
thought about the matter at all, knew
beforehand that they must find them.
They find that Fl per cent Of women
wage workers are getting less than Sc
week, and that 81 per cent are get
ting less than So week. Other
wrongs and evils are noted also, but
these need not be mentioned 1t is in
proposing remedies that the commits
sion is refreshingly sensible. 1t de-
clares that superficial palliatives,
such as minimum wage boards, must
not be depended upon. 1t then makes
bold to declare that
1.-THE produce Of labor constitutes
the natural recompeise or wages
Of labor. But whey srtssleiai bar
riers interfere, wages always become
less than the entire produce Of labor.
Put employer and employee on an
equality In bargaining, and then
wages will not represent less than
the value Of the services performed"
The report then goes on to say, what
every Socialist already knows, that
wage workers have to take just what
they can get, owing to the fact that
there is no alternative but starvation,
so long as there are several men bid
ding for every job open. The com.
mission contend that idle lands should
be so heavily taxed that it would not
pay owners to hold it out of use. They
go too far though in asserting that
"If idle acres were free to be titled
by those needing work, there would
be little or no Industrial distress. The
wage limit would then tend to become
what the worker could earn working
for himself, for he would work for no
one for less. When 1t is made I'M
profitable to hold land out of use,
there will be less demand and certain
Iy less necessity for minimum wage
laws"
Undoubtedly conditions would be
improved through the remedy" pro-
posed; but poverty and unemployment
would still remain, since the farmer
could not find an adequate market for
his products, and could not live by
spuds alone. This is fact your Sin
gle Tax advocate persistently ignores,
Socialism alone, International Indus
trial Democracy, will afford the real
solution of the poverty problem.
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