HJ) 
 
OP 
 
 Utah's Minimum Wage Law 
 for Females 
 
 *Passed by the State Legislature of 1913. 
 Became Effective May 13, 1913. 
 
 Paper read by H. T. HAINES, Commissioner of Immigra- 
 tion, Labor and Statistics of Utah, before the National 
 Convention of the Association of Governmental Labor 
 Officials of the United States and Canada, at Nashville, 
 Tenn., on June 9, 1914. 
 
 Utah's arbitrary minimum wage law for women and girls 
 has now been in operation for one full year, a period long 
 enough to form a partial conclusion of the merits, in one 
 State at least, of a class of labor laws that is now uppermost 
 in the minds of many students of important social and eco- 
 nomic problems. 
 
 Before entering into a statement of the physical opera- 
 tions of the law and its practical results so far as may yet be 
 determined, I desire to first briefly call your attention to the 
 ways and means by which Utah, one of the youngest States, 
 and one having the fewest number of women and girls depend- 
 ing upon a daily wage for their sustenance, took a short cut 
 through the wide but unknown field of proposed living wage 
 legislation, and enacted a minimum wage law for females. 
 
 *Utah was the first State to put a Minimum Wage Law for Females 
 into effect. 
 
Preliminary work leading to the preparation and presentation 
 of a bill for the enactment of a minimum wage law had been 
 performed by a committee of the Federation of Women's Clubs 
 of our State and the bill itself was presented by a woman mem- 
 ber of the lower house of the Legislature, of whom there were 
 three. This bill followed closely the provisions of the bill first 
 presented to the Massachusetts legislature, but which was later 
 much amended and therefore considerably unlike the Bay 
 State 's minimum wage law in effect today. 
 
 The Utah bill provided for a commission, as have bills of 
 all other States having minimum wage laws now in force or 
 pending. The proposed commission was to have been composed 
 of three persons, to be appointed by the Governor, one of whom 
 was to have been a woman. The bill carried an appropriation 
 of $5,000 to meet the expenses of the commission for inquiring 
 into the wages paid to women and girl employes in the various 
 occupations in which they were engaged, with a view of ascer- 
 taining as nearly as possible the adequacy of the then prevail- 
 ing wages to supply the employes with the necessary cost of 
 living and to maintain them in health. 
 
 The commission was further empowered to establish a wage 
 board consisting of three representative employers, and an 
 equal number of representative women employes, and one or 
 more disinterested persons representing the public, whose duty 
 it was to determine a minimum wage for women in occupations 
 in which prevailing wages were found to be inadequate to meet 
 the requirements of a living wage and to maintain the employes 
 in health. 
 
 Merchants and manufacturers were quick to notice this 
 
effort for proposed legislation affecting their several interests 
 and equally alert in protecting such interests. Arrangements 
 were soon perfected for joint meetings of employers and em- 
 ployes and women's club representatives with the labor com- 
 mittee of the lower house. The merchants and manufacturers 
 committee of the local commercial club strenuously opposed the 
 bill in the form presented, asserting that the publicity feature in 
 which the commission was authorized to publish in the daily 
 papers the names of employers and the material facts of their 
 findings through searching investigations into their businesses, 
 was particularly objectionable and unnecessary. It was also 
 maintained by them that the proposed investigating machinery 
 was too bulky and that the $5,000 that was proposed to be 
 appropriated was insufficient to carry on the work in the manner 
 outlined. With the women in their fight for the enactment of 
 their bill, or one equally as good, were representatives of labor, 
 and lobbies in the legislative halls were formed and maintained 
 by the contending forces. At the public hearings before the 
 house labor committee able and exhaustive arguments were 
 made and heard, and but little advancement was apparently 
 made for some time toward an amicable understanding between 
 the participating forces. Finally a sub-committee of the mer- 
 chants' and manufacturers' committee of the local commercial 
 club drafted a bill that was accepted as a fairly good compro- 
 mise between themselves, the club women and labor representa- 
 tives, and a substitute bill embracing a wage scale as agreed 
 upon was drafted by the sub-committee, which was later pre- 
 sented to the legislature and finally passed by a close vote in 
 the lower house and unanimously in the senate. 
 
The original bill contained over 1800 words, and the substi- 
 tute bill about 200, yet the latter bill was such that it prac- 
 tically accomplishes about all that was sought to be secured 
 through the more verbose and cumbersome measure. 
 
 The law itself fixes a minimum wage of 75 cents per day 
 for any girl under the age of eighteen years ; 90 cents per day 
 to a woman over the age of eighteen years, who is inexperienced 
 in the class of work she is employed to perform ; $1.25 per day 
 to women who have served an apprenticeship in the line of 
 work they are performing. The apprenticeship period is fixed 
 at one year. Thus a woman or girl who has worked one year 
 as a saleswoman must be paid $1.2"5 per day. Likewise she 
 must be paid as much as if she has worked as an operator in 
 a factory of any kind, in a candy manufactory, laundry, etc., 
 and is following these lines of employment. 
 
 The merchants and manufacturers sub-committee's bill 
 gave $1.00 per day to apprentices over eighteen years of age, 
 but the house committee cut the wage to 90 cents. In estab- 
 lishments where the piece system of wages obtains a woman's 
 wages must be equal to the wages fixed by the minimum wage 
 law, based on a nine-hour per day service, that number of 
 hours constituting a day's work for women in our State. 
 
 One of the objections raised by the house committee on 
 labor to the minimum wage bill, as first presented, was to the 
 creation of a new State commission, and hence a new depart- 
 ment. In order to eliminate this strongly opposed feature the 
 substitute bill designated the Commissioner of the Bureau of 
 Immigration, Labor and Statistics as the officer to enforce the 
 general provisions of the law. This department was already 
 
responsible for the enforcement of the nine-hour law for 
 females, the eight-hour law for miners, and besides charged 
 with other matters pertaining to labor and immigration, to- 
 gether with the gathering, compiling and publication of sta- 
 tistics. Outside of the fixed salaries of the commissioner, two 
 deputies and a stenographer, rent, etc. (Utah not having a State 
 capitol as yet), the department was allowed $1,500 per year 
 for all traveling, printing, stationery and other incidental ex- 
 penses. As the appropriation for the department was fixed 
 before the passage of the minimum wage law, it may be said 
 that the only sum of money provided by the legislature for 
 operating its minimum wage law was but $800, which was 
 named in an amendment to the old act creating the Bureau of 
 Immigration, Labor and Statistics as the salary to be paid an 
 additional deputy in the department, and which amendment 
 stated that the new deputy should be a woman. 
 
 Here I wish to say that, in the absence of any knowledge 
 by this convention of what criticisms may have been made or 
 are being made concerning the operations of the law in Utah, 
 I think the members of the convention will agree with me that 
 it is being administered economically and that the legislature 
 made a "ten strike" in its efforts to economize when it elim- 
 inated a $5,000 per year department and attached the proposed 
 work of such to another department and allowed it but $800 
 for the performance of the required work. 
 
 The provision concerning a woman deputy was another 
 concession to the women's club members, who contended that 
 in the investigations of alleged violations of the minimum wage 
 and nine hour laws, and the general conditions surrounding the 
 
employment of labor, a woman official would necessarily prove 
 a helpful acquisition to the operating forces of the department. 
 In this proposition they were partially right, but in passing it 
 may be briefly stated at this point that in the handling of many 
 cases wherein women employers were violators of the law 
 enacted for the benefit of women wage earners, woman's in- 
 humanity to woman was ofttimes manifested in a striking man- 
 ner through their incourteous treatment of the woman deputy 
 commissioner. Many women employers charged with violating 
 the law stated that they preferred to deal with a man when 
 investigations concerning their conduct toward their own sex 
 were under consideration. 
 
 The most stubborn opposition to the passage of the measure 
 came particularly from a representative of one large manufac- 
 turing establishment and from several small country merchants. 
 The manufacturers' representative contended that in the line 
 of employment which his concern offered to girls and young 
 women there were certain classes of work requiring but little 
 skill, for which service they could only afford to pay a low wage 
 and could furthermore give employment to a class of females 
 who possessed but meager mentality and were incapable of 
 performing work that required average physical capacity. The 
 argument advanced by him was that his corporation would 
 necessarily have to discharge a number of females who would 
 probably be unable to secure any other employment, or at least 
 such employment at which they could earn as much as he was 
 paying them in the establishment which he represented. Em- 
 phasis was placed by him on the probability of such employes 
 becoming a permanent burden to their parents, relatives or 
 
friends, who would necessarily have to support them, or else 
 they would become public charges. 
 
 The small country merchants set up the claim that their 
 businesses did not warrant their paying a woman more than 
 $20 or $25 per month, and in order for them to maintain female 
 help they would have to discharge their experienced girls and 
 employ only those under eighteen years of age, or one older 
 who had had less than one year 's experience as a sales girl. 
 
 The practical workings of the law are yet to be told. 
 
 Briefly, the total number of women and girls in Utah com- 
 ing under the operations of the law numbered about 12,000. 
 Of the total number only about 6 per cent were under the age 
 of eighteen years, and were employed chiefly as errand or 
 bundle girls in department store, and in candy factories, box 
 and knitting factories. No account was reckoned of the girls 
 and women who, in the packing season, work in the canneries, 
 of which we have quite a number. The operating period of 
 some of these concerns is less than sixty days, and they employ 
 quite a number of young folks of both sexes during that time 
 of year embracing the school vacation for full or part days. 
 However, their rates reach the minimum wage scale. About 
 10 per cent of the 12,000 regular female employes come within 
 the inexperienced or apprentice class, and the remaining 84 
 per cent in the experienced class. 
 
 A month prior to the day the minimum wage law became 
 effective our department sent to every regular employer of 
 female labor of whom it had any knowledge a printed copy of 
 the law and) also a blank calling for a statement of the number 
 of females employed by them who were under eighteen years 
 
of age, how many of this class they were paying less than 75 
 cents per day; how many of the female employes over the age 
 of eighteen years were inexperienced and how many were 
 experienced, and how many of these two classes were being 
 paid less than 90 cents and $1.25 per day respectively. They 
 were requested to fill out these blanks and mail same to the 
 labor department. In a number of later instances these blanks 
 proved quite useful to us, especially in cases where employers 
 of only a few girls, who kept no pay rolls by which our depart- 
 ment might check their weekly wage accounts, and who had 
 failed to adjust their wage schedules to meet the requirements 
 of the new law. The same employers of female labor were 
 later asked to fill out similar blanks bearing a date subsequent 
 to the law becoming effective, and from this information, oft- 
 times unwittingly written upon these blanks, we discovered 
 many violations of the law for which the employers were 
 obliged to pay thousands of dollars in wages that fell short of 
 being the minimum wage, or else defend a lawsuit in a court 
 of justice. 
 
 The first complaint we filed was one against an establish- 
 ment employing about twenty-five young women. Two weeks 
 after the law went into effect, it was reported to the depart- 
 ment that this concern was not paying the minimum wage. The 
 commissioner obtained a pay envelope from one of the girl 
 employes upon which was written her name, the amount of her 
 weekly wage, and date thereof, which was $1 per week less 
 than that provided by law. The commissioner called upon the 
 proprietor of this establishment and requested to see the pay 
 roll, a request that was at first denied until the law requiring 
 
employers to submit their pay rolls for inspection was pre- 
 sented. This pay roll showed that a number of girls were being 
 paid less than the minimum wage, yet in the face of this fact 
 and the envelope exhibited, the proprietor and the bookkeeper 
 claimed that the establishment was paying the minimum wage. 
 The proprietors dared not face a trial in this case, and a plea 
 of guilty was entered before the day of trial, and each girl who 
 had been underpaid was handed the balance legally due her. 
 
 During the full year the minimum wage law has been in 
 operation, our department has collected from employers over 
 $8,000, which was given into the hands of employes who were 
 not receiving the minimum wage. In many instances the em- 
 ployers guilty of violating the law did so unconsciously or 
 carelessly, having neglected to immediately act upon the notice 
 sent out by the labor department and adjust their pay rolls to 
 meet the requirements of the law. One large department store, 
 employing in the neighborhood of two hundred females, and 
 paying semi-monthly, was found guilty of violating the law for 
 the reason that it paid its girls under eighteen years of age but 
 $9 (two weeks' wages) on the first and sixteenth days of each 
 month, computing the wage on twelve months a year basis, 
 instead of at fifty-two weeks a year. When their attention was 
 called to this matter, they thanked the labor department and 
 promptly made up to each underpaid employe the balance 
 due her. 
 
 Quite a number of employers apparently acted with indif- 
 ference to the warnings of the labor department, evidently 
 thinking that the department charged with the enforcement of 
 the law had enough else to do without investigating the amount 
 
10 
 
 of wages they were paying their help, and seeking refuge 
 behind the fact that the underpaid employe well knew that her 
 job was at stake if she entered a complaint. When the com- 
 missioner or deputy commissioners dropped into their places of 
 business to question them or their employes, or examine their 
 pay rolls, ofttimes being possessed in advance of their visits 
 with incriminating facts pertaining to the wages that were 
 being paid in the particular establishment under investigation, 
 many unpleasant scenes occurred, which usually ended with all 
 concerned getting together, computing the back wages due the 
 underpaid employes, to whom a substantial sum of money was 
 turned over, and a promise on the part of the employer to 
 observe the law in the future, followed by a formal and appar- 
 ently friendly farewell. The highest individual sum of money 
 which our department (has as yet collected in this manner for 
 one girl is $125, but several amounts approaching that sum 
 have been obtained. 
 
 The law does not designate our department as a collection 
 agency, but we assumed that for the reason that the law was 
 intended to obtain better pay for girls who were drawing wages 
 insufficient to meet their necessary living requirements, we 
 would be carrying out the spirit of the law if we placed into 
 their hands good hard cash, rather than summon them to appear 
 in court as reluctant witnesses against their employers, and, in 
 most cases, lose them their jobs, after which they would be 
 required to bring a civil action to collect the legal wages due 
 them, and if successful would be obliged to turn over nearly all 
 that had been collected to some attorney for his services in 
 the case. 
 
11 
 
 A wise business man is a respecter of public opinion, and 
 therefore few of such care to antagonize a law established for 
 the payment of a fair wage to men or women. Some mer- 
 chants and manufacturers will tell the commissioner of labor 
 that they believe the minimum wage law to be unconstitutional, 
 and that it is too arbitrary; that it denies to some girls and 
 women the employment that they are very much in need ol, but 
 they lack the moral courage to thus speak or publish such views 
 to the world, and draw unto themselves the odium that the 
 laboring classes feel for the employers opposed to laws intended 
 for the betterment of wage earners. Hence our department 
 has had to bring but seven cases for the violation of the min- 
 imum wage law before the courts, six of which we have won 
 and one is still pending. A case won has been appealed to the 
 Supreme Court. This was a matter wherein a woman pro- 
 prietor of a dressmaking establishment was paying an appren- 
 tice but $5 a week, the minimum wage being $5.40. The ap- 
 prentice had been employed but three weeks and her employer 
 was offered the privilege of paying the $1.20 due the appren- 
 tice under the minimum wage law, or else face a prosecution. 
 She elected to fight, but after an action was instituted against 
 her for her violation of the law, an attorney advised her to pay 
 to the apprentice the $1.20 due, which she did and then asked 
 that the suit be withdrawn. In view of the fact that she 
 slammed the door of her establishment in the face of the deputy 
 commissioner and hung up the telephone receiver when the 
 county attorney was advising her to pay the apprentice and 
 thus avoid prosecution, the forces charged with the enforce- 
 ment, prosecution and dignity of the law elected to allow the 
 
12 
 
 woman the opportunity of fighting until the Supreme Court of 
 the State called "time." Thus the constitutionality of our 
 little minimum wage law is to be tested, and others besides the 
 lady have quietly chipped in to help defray the expense of the 
 legal scrap. One contributor is a man whom we had pre- 
 viously convicted of violating the law. 
 
 Summarizing its practical effects within the brief period 
 it has been in operation, the law may be said to have been 
 instrumental in raising the wages of a number of women and 
 girls who most needed the additional sums of money it has 
 placed in their hands. It has not increased the wage pay roll 
 in establishments employing any considerable number of women 
 over 5 per cent. As an offset to this, most employers admit 
 that they have obtained increased efficiency, because proprietors 
 or managers of many establishments employing a large number 
 of female workers immediately preceding the date of this law 
 becoming effective made the occasion an opportunity for heart- 
 to-heart talks with their female employes, to emphasize the fact 
 that it would be up to them (the employes) to make good in 
 order to hold their positions. This presentation of the situa- 
 tion is; alleged to have had a leavenous effect upon quite a few 
 deficient employes who are now drawing more than the mini- 
 mum wage. A few small country merchants claim to have 
 been hard hit, and some formerly employing two girls now have 
 but one. A very small number of women and girls who failed 
 to produce the results fixed as necessary were dismissed from 
 establishments, but most of them found other work for which 
 they were better adapted, and consequently we can recall but 
 few cases where a woman or girl has been utterly deprived of 
 
13 
 
 employment because of this law. |En several cases where 
 girls have been discharged because of the activities of our de- 
 partment in compelling employers to pay the minimum wage, 
 we have found positions that were satisfactory to them. 
 
 And here, let me say, we have found among the business 
 men of Utah many whole-souled, broad-minded and philan- 
 thropic fellows, who have stood ever ready to aid our depart- 
 ment and assist us in the enforcement of the law by giving 
 employment to the girl or woman who had been unkindly and 
 unceremoniously discharged because of our insistence that she 
 be paid the minimum wage and all back wages due her, or 
 because she had given or was willing to give, at the sacrifice 
 of her job, incriminating evidence against her employer. Our 
 progress in the enforcement of the law would often have been 
 impeded had it not been for the co-operation of the men thus 
 referred to. 
 
 One very important thing the law appears to have not done, 
 as was feared, and that is that it has not caused the minimum 
 wage to become very nearly the maximum wage. Of the 12,000 
 women wage earners in our State coming under the provisions 
 of this law, we have not been able to find one woman or girl 
 who was drawing $7.50 per week at the time the law went into 
 effect whose wages have suffered a decrease. The fear of some 
 such action as this, by way of retaliation, was and has been 
 often voiced prior and subsequent to the operations of this law, 
 but the fear in our State appears to have been ill-founded. The 
 situation now is that a much larger number of employes in 
 Utah are drawing a wage in excess of the highest minimum 
 wage than those who are paid the legal wage itself. 
 
14 
 
 Another beneficial effect for the manufacturer is that it 
 tends to equalize the cost of production, and the same deduction 
 applies to the merchants, as the minimum wage will also in 
 his case contribute to the equality in the cost of selling goods. 
 The hard-fisted manufacturer or merchant who was inclined to 
 purchase his labor for the cheapest price obtainable is now 
 compelled by law to pay for labor about the same price that the 
 more liberal and considerate employer is inclined to pay vol- 
 untarily. 
 
 I believe that I am justified in saying that 90 per cent of 
 employers of women and girls are well satisfied with the law as 
 it now stands and is enforced. Of course employes whose 
 wages it has raised are satisfied, and hope soon to see the 
 minimum wage made higher. The women who are responsible 
 for the enactment of the law feel that they have accomplished 
 a great good for their sex, and no member of the legislature who 
 voted for the law is apologizing to his constituents for his 
 action. 
 
 An intelligent manager of one of Salt Lake 's largest depart- 
 ment stores, who was chairman of the sub-committee that 
 drafted the minimum wage law as it appears today, in a paper 
 read before a national convention of merchants, recently held in 
 one of the eastern States, says of the law : " * * * What- 
 ever its faults or virtues, there is little doubt that good has been 
 uppermost. Without discussing its legal, moral, economic or 
 industrial bearings, I might venture the suggestion that of far 
 greater importance than minimum wage legislation for the 
 uplift of women workers is preparatory education which oper- 
 ates automatically to raise the standard of wages in ratio to the 
 
15 
 
 standard of service. It would seem fair that if the State estab- 
 lishes a standard of wage it should assume the responsibility of 
 furnishing service of equal value. Then it must follow that the 
 greatest material service we can render the future women and 
 girl workers is to prearrange such environment and education 
 as will give them individual independence, self-supporting pro- 
 ducing power. We must care better for our womanhood before 
 it is thrown into the thick of the fight for existence and com- 
 pelled to call to the State for minimum wage protection. "We 
 should now know that we are in a period of change, humanizing 
 change, and that along with the development of industrial in- 
 stitutions and processes has come a new world-wide sub con- 
 sciousness, which pleads the necessity of a fairer distribution 
 of the products of labor, the uplift of the laborer, the better 
 development and conservation of the mental and physical 
 forces, a more humane and scientific application of productive 
 human energy. The minimum wage helps, but let us first help 
 the women to know ; she is then a law unto herself. ' ' 
 
16 
 
 Minimum Wage Scale for Females 
 
 (Chap. 63, Session Laws of Utah, 1913.) 
 
 SECTION 1. UNLAWFUL TO PAY LESS THAN SCALE. It shall be 
 unlawful for any regular employer of female workers in the State 
 of Utah to pay any woman (female) less than the wage in this 
 section specified, to- wit: 
 
 For minors, under the age of eighteen years, not less than 
 seventy-five cents per day; for adult learners and apprentices not 
 less than ninety cents per day; provided, that the learning period 
 or apprenticeship shall not extend for more than one year; for 
 adults who are experienced in the work they are employed to per- 
 form, not less than one dollar and twenty-five cents per day, 
 
 SEC. 2. CERTIFICATE OF APPRENTICESHIP. All regular em- 
 ployers of female workers shall give a certificate of apprenticeship 
 for time served to all apprentices. 
 
 SEC. 3. PENALTY. Any regular employer of female workers 
 who shall pay to any woman (female) less than the wage specified 
 in Section 1 of this Act shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. 
 
 SEC. 4. COMMISSIONER OF IMMIGRATION, LABOR AND STATISTICS 
 TO ENFORCE ACT. The Commissioner of Immigration, Labor and 
 Statistics shall have general charge of the enforcement of this Act, 
 but violations of the same shall be prosecuted by all the city, State 
 and county prosecuting officers in the same manner as in other 
 cases of misdemeanor. 
 
 Approved March 18th, 1913. 
 
 PRINTING CO. 
 
 \