women; and any business, vocation, profession, and calling followed and pursued by men may be followed and pursued by women, and no person shall be disqualified from engaging in or pursuing any business, vocation, profession, calling or employment on account of sex."
Section 5 of Industrial Welfare Commission of the State of Washington, Order of September 10, 1918, is the first general equal pay law: "That women doing equal work with men in any occupation, trade, or industry in this state shall receive the same compensation therefor as men during work of the same character and of like quantity and quality, the determination of what constitutes equal work to rest with the Industrial Welfare Commission."
THE MEANING OF THE MINIMUM WAGE.
The interests of every community demand that all workers, male as well as female, shall receive a fair living wage, to save them from pernicious effects upon their health and morals. The dangers to the health of women have been found to be twofold: lack of adequate nourishment and lack of medical care in sickness. Careful investigations as well as statistics have proven that with insufficient wages food is necessarily cut down below the requirements of subsistence, and health inevitably suffers. In order to meet unavoidable expenses for lodging and clothing, workingwomen reduce their diet to the lowest possible point.
On the moral side, authorities agree in the opinion that, while underpayment and the consequent struggle to live may not be the primary cause for entering upon an immoral life, it is inevitably a highly important factor. When wages are too low to supply nourishment and other human needs, temptation is more readily yielded to.
The discovery that inadequate wages menace the morals of women and through them the interests and the good name of the community in which they work, has had much to do with the adoption of minimum-wage laws in America as well as in other parts of the world.
In the United States the first minimum-wage orders were those of the Oregon Industrial Commission, which fixed $8.64 as the legal weekly minimum for manufacturing establishments, and $9.25 for mercantile establishments, in the City of Portland. These rates were based upon the testimony of workers and employers gathered by the Oregon Consumers' League. The testimony had shown that the prevailing wage for beginners in department stores was $3.00 a week; that nearly half of these girls and women employed were receiving less than $9.00, and that female clerks never received above $10.00
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