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The article focuses on the legislation related to the judiciality of minimum wage. Minimum wage legislation has been of two main kinds. One is the Massachusetts variety which vests a commission with power to make inquiries and publish results. Employers are exposed to public knowledge of the wages paid and are thereby subjected to public censure or public praise. Sentiments of decency or of vanity may move the niggardly to mend their ways, but the recalcitrant are left free to bargain as they can and will. The other type of legislation adds physical to moral force. A commission is authorized to discover and to declare the minimum cost of decent subsistence and on this basis to prescribe the minimum wage that may be paid to women and minors. Employment at less than the prescribed wage subjects the employer to punishment.

This article reviews the minimum wage theory and its operations in Texas. The industrial society in the U.S. is founded upon private property and freedom of enterprise. Society relies largely upon competition to regulate industry in the interest of all. Women and children are more apt to be exploited by such employers than any others. They constitute the least mobile portion of the labor supply. Meanwhile, minimum wage legislation originated and has had its development among English speaking people. The first minimum wage law was tried in the British possessions of the Pacific about a quarter century ago. The first organized movement for a minimum wage in the U.S. began under the leadership of the National Consumers League. Furthermore, Massachusetts took the lead in minimum wage legislation. A minimum wage law for women and minors in Texas was passed by the Legislature on March 12, 1919 and became effective June 18, 1919. The effects of the enforcement of a minimum wage in Texas will be very much those that have been and are being realized in other states which are enforcing such measures. First there will be a tendency of the women in the trades regulated to organize. A second result will be the lowering of the wages of some who now receive more than a minimum wage. Moreover, some forms of business in competition with establishments in other states which have no minimum wage laws, would find themselves harder put to it to meet with success their competitors in the market.

The present position of the Supreme Court renders the future of mandatory minimum wage laws perilous. Since the decision in the District of Columbia case, considerable discussion has arisen as to the results which can be obtained from a law free from objectionable (to the court) features. The Massachusetts statute is the outstanding example of such a law. The first decade of the operation of the law in Massachusetts ended July 1, 1923. During these ten years wage decrees establishing minimum rates for women and girls have been made in sixteen occupations employing from 70,000 to 80,000 women and girls and covering approximately 5,000 firms. It is apparent that the Massachusetts law has done much to ameliorate the condition of working women. It does not follow that the declared object of minimum wage legislation, the securing of a cost-of-living income, has been attained. In spite of difficulties, the Massachusetts minimum wage law has done not a little to improve the condition of unskilled, unorganized female labor.

The Massachusetts law for the public regulation of wages operates through a Minimum Wage Commission which appoints wage boards to sit in different industries. These boards are composed of representatives of employers and employees in equal number, and representatives of the public not exceeding one half of the number who represent the parties at interest. Wage boards have so far been appointed in three industries. But in only one, that of brush making, has a minimum wage as yet been promulgated. The brush making industry was selected for the initial experiment, partly because it was so small that it was possible for agents of the Commission to visit practically every establishment in the state and explain the law to employers and employees who were alike ignorant of its existence and partly because wages in this industry ran abnormally low. A chief cause of these low earnings was short time, or underemployment. There were great differences in this respect, and consequently in earnings, in different occupations and in different establishments.