Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/929

EFFECT OF AN INCREASE IN THE LIVING WAGE 893 ing degree of skilled work. It is absolutely necessary to the well- being of a community that the skilled and competent worker should be encouraged in every way possible. If he is not, a premium is put on apathy, and the community drifts towards that "cult of in- competence" which, according to many distinguished authorities, is one of the regrettable prices paid for democratic institutions. In part, the need for differential rates of wage may be illustrated by the need for maintaining a reasonably high standard of output. The question of output to-day is even more important than the question of nominal wages. Again, while employers should, as far as possible, cooperate in maintaining a high secondary wage, they are subject, in the absence of legal regulation, to the danger that if they are just to the competent and skilled workmen, they may find themselves handicapped by the competition of some other employer who is less scrupulous. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of this limitation upon any disposition which the employers may have to regard special competence or efl&ciency by adequate additions to a living or primary minimum wage. In the early days of industrial legislation, and when Wages Boards were first introduced, it was not so much the intention of the legislatures to secure an adequate remuneration for skill, etc., as to preclude sweating. Prevailing opinion assumed that the skilled worker could take of himself. In the course of time, however, it has become increasingly apparent that a system of industrial regulation must pass far beyond the question of the elimination of sweating if national efficiency is to be maintained, or justice to the workers even approximately assured. I pass from new cases to consider what adjustments, if any, should be made with respect to court awards actually in force at the time when the living wage is increased. Naturally, when the living wage is increased, the employees who are under an obligation still in force will desire that the revised standard should be immediately applied to them as well as in new cases. Briefly, the argument is that what a court awards is not so much a particular sum of money as so much purchasing power. When, through an increase in the cost of living, the living wage is increased, the employees are en- titled to argue that the revised standard should be universally and comprehensively adopted if the spirit of preexisting regulation is to be honored, notwithstanding the fact that the award under which