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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 18. Pre-War Labor Market Controls and Their Consequences for the Negro - 1. The Wages and Hours Law and the Dilemma of the Marginal Worker
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398 An American Dilemma
1938, usually called the Wages and Hours Law.^ It provides for a
minimum wage, which was 25 cents an hour in 1938, was automatically
increased to 30 cents in 1941 and will be 40 cents in 1945.* Industrial
committees can institute higher wage minima for particular industries.
Work over 40 hours a week is overtime and is to be paid at time-and-a-half
the usual wage rate. Children under 16 may not be employed.
The law covers only persons employed in interstate commerce or in
production of goods for interstate commerce. Since workers in agriculture
and domestic service are excluded from the benefits of the law, it is certain
that the coverage is much smaller for Negroes than for whites. On the
other hand, wherever Negroes are covered, the law must affect their
wages more often and more substantially than in the case of white workers.
The proportion of workers with wages below the new minima has been
much higher among Negroes than among whites.
. For the same reason, the law affects the South much more than the rest
of the country, since it does not provide for any regional differentials
regarding wage minima—not even such differentials as could be motivated
by the differences in cost of living between the predominantly urban North
and the largely rural South. The law will probably, in some measure, slow
up the migration of industries to the South, which certain Southern states,
particularly Mississippi, have encouraged by offering manufacturers special
tax exemptions, free or low-priced factory lots, or even ready-built plants,
as well as other advantages. The main selling point, however, has always
been the cheap labor supply—incidentally, with particular emphasis on the
fact that white workers are available—^and the relative absence of trade
union interference. Now, however, it seems that Southern industry will
lose one of its main competitive advantages. This effect will increase the
competitjon for jobs in the South and make the Negroes^ chances for
employment in Southern industry slimmer.
The fact that enforcement seems to have been slower in the South than
elsewhere, probably also slower for Negroes than for whites, may have
cushioned these effects. Moreover, there is a differential between North
and South in respect to supplementary state legislation and enforcement
by state agencies. Only three Southern states limit women’s work to 48
hours per week, and state legislation restricting child labor is less extensive
in the South than elsewhere.* Still, it seems safe to conclude that Negroes
have been affected already—positively as well as negatively. An estimate
quoted by Dabney, to the effect that the wage regulations brought about
already under the N.I.R.A. had thrown half a million Negroes on relief
by 1934)* seems more definite than the complicated character of the problem
would permit, and is in all likelihood much exaggerated. It is not possible
• Similar minimum wages were instituted under the National Industrial Recovery Act of
1933, which wa« declared unconstitutional in 1935.
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