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do you as a union? If everybody gets the union scale of wages, then why would they ever join the union?”
“Oh well, well, we'll see to that. If they get the union scale of wages, we'll make them join the union.” It was that sort of talk.
Among the protesters were the garment trades who were then trying to organize in the South. Cotton garments were not organized.
It was true that in some cases the employers accept the minimum wage and left it at that, but in those cases the minimum wage that we fixed was the true prevailing minimum wage and it was slightly higher, always, than the poorest and the worst employers paid. In an area where wages are not regulated by any law, and where the union is not organized, different employers pay different wages. There's no general standard wage for a bobbin doffer, for instance, under those circumstances. You pay the bobbin doffers what you have to pay the bobbin doffers, or what you think is right to pay the bobbin doffer. Whether a bobbin doffer is worth as much as a spinner is for you to decide. As a matter of fact, they aren't. An experienced textile man says, “If we pay the spinners so much because it's a skilled job and we want to get good people and
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