During the same summer an interstate compact conference was held in the United States Department of Labor at Washington and attended by labour commissioners of many of the major in dustrial states of the East and South, at which resolutions were passed favouring wage and hour legislation in the various states pursuant to compacts which would be sanctioned by Congress.
Through this device advocates of labour legislation hoped to over come the fear on the part of many states that statutes of this char acter would place their local manufacturers at a disadvantage in competing with those in other states. Two states, which had adopted minimum wage laws pursuant to the compact, applied to Congress for ratification.
Another event which may have great legal significance in the evolution of Federal labour law was the adherence in 1934 of the United States to the International Labor Organization. Since that time the United States has participated in international labour conferences which have adopted "conventions" with respect to labour regulation in certain industries. By virtue of their mem bership in the organization, the nations incur an obligation to sub mit such conventions to their competent legislative authorities for ratification. Since the Constitution vests the treaty-making power exclusively in the Federal Government, many students of constitutional law believe that in America the only "competent legislative authority" is Congress. In support of that view, there has been cited a Supreme Court decision upholding a treaty with Canada as the law of the land, although in conflict with a state law on a topic conceded in the absence of international agree ment, to be a matter exclusively of state concern.
Some form of hour regulation is found in the statute books of most American states. The original position of the Supreme Court, however, was that compulsory general limitation of hours was repugnant to the Constitution. Subsequent decisions estab lished an exception where a showing was made justifying legisla tive action on the score of safety, health or public morals. As a result the type of statute most frequently enacted has dealt with the hours or time of factory employment for women and children, or with occupations for men regarded as unhealthy, like mining or compressed air work, or with occupations like the operation of trains, street cars, and buses where the possibility of fatigue was a source of danger to the travelling public. Eventually the courts
conceded that even a general limitation fixing the hours of em ployment for men might fall within the scope of the police power. In one case the Supreme Court upheld a factory law placing a ten hour daily limitation with respect to all employees.
Owing to the narrow ground upon which these statutes rested, however, few, even of those acts relating to women, proposed any thing more drastic than an eight hour day or a forty-eight hour week. Actually the average working week is considerably shorter than these statutes indicate.
As yet there has been little recognition by the courts of the principal reason advanced in recent years by advocates of a com pulsory shorter working week—the desirability of spreading work so as to absorb the unemployed into industry. The reluctance of state legislatures to place their industries at a competitive dis advantage has halted the passage of legislation designed to attain this object, so that of late years the higher courts have never been squarely faced with the question.
Minimum wage legislation in the states has been less frequent. The development of this kind of regulation was retarded consid erably by a decision of the Supreme Court in 1923 holding void a minimum wage law for women. A few states, however, recently sought to meet the constitutional objections voiced in that case by enacting the so-called standard statutes. These acts create minimum wage boards to fix wages in certain industries in accord ance with specified criteria for the determination of fair compen sation.
There is a large amount of valid regulatory legislation with re spect to wages in different states however. Included in this cate gory are statutes fixing the time or frequency of wage payments, prohibiting payment in scrip, providing that wages shall be a lien on the property of the employer, recognizing the priority of wage claims in bankruptcy proceedings, and creating exemptions from assignments or garnishee process. Small claims courts have been created in many states to reduce the cost of actions for the recov ery of unpaid wages. Authority has often been given to state labour bureaus to assist employees in such litigation.