449 



A NOTE ON SOME AUSTRALIAN PROPOSALS FOR A 



WAGE VARYING IN PROPORTION TO THE SIZE 



OF THE FAMILY. 



BY 



Mabel Atkinson, M.A. (Mrs. Palmer), 

 Lecturer in Economics, Natal Technical College, Durban. 



Read July U, 1922. 



It has for some years now in Australia been a part of the 

 policA" of the community that wages should not be determined by 

 competition but by reference to the reasonable standard of life of 

 the worker. The famous precedent in which this principle is first 

 embodied is the statement by Mr. Justice Higgins, President of 

 the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, who laid it down in 1907 

 (in the Harvester Case)' that the standard to be used in fixing 

 wages must be " the normal needs of the average employee 

 regarded as a human being living in a civilised comnmnity." He 

 went on to say: " Surely the State in stipulating for fair and 

 reasonable remuneration for the employees means that the wages 

 shall be sufficient to provide ... a condition of frugal com- 

 fort estimated by cvu-rent human standards. This, then, is the 

 primary test, the test which I shall apply in ascertaining the 

 minimum wage that can be treated as fair and reasonable in the 

 ease of unskilled labourers." 



Wages were from time to time fixed on this basis on the 

 assumption that the male adult worker has to support himself, 

 a wife and three children. The first rate fixed was 7s. a day, 

 but as prices increased in Australia, as in all other countries as a 

 result of the war, the minimum had from time to time to be 

 raised, and in 1919 the Federal minimum basic wage had been 

 established at £3 17s. a week. 



It was, however, asserted by many workers, and the 

 employers did not dispute the assertion, that this wage was not 

 adequate for existence on a civilised basis for the supposed 

 standard family of five persons. The Government Statist of 

 Tasmania, for example, in an independent inquiry ascertained 

 that £6 a week was necessary in Hobart for the family narned,' 

 and a Hobart employer gave it as his opinion that a man with a 

 wife and three dependent children "must be having a rotten bad 

 time of it " if he had to bring up his family on the existing basic 

 Avage of £3 17s. a week.'' 



' Commonwealth Arbitration Court, 1907. 



- Second Report of Basic Wage Commission, p. 107. 



^ Evidence of President of Holjart Chamber of Commerce, Aug. 25, 1920. 



