286 



NATURE 



[October 28, 1920 



cost of living- should be the dominant factor in 

 the determination of the level of the minimum 

 wage. Such a mode of assessment would also 

 form an equitable basis for the determination of 

 the wage of the skilled worker, in so far that the 

 increment to be added in payment of (i) skill, 

 (2) compensation for work carried out under un- 

 pleasant or unhygienic conditions, or (3) extra- 

 heavy work, would be simply an addition to the 

 minimum wage. 



It is unquestionably true that there ought to 

 be a statutory minimum wage. It is the unskilled 

 worker who suffers most. No matter what the 

 trade or occupation, it can be confidently asserted 

 that, as a general rule, it will be found that the 

 unskilled labourer is expending most energy and 

 receiving least pay. 



The assumption has been made that the pur- 

 chase of food and the production of external 

 muscular work are terms which are strictly inter- 

 changeable, and within the limits of the minimum- 

 wage-earning class this is true. Objection to the 

 proposal to use food consumption as the basis of 

 wage fixation might legitimately be raised on the 

 ground that, with the great majority of wage- 

 earners, the purchase of food is not confined to 

 the purchase for their own needs, but also for 

 those of a family or other dependents. There is 

 the further difiiculty as to whether the minimum 

 wage for men and women should be identical. 

 There is absolutely no question about the fact 

 that the average woman worker does not expend 

 the same amount of energy as the average man, 

 but this may be offset by another factor of wide 

 application, that the majority of working women 



carry on at the same time housework in their own 

 homes, where the expenditure in energy may 

 easily compete in severity with the work done 

 outside. 



Science may seem at times to be cold and un- 

 sympathetic, even harsh, but, nevertheless, it is 

 only when the facts are observed in a clear and 

 unimpassioned manner that the truth can be 

 found. Far from viewing man as a mere machine 

 for the conversion of the latent energy of food 

 into the potential energy of work, science is fully 

 alive to the fact that this is only one aspect of 

 vital activity, that there is a psychic side of life 

 — everything that makes up the environment — 

 which plays an equally important part in the life- 

 history. 



The purely energy side of the subject cannot 

 be the sole criterion for the determining of wages. 

 Food alone will not suffice to keep men going ; 

 it "must be consumed under conditions which 

 are satisfactory — conditions, it is true, which 

 vary, at present, with the social status of the 

 individual. There must be a sufficiency of money 

 for a reasonable expenditure on various small 

 luxuries, for entertainment, and for the various 

 amenities of life, the absence of which makes life 

 for the majority of people scarcely worth living. 

 There is no question, then, as many Labour 

 leaders seem to imagine, that an attempt is being 

 made to reduce the manual worker to the level of 

 serfdom. 2 g_ p_ q_ 



. ',T'".F'''!.'°r ^*'' '■"T '<"")Iy directed the writers attention to a foolBole 

 in Mr. H. G. Weliss "Outline of History" (p. 5,9 : Cassell and Co.. iom) 

 with reference to an eiperiment of the Oneida Silver Co. In the aurs<nieal 

 of the weekly wage reference is n-aHe to the cost of staple commodities and 

 common nccKsities, and the worker receives hi.s wafes plus a percentage 

 represenimg the advance of the cost of food, etc., from a standard value. 



Obituary. 



Dr. Max Margules. 

 'X'HE news of the death of Dr. Max Margules 

 -*■ on October 4, which reached this country 

 a fortnight ago, is rendered particularly sad by 

 the announcement in Tuesday's Times that "his 

 death was due to starvation. He had been hving 

 on a pension of 400 crowns a month (which is 

 equivalent to 8s.), and he was too proud to beg 

 for assistance." Dr. Margules was born in 1856 

 at Brody, in Galicia. After studying at Vienna 

 and Berlin, he entered the Austrian Meteorological 

 Service in 1880, and became secretary of the 

 Institute at Vienna in i8go. 



In 1882 Lord Kelvin suggested that the 

 explanation of the regular semi-diurnal variation 

 of the barometer, which has a range of more 

 than two millibars in equatorial regions, might 

 be found in the coincidence of a free period of 

 oscillation of the atmosphere with the period of 

 the solar gravitational tide. Lord Rayleigh in 1890 

 showed that t'/ ihe rotation of the earth were 

 neglected, a rough computation of the free periods 

 led to^ values of 23-8 and i3-7' hours, so that 

 Kelvin's hypothesis became at any rate a possi- 

 NO. 2661, VOL. 106] 



bility, although the actual values obtained by 

 Rayleigh would have indicated a bigger .diurnal 

 and a smaller semi-diurnal barometer variation. 

 Margules, in the same year, attacked the problem 

 of computing the pressure oscillations of the 

 atmosphere on a rotating globe, and found that 

 for an atmosphere with a temperature of 268° 

 absolute (-5° C.) the free period was exactly 

 twelve hours. 



In 1892 and 1893 Margules contributed to the 

 Sitsungsberichte of the Vienna Academy a series 

 of masterly papers on the motion of the air on 

 a rotating spheroid. These papers are little 

 known to English meteorologists, as they were 

 not included in the collection of papers and trans- 

 lations issued by the Smithsonian Institution in 

 the volumes of "Mechanics of the Earth's Atmo- 

 sphere." 



Margules contributed to the Year Book of the 

 Meteorological Institute of Vienna for 1903 a 

 comprehensive discussion of the energy of storms. 

 He showed that the atmospheric phenomena 

 associated with storms would arise if two 

 masses of air of different temperatures were in 



