specific exemption from the anti-combines legislation of 1889 and this exemption has been continued in all subsequent legislation of the kind.

After the Taff Vale decision in 1901 injunctions and damage suits began and in 1909 Mr. Justice Mathers held that the omission of the peaceful picketing clause from the Criminal Code indicated the intention of Parliament that attending for the purpose of obtaining and communicating information should not deprive "watching and besetting" of its wrongful character.

But in 1910 the Minister of Justice gave an opinion that "besetting and watching" merely to communicate information would not constitute an offence and that the reinsertion of the peaceful picketing clause in the Criminal Code was therefore unnecessary. During the war there were more damage suits and injunctions. In vain the unions urged the federal and provincial governments in turn to enact the British Industrial Disputes Act of 1906 into Canadian law and in 1921 the Dominion Government, on the advice of the Department of Justice, refused to legalize peaceful picketing and sympathetic strikes. The government's opinion with regard to picketing is reminiscent of Chief Justice Taft's statement in the American Steel Foundries case 1 that "the name ' picket' indicates a militant purpose inconsistent with peaceful persuasion.”

1

In short, the legal status of Canadian trade unions is much the same as that of the unions in Great Britain before the Industrial Disputes Act. They seem to have adequate protection from the combination laws but they are open to constant attack on charges of criminal and civil conspiracy. There has been frequent use of the injunction and union funds are liable to seizure to satisfy damage actions. Fear

1257 U. S. 184, American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Central Trades Council.

of inroads on their funds has prompted the unions not to register under the Trade Unions Act. But the Catholic unions of Quebec are not opposed to incorporation and numbers of them have been incorporated under recent legislation of that province. Unions have a legal right to strike for certain stated objects but picketing and sympathetic strikes have been held illegal by the courts. The right to strike is also restricted by Dominion and provincial conciliation legislation so that despite the legality of the strike the unions are much hampered in its use. The Trades and Labor Congress has been advised by its solicitor that every Canadian union is open to prosecution as an unlawful association for seeking to bring about "any governmental, political, social, industrial or economic change" by the use of force.1 While British Columbia by a dead-letter measure has forbidden the injunction and has legalized peaceful picketing and the sympathetic strike, an Ontario judge has recently held that the injunction is abhorrent to the law of that province.2

Employers' organizations have been little used for the purposes of industrial relations. They are subject to a considerable body of combines legislation from which trade unions are exempt.

1 Cf. supra, p. 152.

2 According to a judgment rendered since going to press the British Columbia law would seem to be ineffective from the labor viewpoint even if within provincial competence. (Cf. Labour Gazette, vol. xxvi, p. 624.) And there has been an important interpretation of the law on picketing. In June, 1926, the Supreme Court of Canada held it unlawful under Section 501 of the Criminal Code to picket for the purpose of persuading employees. (Cf. Labour Gazette, vol. xxvi, p. 621.)

CHAPTER VI

A WAGE SUFFICIENT FOR REASONABLE Living

"The payment to the employed of a wage adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of life as this is understood in their time and country." (Treaty of Peace: Article 427,3.)

GOVERNMENT action in Canada for the regulation of wages in the interests of the employed has been in two directions (1) legislation and administrative regulation to ensure the payment of a "fair wage" to persons employed on government works, on undertakings receiving subsidies from the public funds, and in the manufacture of government supplies; and (2) minimum wage laws for the protection of women workers.

Provision for fair wages on government contracts is one of the few fields of labor legislation in which the Dominion Government preceded the provincial legislatures. In England in 1884 the Trade Union Parliamentary Committee tried to induce the stationery office to adopt the union rates of the London compositors as a basis for the government printing contract, and when their request was disregarded "fair wages 99 became one of the campaign cries of the election of 1886. The election of a champion of trade-union wages to the London School Board in 1888 resulted in the adoption of a fair wage policy by the Board in 1889 and the House of Commons, in view of the strength of the agitation and the disclosure before the House of Lords Sweating Committee of the abuses arising from subletting, passed a fair-wage resolution in 1891.

The campaign in England encouraged organized labor in Canada to press for the adoption of a fair-wage policy. In 1890 the Trades and Labor Congress passed its first resolution on the subject and in 1900 a fair-wage resolution was adopted by the House of Commons. Since then the unions by their own unaided efforts have secured a fairly general acceptance of the principle.

The minimum-wage idea, first adopted in Australia and Great Britain, seems to have come to Canada by way of the United States, and particularly through states on the Pacific Coast, whose legislation influenced the neighboring western provinces. The manufacturing provinces of the East followed the agricultural provinces of the West in the enactment of minimum wage laws, but in both the Ontario and Quebec laws the minimum wage boards have jurisdiction. over wages alone while in the legislation of the other provinces their powers extend to hours and conditions of work. In 1923 New Brunswick appointed commissioners to investigate and report on mothers' allowances and a minimum wage for women. The report submitted in 1925 favored the enactment of a minimum wage law but as yet the legislature has taken no action.

The Trades and Labor Congress indicated its position with regard to a legal minimum wage as early as 1899, when a resolution demanding federal legislation for a minimum wage and a maximum work-day was adopted.1

The report of the Industrial Relations Commission of 1919 favored minimum wage legislation for unskilled laborers. After stating that the absence of minimum wage legislation, particularly for women and girls, was mentioned by witnesses "as a serious cause of dissatisfaction in some provinces", the Commissioners give their view, "We be

1 Trades and Labor Congress, 1899, p. 18.

lieve that such a law should be enacted in all the provinces and should cover not only women and girls but unskilled labourers as well." 1

In 1925 British Columbia passed a Male Minimum Wage Act, the first legislation of the kind in the Dominion.

The first Canadian minimum wage law, enacted in Alberta in 1917, applied to workers of either sex within the scope of the Factories Act. It was strongly opposed by the manufacturers. When the measure was being discussed in the Alberta legislature the Canadian Manufacturers' Association expressed its view in a telegram to one of its members in Alberta. This message, which was forwarded later to the premier of Alberta, reads in part:

Principle of arbitrary minimum wage rests upon economic fallacy. Like any commodity offered for sale, price of labor will always be regulated by conditions of supply and demand. When Alberta minimum is lower than market price of labor in adjoining provinces the law is unnecessary and inoperative; when higher there will be influx of outsiders in numbers too great to be absorbed. Result is mass of unemployment with all attendant evils of destitution and vice. A province which always pays its labor at prices higher than adjoining provinces pay cannot help but impoverish itself. This type of legislation adversely affects interests of the very people it is designed to help. Minimum wage levels down; competitive wage levels up. Minimum wage encourages laziness; competitive wage encourages industry. Minimum wage stifles ambition by pulling energetic worker down to same class as less competent fellow; competitive wage stimulates ambition by recognition of merit. Minimum wage tends to restrict employment to young and robust who are physically able to give full value; competitive wage enables older and less hardy workers to share in opportunity of earning livelihood. Labor interests and legislators

1 Royal Commission on Industrial Relations, op. cit., p. 10.