Early Wisconsin Industry

Work permit example from 1904

More information on the Civil Service Centennial

More information about Robert La Follette

Governor Robert M. La Follette
The Founder and Leader of Wisconsin Progressivism

Child Labor in Industry

The first attempt at workers compensation legislation came in 1909. Senator Theodore W. Brazeau introduced a proposal to provide compensation insurance. The senate postponed the proposal indefinitely. The legislature did, however provide for a joint interim committee of 3 Senators and 4 Assemblymen to study such insurance.
 

 
Senator Theodore W. Brazeau

One of the more notable Commissioners was John R. Commons. Dr. Commons was a Economics Professor at the University of Wisconsin. Commons influenced a  generation of people who became involved in social reform and progressive legislation.

A reformer rather than a revolutionary, Commons championed laws that protected workers while preserving the efficiency of large-scale industry. Effective labor legislation, he maintained, could make the capitalist economic system work in favor of workers as well as employers. Commons' thinking influenced Wisconsin's most important new labor laws, especially industrial safety and unemployment insurance. On occasion, Commons' University classes became staging grounds for new legislation. Many of his students, including Arthur Altmeyer, became state or federal labor law administrators.

The Wisconsin legislature enacted more laws to regulate hours, wages and employment conditions of women and children.

    Work week for children reduced
      to 48 hours.

    Work week for women set at 55
      hours.

Other industrial safety laws were passed.

Wisconsin established free employment services in its Milwaukee, Superior, LaCrosse and Oshkosh Employment Offices. These employment services were primarily local labor exchanges.

Nation's first modern apprenticeship law that included area vocational schools as a necessary component of apprenticeship programs.  625 apprentices were indentured in the first year in Wisconsin.

Nation's first state constitutional Workmen's Compensation Act (now Worker's Compensation) guaranteeing injury compensation as a legal right was enacted on May 3, 1911 and became effective September 1st to be administered by the Industrial Commission. The Constitutionality of the Act was upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court on November 1, 1911 (and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1926).

The first Wisconsin wage law was enacted in 1913 and specified that a "living wage" must be paid to women and minors. In enacting this law, the Legislature specified that "every wage paid or agreed to be paid by any employer to any female or minor employee shall be not less than a living wage." Administrative authority was given to the Industrial Commission, which was to use an advisory board equally representing employers, employees and the public in its determination of a "living wage," thereby also necessitating consideration of the cost of living. There were several events which delayed the determination of a living wage and contributed to a 6-year lapse between the 1913 enactment of the law and issuance of the first wage orders in 1919.

. . . The Industrial Commission completed an extensive study in 1913- 1914 of the working conditions and cost of living of employed women in Wisconsin; and most pertinent - the constitutionality of the Oregon Minimum Wage Law (which was similar in principle to the Wisconsin law) was being challenged in the courts from 1914 to 1917, when a tie vote of the U.S. Supreme Court sustained the Oregon Law and thus helped clear the way for action in Wisconsin.
  

Photo Source: Wisconsin Historical Society

. . . World War I began . . .
  

Current Employment Statistics (CES) began, managed by the United States  Bureau of Labor Statistics and Industrial Commission (the program continues today!).

 
Commissioners are:
Edwin E. Witte, Secretary (1917-22);  Joseph D. Beck; Fred M. Wilcox; and George P. Hambrecht.
 Photo Source: Wisconsin Historical Society

The Wisconsin Free Employment Service had 31 public employment offices.

State Legislators centralized child labor permit-granting authority under the Wisconsin Industrial Commission.

Apprentices Learning

A 22-cent minimum wage was established for women and minors 17 years of age and older.
  

A petition presented May 1, 1919, to the Industrial Commission by the Wisconsin Federation of Labor, the Consumers League of Wisconsin, and the Central Council of Social Agencies of Milwaukee initiated a wage action by the Commission. As required by law, the action involved appointment of an Advisory Wage Board and consideration of their recommendations and findings, as well as those of the Commission in its 1913-1914 cost of living study. After the required public hearings were held, the commission issued Wage Orders on June 27, 1919, and named their effective date as August 1,1919.