[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 102 (Thursday, July 11, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7679-S7680]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE MINIMUM WAGE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am going to begin a brief discussion 
along with two of my colleagues who will appear shortly, Senator Breaux 
from Louisiana and Senator Rockefeller from West Virginia, on what we 
have called the families-first agenda that we developed to lay out what 
we think we would like to accomplish in the months ahead and also in 
this and the following Congress.
  Before I do that, however, I wanted to share with my colleagues 
something that I will share at greater length at a later time.

  Yesterday, we voted on the minimum wage. There has been a lot of 
discussion back and forth on the issue of the minimum wage, and the 
opposition to the minimum wage from some is that it will cost jobs; 
from others, that there ought not be a minimum wage.
  There has been a lot of controversy about it. The Congress I think in 
its good judgment decided after about 7 years that another adjustment 
should be made; the last adjustment was made in the latter part of 
1989. But we will still have some discussion about it because there 
needs to be a conference and, I expect, more debate in the Chamber 
about the minimum wage.
  Last evening, I found something that I want to share with my 
colleagues which I think contributes to the debate some. It is a piece 
written by Edward Filene. Some will remember, especially in 
Massachusetts and others around the country, the name Filene because 
Filene is the name that is attached to department stores, Filene's 
Basement among others.
  Edward Filene, September 1923, a businessman of some significance at 
that time, wrote the following. And this is only the last paragraph. I 
intend to share this at greater length with my colleagues at a 
different time.
  ``The Minimum Wage,'' Edward Filene says in 1923.

       In this connection, I will call attention to a result which 
     cannot be ignored--to the man who has produced the best 
     commodity for the price of its kind in the world, produced in 
     quantities never before dreamed of

[[Page S7680]]

     and produced it so cheap that it can be sold in competition 
     with the cheap labor of Europe--so cheap, indeed, that no 
     country can make it to compete with him. I refer to Henry 
     Ford. He has produced twelve hundred thousand automobiles a 
     year--eight a minute--has financed his whole business from 
     the profits, and has become the richest man in the world. And 
     the minimum wage he pays is so high that if it were proposed 
     in Massachusetts, those who advocated it would be set down as 
     crazy. Even at his high minimum wage, he has been able to 
     employ the lame, the crippled, the blind of the community not 
     as a charity but at a profit. The statistics in his 
     autobiography covering these facts are amazing. The 
     demonstration of the possibility of the minimum wage speaks 
     louder than my words and I hope it may be borne in mind in 
     any decision of the minimum wage question.
  This was September 1923, by Edward Filene, a businessman of some 
significance, then. I wanted to share this, which I think is a 
wonderful piece about the minimum wage written some 70 years ago, but I 
think it is still relevant today with respect to the questions that we 
face.

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