(e) Minimum wage.

Full employment and full production may be achieved only by maintaining a level of consumer income far higher than that of the prewar period.  A high level of consumer income will maintain the market for the output of our mills, farms, and factories, which we have demonstrated during the war years that we can produce.  One of the basic steps which the Congress can take to establish a high level of consumer income is to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to raise substandard wages to a decent minimum and to extend similar protection to additional workers who are not covered by the present act.

Substandard wages are bad for business and for the farmer.  Substandard wages provide only a substandard market for the goods and services produced by American industry and agriculture.

At the present time the Fair Labor Standards Act prescribes a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour for those workers who are covered by the act.  The present minimum wage represents an annual income of about $800 to those continuously employed for 50 weeks—­clearly a wholly inadequate budget for an American family.  I am in full accord with the proposal now pending in the Congress that the statutory minimum be raised immediately to 65 cents an hour, with further increases to 70 cents after one year and to 75 cents after two years.  I also favor the proposal that the industry committee procedure be used to set rates higher than 65 cents per hour during the two-year interval before the 75-cent basic wage would otherwise become applicable.

The proposed minimum wage of 65 cents an hour would assure the worker an annual income of about $1,300 a year in steady employment.  This amount is clearly a modest goal.  After considering cost-of-living increases in recent years, it is little more than a 10-cent increase over the present legal minimum.  In fact, if any large number of workers earn less than this amount, we will find it impossible to maintain the levels of purchasing power needed to sustain the stable prosperity which we desire.  Raising the minimum to 75 cents an hour will provide the wage earner with an annual income of $1,500 if he is fully employed.

The proposed higher minimum wage levels are feasible without involving serious price adjustments or serious geographic dislocations.

Today about 20 percent of our manufacturing wage earners—­or about 2 million-earn less than 65 cents an hour.  Because wages in most industries have risen during the war, this is about the same as the proportion-17 percent—­who were earning less than 40 cents an hour in 1941.

I also recommend that minimum wage protection be extended to several groups of workers not now covered.  The need for a decent standard of living is by no means limited to those workers who happen to be covered by the act as it now stands.  It is particularly vital at this period of readjustment in the national economy and readjustment in employment of labor to extend minimum wage protection as far as possible.