of 65 cents, a maximum 8-hour day and 48-hour week, and required payment of overtime at time and a half the regular rate of pay after 40 hours. This order was invalidated by the courts on the ground that statutory procedural requirements had not been followed. As a result, the old orders were automatically reestablished.

Child labor.-In Washington, a minimum age of 14 is applicable in factories, workshops, and stores, except that children 12 or over may work at occupations not hazardous in the judgment of the superior court, upon satisfactory evidence that their employment is necessary for their own support or for assistance to their parents. The 14-yearage minimum applies also in a number of occupations specified by order of the Industrial Welfare Committee, including work in fresh fruit and vegetable packing industries and stock-room work in warehouses. Employment certificates (issued by the Women's Division of the Department of Labor and Industries, or its branch offices) are required up to 18 years of age, with a maximum 8-hour day and 6-day week, and a prohibition (with certain exemptions) of night work from 7 p.m. to 6 a. m., for minors under 18. A half-hour meal period is required. Agriculture and domestic service in private homes, however, are exempt from the hours of labor and certificates provisions, and are not covered by the minimum-age standard. Certain hazardous occupations are prohibited for minors under 18 or under 16. In addition, under the minimum wage law, the Industrial Welfare Committee is authorized to determine conditions of labor for minors under 18 and under this authority has prohibited a number of hazardous occupations for such minors.

Hours of work.-Washington has no hours law of general application. Hours of women are limited to 8 a day in any mechanical or mercantile establishment, laundry, hotel, or restaurant; employment in connection with perishable fruit, vegetables, or fish or shellfish is specifically exempt. Further limitations as to hours are established by orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission. A 60-hour week is applied to household or domestic workers, male or female, except in case of emergency; the daily hours of streetcar operators or conductors are limited to 10. Employees of common carriers engaged in the movement of trains may not remain on duty more than 16 consecutive hours, after which they must have a 10-hour rest period.

Industrial home work.-Washington does not regulate industrial home work.

Wage payment and wage collection.--The laws of Washington do not require payment of wages at a regular, specified period. Wages must be paid in lawful money or check, and workers must be paid immediately in case of discharge or quitting. The labor commissioner is authorized to take assignment of wages claims.

Private employment agencies.-Washington has no legislation for the regulation of private employment agencies. One section of the law relating to false statements makes any employment agent or broker who misrepresents matters in connection with the demand for labor, the conditions under which labor or service is to be performed, the duration of the work, or the wages, guilty of a misdemeanor.

Apprenticeship. The law which provided for a system whereby voluntarily made agreements of apprenticeship would be encouraged was enacted in 1941. It created an Apprenticeship Council within the Department of Labor and Industries, and provided for a Director of Apprenticeship. The council, with the consent of employee and employer groups, establishes standards for apprenticeship agreements, issues such rules and regulations as may be necessary, and carries on other activities in the interest of the program. The law establishes a minimum period of 4,000 hours of reasonably continuous employment as the basis for apprenticeship agreements. At the close of 1946, 152 programs-both single plant and group programs-were in operation and covered 1,650 establishments with 2,304 apprentices.

Industrial relations.-The Director of the Washington Department of Labor and Industries is authorized to use his offices in mediation and conciliation of labor disputes. In case of failure to settle a dispute or failure of the parties to agree to submit the matter to arbitration, the director may require the parties to file with him statements of the facts involved in the dispute, which he may publicize. The law rerestricts the power of the courts in the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes and forbids yellow dog contracts.

Unemployment compensation.-The Washington act provides for coverage of firms employing one or more workers at any time. A worker, in order to establish eligibility for the minimum weekly benefits of $10, must have earned $300 within a year's period. The maximum weekly benefits are $25.

736039-47--9

COOPERATION in some form has been found in the Pacific States for 75 years or more. During the depression of the 1930's, California and Washington were leading States as regards the self-help cooperatives formed among the unemployed. All these associations-except one or two in each State which became consumers' cooperatives-went out of existence as employment opportunities opened up for the members; while in operation, however, they were of great benefit to the workers who participated in them. Communal colonies, of which California and Washington also have had rather an unusual number, were one of the earliest forms of cooperative effort. One such association dated back to 1854. None had a very long life except one, formed in California, which later moved to Louisiana, where it maintained existence from 1914 to 1938.

All three States shared in the cooperative efforts of the early Granges (lodges of the Patrons of Husbandry) which were the chief pioneers of consumers' cooperation in this country. The consumers' cooperative movement of Oregon has continued to be mainly that of farmers (largely Grangers) and has its own wholesale association.

In California, the latter-day consumers' cooperatives have been largely those of the nonfarm groups; many have been appendages of, or offshoots from, other economic, social, or political movements, and have gone into eclipse when the latter declined. The present distributive cooperatives are rather small and mainly of urban or town origin, but there is a growing interest among farmers in consumers' cooperatives. The urban associations have a cooperative wholesale which is extending its services to the farmers' cooperatives.

The growth of urban cooperatives in Washington has been hampered by a history of previous failure, especially in the early 1920's. The present retail distributive movement is small, but may be accelerated by the formation recently of a new cooperative wholesale. The farmers' consumers' cooperatives in this State are still predominantly those of the Grange, and have their own wholesale association. NonGrange cooperatives are served by a cooperative wholesale whose trading territory covers Idaho and Oregon also. This association and the California wholesale are members of the nation-wide wholesale, National Cooperatives, Inc.

The Pacific States have an active student cooperative movement— mainly associations which provide low-cost board and rooms for their members. Several of the student cooperatives are large organizations operating a number of dwellings. Campus cooperatives of all three

1 Prepared by Florence E. Parker, of the Bureau's Labor Economics Staff.

States are affiliated with the Pacific Coast Student Cooperative League, an educational federation formed in 1939. Of the other types of service associations, housing cooperatives have had little development, but California and Oregon together account for over a third of the consumers' water-supply cooperatives in the United States. In Oregon and Washington the cooperative provision of medical and hospital care is being actively promoted, and of seven associations at least four were negotiating for or had acquired-hospital buildings, by the end of 1946; in California the associations were generally providing care on a contract basis with established agencies or were paying sickness benefits.

In sum, these three States, with 7.4 percent of the population of the United States, account for about 5 percent of the retail distributive associations, 4 percent of the electric-power and telephone associations, 12 percent of the service associations, and nearly 8 percent of the credit unions. The 693 credit unions in existence in these States at the end of 1945 (7.8 percent of the total) had 7.7 percent of the total creditunion membership in the United States and 7.7 percent of the assets.

The membership of the credit unions, students' cooperatives, and medical-care associations is drawn very largely from urban industrial workers, as is also the greater part of the consumers' distributive membership in California. In Oregon and Washington the distributive cooperatives are predominantly farmer and rural in character, although in the latter State consumers' cooperation is expanding in urban areas also.

Only recently has organized labor taken any active interest in the consumers' cooperative movement. Now, however, both AFL and CIO leaders are stressing the fact that union organization and cooperative organization are twin safeguards for the working man, and in a considerable number of places on the Pacific Coast, unionists are sponsoring new associations or giving their support to established cooperatives.

California

California has an interesting cooperative history, but one recording a rather unusual amount of failure. The chart of cooperative development shows rapidly rising and as abruptly falling lines, the peaks being separated by considerable periods of relative quiescence. With some exceptions, consumers' cooperative development in California has been generally among nonfarm people and characterized by small, weak associations that were insecurely rooted, with the result that their average existence has been short. The present movement see.ns to offer more promise than was true of its predecessors.

Local associations.-There were about 50 active nonfarm retail cooperatives in the State at the end of 1946, of which about 30 were

store associations and the rest buying clubs. Several new associations were in process of organization. There were also in operation about 20 farmers' cooperatives purchasing consumer goods as well as farm supplies.2 The Bureau of Labor Statistics has records of some 25 other associations whose present existence is doubtful, including buying clubs at 4 Farm Security Administration migratory labor camps. Of 72 existing cooperatives of various types for which the year of formation is known, 46 were less than 10 years old, 19 were between 10 and 20 years old, and 7 had been in operation over 20 years. Their average period of existence was 9.7 years. Although this indicates a gradually lengthening cooperative life, it takes no account of the many small ephemeral associations (mainly buying clubs) which have come and gone, dying practically in their infancy.

3

Records for 12 of the larger nonfarm store associations for 1945 3 show an average membership of 403 and an average annual business of $119,032. Of these, 1 association dates from 1923 and 1 from 1927; 6 were formed in the period 1935-40, and the others since 1940. For 4 farmers' purchasing associations handling consumer goods, the average membership was 1,072 and the average business $1,295,805. Of the other types of consumers' cooperatives, nearly a score were students' cooperatives running rooming and boarding houses. One of these, on the University of California campus in Berkeley, was operating 7 such houses, one of which (a large residential hotel accommodating 150 women) it bought in 1946. On the University of California campus in West Los Angeles, a similar organization operated several houses. In addition there were a dozen or more students' bookstores, most of which were only semicooperative in character.

Some half dozen housing associations have been organized, none of which had reached the stage of actual construction by the end of 1946. At least 2 had acquired land and 1 had added so many new members that it had to obtain an additional tract of 60 acres to accommodate them. Other consumers' cooperatives included a yearround recreation camp, and perhaps 10 associations supplying medical care on a prepayment, contract basis. During the war, the war relocation camps at Manzanar and Tulelake also had large cooperatives, which dissolved when the camps were closed. The camps for conscientious objectors also had buying clubs.

At the end of 1945, California had 444 credit unions with a combined membership of 171,391 and assets amounting to $26,986,463. Other cooperatives include a few rural electricity associations, a single burial-benefit association, and 2 cooperatives supplying water

? The many such associations handling producer goods only are not here considered; California, of course, leads the Nation in farmers' large-scale cooperative marketing associations.

3 No later data are as yet available.