Cost-of-living pay boosts are as important in 1955 employment contracts as were yellow-dog agreements in 1905. They even influence minimum wage laws. If Secretary of Labor James Mitchell wins congressional favor for his $.90 an hour minimum wage, the increase would just offset the inflation during the five years since $.75 became standard. In fact, booming prices have washed out every minimum wage gain since the original Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set wages at $.40 an hour.

During this 17-year era, when union men have collected their share of the economy's expanding production, the 1.3 million minimum-wage workers have gained nothing from industrial progress. Only wage hikes that would carry the wage floor above $.90 an hour, such as Senator Lehman's proposal of $1.25, would give these workers a share in the new wealth their labor has helped produce.

In the present minimum wage legislation, however, exceptions ridicule the rule. Exemptions perforate Fair Labor Standards, accurately reflecting the strength of America's employer lobbies. for several million workers--laundrymen, clam diggers, tailors, delivery truck drivers--minimum wages do not exist. Although the Lehman proposal covers chain-store workers for the first time, it continues the exclusion of important groups, among them farm laborers.

The unbelievable squalor of farm workers blights rural areas in a broad sweep from the Central Valley of California into the Deep South. While prosperous cotton farmers collect subsidies on their surplus fibre, they pay a wages must include these exempted workers, if their lofty statements have any foundation in principle. And with exemptions erased, Congress should vote wage floors that reflect the progress, rather than the inflation, of the national economy.