The chief function of these boards would be to translate the weekly minimum wage into piecework rates: that is to say to determine the number of articles to be made or the quantity of work to be done in an hour. This task implicitly involves the fixing of the length of the normal working week. There would be little difficulty in the case of factories and workshops where the number of hours is already fixed at 56 per week, but in domestic workshops it is impossible to regulate hours of labor. Domestic workshops must be placed on an equality with factories and workshops, unless we wish to put a premium on sweating; and the only way to do this is to enact that the boards shail convert the legal weekly wage into piece rates on the basis that for all classes of factories and workshops 56 hours constitute a normal week. Whatever the minimum wage may be one-fifty-sixth of it will be an hour's pay, and what the boards will have to do is to fix the number of articles to be made in an hour.

We might very well go a little further in imitation of Victorian precedents by making the rates for homework higher than those paid for work done in the employer's workrooms, and thus compensate the homeworker for the cost of rent, light, etc. Incidentally this would help to drive work out of the home into the workshop. In addition, the boards would deal with the proportion of children and young persons that might be employed, and the minimum wages. to be paid to them, and with any other question relating to hours of labor and to wages arising through the operations of the Act and not already covered implicitly or explicitly by other industrial legislation.

These determinations-to use the term adopted in Victoria-of the trade boards would be sent to the Labor Department for ratification. Before ratification they would be checked by the Department for the purpose of amending any too great local variations in working hours, piecework rates or other details, and to ensure the greatest possible uniformity in the minimum conditions of any widely distributed trade. The Labor Department should also be empowered, in conjunction with the local authority, to assist in drawing up a determination when a trade board found it impossible to arrive at an agreement. When ratified by the Labor Department the determinations should have the force of law, and any employer not complying with their provisions should be liable to a heavy fine or imprisonment. Where collusion between employer and employed was discovered both parties should be punished proportionately. Inspectors would have the power to inspect the wages books of employers, and to institute proceedings under direction of the local authorities for any breaches, or suspected breaches, of the Act. Homework employers must now keep registers of the names and addresses of persons so employed and would further be compelled to take receipts for wages, showing the work done and the rate paid. The difficulties of enforcing a minimum wage for homework are certainly formidable; but they appear to have been surmounted in Australasia. With the occupation of those engaged as shop assistants, waiters, waitresses, and the like, or as domestic servants, the complications of

a wage paid partly in cash and partly in food and sleeping accommodation, and sometimes clothing, will be troublesome. But here, as in many other spheres of employment, much of the apparent difficulty in fixing a minimum wage arises from the present lack of systematization. By means of the trade boards it should be possible to evolve improved conditions for labor even out of the chaos of sweating in cheap retail drapery, or the over-worked life of the general slave to suburban snobbery or boarding-house brutality.

The Minimum Wage Law in Operation.

It will have been noticed that the proposed law is not intended to be of immediate universal application. The Act would have to be applied gradually but systematically. The procedure would be as follows: Directly the minimum of real wages had been fixed by the Special Commission, or the Labor Department, the county council, borough council, or urban district council, as the case might be, would transform this wage into a local cash equivalent. It would then appoint its inspectors, who would enquire into the conditions of the local industries. This enquiry would not take up much time, as sweated industries are always well known. Taking the trades with the worst conditions first, the local authority, acting on the information and advice of its inspectors, would appoint trade boards in these occupations. This might be called scheduling a trade under the Minimum Wage Act. Directly the boards were appointed, the local authority would inform the Labor Department of the fact. The Labor Department would send the information to all other local authorities, instructing them at the same time to take immediate steps for the formation of trade boards in these scheduled trades, if any existed in their districts. This would systematize and hasten the work of arriving at determinations applying to the whole country. Directly such a determination had been made, public notification would be given of the date when it would come into operation. It would be necessary to arrive at determinations for the whole area of an industry before action was taken for enforcement, otherwise those portions of the country in which local authorities neglected or delayed their work might for a time undersell districts in which local authorities were active and conscientious. In cases of undue delay or culpable negligence on the part of any local authorities, the Labor Department should have the power to apply to their areas the determinations already made by other local authorities.

Proceeding in this way every trade could be brought under the operations of the Act. In practice there might be no necessity for the institution of trade boards in some industries owing to the prevalence of satisfactory conditions; and these industries might not therefore be scheduled. Still in connection with nearly every trade or group of trades there is a fringe of so-called unskilled labor which is not receiving sufficient for the maintenance of healthy existence. Hence it is likely that few occupations would remain outside the scope of the Act were it efficiently administered.

Probable Effects of the Law.

As there will be local variations in the minimum cash wage owing chiefly to variations in rent there will be an increasing tendency for industries-so far as greater cost in wages is not compensated by market advantage, or proximity to sources of raw material-to move from the high rent to the low rent districts, that is to say, from the large and crowded manufacturing cities to the small town or to the country. Migration of this kind, which is already going on, is to be welcomed for obvious reasons. Homework, under a strict administration of our Minimum Wage Law, would tend to become more expensive than that carried on in the factory, and this handicapping of domestic industry would be a great social advantage. The institution of the trade boards would bring to the weakest sections of the workers a sense of the power of organization and combination which, it is not too much to predict, would induce them to use the minimum wage as a stepping-stone to further improvements in industrial conditions. That there would be at first a great deal of friction aroused by the minute inspection, especially of wages books, required by the law, is highly probable. But it must be remembered that to-day many public bodies, in order to investigate charges of breach of contract in matters of wage payments, insist upon the right to examine the books of firms who carry out public work. The higher the standing of the firm the less trouble there is in exercising this right. It is certain that in England, as in Australia, when the first horror of the shock caused by State interference with the cash nexus is over, the better employers will heartily welcome the means of ridding themselves of the competition of those who employ parasitic labor.

As to the effect of the law upon our foreign trade, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb have shewn that the abolition of parasitic labor would not necessarily lead to a reduction in the volume of our export trade; and, moreover, that a sweated trade will not be lifted from its degraded position by a protective tariff on the products of a foreign, competing trade. But with the institution of a national minimum wage a new question arises, which is not altogether one of abstract economics. Under a Minimum Wage Law the manufacture of goods in England under sweated or parasitic conditions becomes unlawful, and by inference the sale of such goods ought to be made a breach of the law in the same sense as selling illicit whiskey. Therefore, it follows from a Minimum Wage Law that the importation of goods made under sweated conditions abroad must be prohibited. The difficulty of deciding what is the foreign equivalent of sweating, and the impossibility in many cases of tracing the foreign goods through all the processes of their manufacture, are obstacles to the complete enforcement of such regulations; but this is not a sufficient reason for abandoning the attempt.

The National Dividend Increased.

What is the number of persons who would immediately feel the effects of the enactment of a legal minimum wage? If we take Mr.

Rowntree's figures with regard to the primary poverty in York as fairly representative of the whole kingdom, we should have about five millions of people who are members of families that have incomes insufficient to maintain merely physical efficiency. This is the class that breeds the weak, the unfit, in a word the residuum. Many of its members, it is true, would not be capable of earning even the low minimum suggested by Mr. Rowntree. These would become the unemployable. To the others, the largest proportion, an increased wage would give the increased mental and physical vitality which are a nation's real capital. The manufacture of human wreckage by the process of semi-starvation would be in great part checked and controlled. Indirectly the classes above this lowest would benefit. There would be a gradual growth in the national dividend, arising from the greater power of production due to the increase of physical efficiency, and the share of each grade and each trade in the dividend would be increased accordingly. A Minimum Wage Law cannot cure the evils which arise from the foolish spending of incomes small or great, but it would act as a palliative of those evils which arise from the existence of incomes that are insufficient for the barest necessaries of life.

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