rict concerned; that it should consist of representatives of
employers and employed in equal proportions, with an impartial
chairman; and that it should have the widest possible discretion to
fix rates of remuneration. If Wages Boards were established, as the
Bill proposed, they would simply do for sweated trades what is already
constantly being done in organised trades, with no doubt one important
difference, that the decisions of these Boards would be enforceable by
law. Now that no doubt may seem to many of you a drastic proposition.
But I would strongly recommend any one interested in the subject to
study a recently-published Blue-book, one of the most interesting I
have ever read, which contains the evidence given before the House of
Commons Committee on Home Work. That Blue-book throws floods of light
on the conditions which have led to the proposal of Wages Boards, on
the way in which these Boards would be likely to work, and on the
results of the operation of such Boards in the Colony of Victoria,
where they have existed for more than ten years, and now apply to more
than forty industries. The perusal of that evidence would, I feel
sure, remove some at least of the most obvious objections to this
proposed remedy for sweating.

Many people look askance, and justly look askance, at the interference
of the State in anything so complicated and technical as a schedule of
wages for any particular industry. But the point to bear in mind is
this, that the wages, which under this proposal would be enforceable
by law, would be wages that had been fixed for a particular industry
in a particular district by persons intimately cognisant with all the
circumstances, and, more than that, by persons having the deepest
common interest to avoid anything which could injure the industry. The
rates of remuneration so arrived at would be based on the
consideration of what the employers could afford to pay and yet retain
such a reasonable rate of profit as would lead to their remaining in
the industry. Such a regulation of wages would be as great a
protection to the best employers against the cut-throat competition of
unscrupulous rivals as it would be to the workers against being
compelled to sell their labour for less than its value. There is
plenty of evidence that the regulation of wages would be welcomed by
many employers. And as for the fear sometimes expressed, that it would
injure the weakest and least efficient workers, becaus