e children." He looks
forward "to the universal establishment of the _minimum standards_ of
life and labor, and their progressive elevation as the increasing
energies of production may permit."[59]

Mr. Churchill rejects the supposition that the government intends to
stop with the extension of the eight-hour law to miners. "I welcome and
support this measure, not only for its own sake," he said, "but more
because it is, I believe, simply the precursor of the general movement
which is in progress, all over the world, and in other industries
besides this, towards reconciling the conditions of labor with the
well-ascertained laws of science and health."[60]

It might be supposed that this measure would prove costly to employers,
but this is only a short-sighted view. In the first place, working for
less hours, the miners will produce somewhat more per hour, but an even
more important ultimate benefit comes from the fact that the most
experienced miners, those who are most profitable, being subject to less
overstrain, will have a longer working life.

Another measure already enacted towards establishing "a national
minimum" applies to the wages in ready-made tailoring and some less
important industries, to which shirt-waist making is soon to be added.
These are known as the "sweated" trades, "where the feebleness and
ignorance of the workers and their isolation from each other render them
an easy prey to the tyranny of bad masters and middlemen one step above
them upon the lowest rungs of the ladder, and themselves held in the
grip of the same relentless forces,"--where "you have a condition not of
progress but of progressive degeneration." Mr. Churchill asked
Parliament to regard these industries as "sick and diseased," and "to
deal with them in exactly the same mood and temper as we should deal
with sick people," and accordingly boards were established for the
purpose of setting up a minimum wage.[61]

But if employers are forced to pay higher wages, it may be thought that
they will lose from the law. This Mr. Churchill effectively denies.

"In most instances," he says, "the best employers in the trade are
already paying wages equal or superior to the probable minimum
which the Trade Board will establish. The inquiries I have set on
foot in the various trades scheduled have brought to me most
satisfactory assurances from nearly all the employers to whom my
investigations have addressed