sentient, things. Let the House think of these sweated
trades as patients in a hospital ward. Each case must be studied and
treated entirely by itself. No general rule can be applied. There is
no regulation dose which will cure them all. You cannot effect quicker
cures by giving larger doses. Different medicines, different diets,
different operations are required for each; and consideration,
encouragement, nursing, personal effort are necessary for all. Great
flexibility and variety of procedure, and a wide discretionary power,
entrusted to earnest and competent people, must characterise any
attempt to legislate on this subject.

The central principle of this Bill is the establishment of Trade
Boards, which will be charged with the duty of fixing a minimum wage.
I am very anxious to give these Trade Boards the utmost possible
substance and recognition. They will be formed on the principle of
equality of representation for employers and employed, with a skilled
official chairman or nucleus. That is the principle I have adopted in
the new Arbitration Court recently established. That is the principle
which will govern the system of Labour Exchanges, shortly to be
introduced, and other measures which may come to be associated with
Labour Exchanges, and I think it is an excellent principle.

At the same time, do not let us suppose that these Trade Boards will,
in the first instance, be very strong or representative bodies. They
are to be formed in trades mainly worked by women, where no
organisation has ever yet taken root, where there are as yet no means
of finding and focusing an effective trade opinion. Where possible,
they will be partly elective; in many cases they will, I expect, have
to begin by being almost entirely nominated. In some cases it will be
upon the official members alone that the main burden will fall. I
could not ask the House to confer upon bodies of this nebulous
character, not representative, not elective in any democratic sense,
responsible not to constituents, nor to a public department, nor to
Parliament itself in any way, the absolute and final power of
enforcing by the whole apparatus of the law any decision, whether wise
or foolish, upon wage questions to which they may come by the
narrowest majority. The work which we entrust to them wholly and
finally is sufficiently difficult and important. We direct them by
this Bill to prescribe minimum rates of wages. They are to find the
minimum rate. F