erman legislation on some of these questions has even
anticipated us. In other countries legislation is pending on
principles not dissimilar from those which we advocate. In Bavaria and
Baden the latest reports are to the effect that the official
Government Reports of Inquiries recommend almost the same and in some
cases stronger provisions than those to which we now ask the assent of
the House of Commons. This may be said in a different form of Austria.
All this movement which is going on throughout Europe, and which is so
pregnant with good, will be powerfully stimulated by our action in
this country, and that stimulus will not only facilitate our work by
removing the argument which causes hon. gentlemen opposite anxiety,
but it will also, I think, redound to the credit of this country that
it took a leading and prominent position in what is a noble and
benignant work.

I was delighted to hear the Leader of the Opposition say, in a concise
and cogent sentence, that he could easily conceive many sweated trades
in which the wages of the workers could be substantially raised
without any other change except a diminution of price. Sir, the wages
of a sweated worker bear no accurate relation to the ultimate price.
Sometimes they vary in the same places for the same work done at the
same time. And sometimes the worst sweating forms a part of the
production of articles of luxury sold at the very highest price. We
believe further, however, that decent conditions make for industrial
efficiency and increase rather than diminish competitive power.
"General low wages," said Mill, "never caused any country to undersell
its rivals; nor did general high wages ever hinder it." The employers
who now pay the best wages in these sweated trades maintain themselves
not only against the comparatively small element of foreign
competition in these trades, but against what is a far more formidable
competition for this purpose--the competition of those employers who
habitually undercut them by the worst processes of sweating. I cannot
believe that the process of raising the degenerate and parasitical
portion of these trades up to the level of the most efficient branches
of the trade, if it is conducted by those conversant with the
conditions of the trade and interested in it, will necessarily result
in an increase of the price of the ultimate product. It may, even as
the right hon. gentleman has said, sensibly diminish it through better
method