of wages boards composed of representatives of workers and employers, has been attempted, organization has been encouraged, and this plan of legalized collective bargaining has been applied to trade after trade.  In Victoria, Australia, the birthplace of the system, and the state where it has been longest in force, and more fully developed than anywhere else, the number of trades covered has grown in less than twenty years from the four experimental trades of shoemaking, baking, various departments of the clothing trades and furniture-making to 141 occupations, including such varied employments as engravers, plumbers, miners and clerical workers.

It is hardly necessary to say that minimum wages boards in Australia control the wages of men as well as of women.  This question, however, does not enter into practical labor statesmanship in the United States today, but the minimum wage for women is a very live issue, and its introduction in state after state is supported by the working-women, both speaking as individuals and through their organizations.

The objections of employers to any regulation of wages is partly economic, as they fear injury to trade, a fear not sustained by Australian experience, or by the experience of employers in trades in this country, in which wages have been raised and are largely controlled by strong labor organizations.  In especial, employers object to an unequal burden imposed upon the state or states first experimenting with wages boards.  This has no more validity than a similar objection raised against any and all interference between employer and employe, whether it be limitation of hours, workmen’s compensation acts or any other industrial legislation.  It is only that another adjustment has to be made, one of the many that any trade and any employer has always to be making to suit slightly changing circumstances.  And often the adjustment is much less, and the advantage to the employer arising from having more efficient and contented employes greater than anticipated.  Competition is then not for the cheapest worker, but for the most efficient.

Public responsibility for social and economic justice is likely to be quickened and maintained by the very existence of these permanent boards created not so much to remedy acute evils as to establish in the industry conditions more nearly equitable.

It has ever been found that in regard to ordinary factory legislation, organized employes were the best inspectors to see that the law was enforced.  This principle holds good in even a more marked degree, where the representatives of the workers have themselves a say in the decision, as is the case during the long sessions of a wages board, where all who take part in the discussions and in the final agreement are experts in the trade, and intimately acquainted with the practical details of the industry.