and reacting upon the other.  A mere increase of the penal provisions and inspection would be a poor compensation for the active support of a powerful section within the trade itself.  It is upon the probationary period that we rely to enable us to rally to the Trade Board and to its minimum wage the best employers in the trade.  In most instances 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 which 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 investigators have addressed themselves.

For the enforcement of this Act, and for the prevention of evasion and collusion, I rely upon the factory inspectors, who will report anything that has come to their notice on their rounds and who will make themselves a channel for complaints.  I rely still more upon the special peripatetic inspectors and investigators who will be appointed under the Act by the Board of Trade, who will have to conduct prosecutions under the Act, and who will devote all their time to the purposes of the Act.  These officers will incidentally clothe the Trade Boards with real authority, once the rate has been enforced, in that they will be responsible to the Trade Board, and not to some powerful Department of Government external to the Trade Board itself.  I rely further upon the support of the members of the Trade Boards themselves, who will act as watch-dogs and propagandists.  I rely upon the driving power of publicity and of public opinion.  But most of all I put my faith in the practical effect of a powerful band of employers, perhaps a majority, who, whether from high motives or self-interest, or from a combination of the two—­they are not necessarily incompatible ideas—­will form a vigilant and instructed police, knowing every turn and twist of the trade, and who will labour constantly to protect themselves from being undercut by the illegal competition of unscrupulous rivals.

An investigator in the East End of London writes: 

“The people who can check evasion are the large firms.  Their travellers form a magnificent body of inspectors, who ought to see that the Act is enforced.  The checking of evasion will have to be carried out, not so much by visiting workshops and home-workers as by hearing where cheap, low-class goods are coming into the market, and tracing the goods back to the contractors who made them.”

There are solid reasons on which we on this side of the House who are Free Traders rely with confidence, when we associate ourselves with this class of legislation.  First of all, we must not imagine that this is the only European country which has taken steps to deal with sweating.  The first exhibition of sweated products was held in Berlin, and it was from that exhibition that the idea was obtained of holding that most valuable series of exhibitions throughout this