An increase of wages then is the primary condition of any real
improvement in the lives of the sweated workers. So the point is this.
Can we do anything by law to screw up the remuneration of the
worst-paid workers to the minimum necessary for tolerable human
existence? I know that many people think it impossible, but my answer
is that the fixing of a limit below which wages shall not fall is
already not the exception but the rule in this country. That may seem
a rather startling statement, but I believe I can prove it. Take the
case of the State, the greatest of all employers. The State does not
allow the rates of pay even of its humblest employés to be decided by
the scramble for employment. The State cannot afford, nor can any
great municipality afford, to pay wages on which it is obviously
impossible to live. There would be an immediate outcry. Here then you
have a case of vast extent in which a downward limit of wages is fixed
by public opinion. Take, again, any of the great staple industries of
the country, the cotton industry, the iron and steel industry, and
many others. In the case of these industries rates of remuneration are
fixed in innumerable instances by agreement between the whole body of
employers in a particular trade and district on the one hand and the
whole body of employés on the other. The result is to exclude
unregulated competition and to secure the same wages for the same
work. No doubt there is an element--and this is a point of great
importance--which enters into the determination of wages in these
organised trades, but which does not enter in the same degree into the
determination of the salaries paid by the State. That element is the
consideration of what the employers can afford to pay. This question
is constantly being threshed out between them and the workpeople,
with resulting agreements. The number of such agreements is very
large, and the provisions contained in them often regulate the rate of