This proposal has taken practical form in a Bill presented to the
House of Commons last session. Whether the measure reached its second
reading or not I do not know. It was a Bill for the establishment of
Wages Boards in certain industries employing great numbers of
workpeople, such as tailoring, shirtmaking, and so on. The industries
selected were those in which the employés, though numerous, are
hopelessly disorganised and unable to make a bargain for themselves.
And the Bill provided that where any six persons, whether masters or
employés, applied to the Home Secretary for the establishment of a
Wages Board, such a Board should be created in the particular industry
and district concerned; that it should consist of representatives of
employers and employed in equal proportions, with an impartial
chairman; and that it should have the widest possible discretion to
fix rates of remuneration. If Wages Boards were established, as the
Bill proposed, they would simply do for sweated trades what is already
constantly being done in organised trades, with no doubt one important
difference, that the decisions of these Boards would be enforceable by
law. Now that no doubt may seem to many of you a drastic proposition.
But I would strongly recommend any one interested in the subject to
study a recently-published Blue-book, one of the most interesting I
have ever read, which contains the evidence given before the House of
Commons Committee on Home Work. That Blue-book throws floods of light
on the conditions which have led to the proposal of Wages Boards, on
the way in which these Boards would be likely to work, and on the
results of the operation of such Boards in the Colony of Victoria,
where they have existed for more than ten years, and now apply to more
than forty industries. The perusal of that evidence would, I feel
sure, remove some at least of the most obvious objections to this
proposed remedy for sweating.