could apply in grading wages.

For these reasons the movement for compulsory arbitration has never in
this country advanced very far. We have an Industrial Court which can
investigate a dispute, find a solution which commends itself as
reasonable, and publish its finding, but without any power of
enforcement. The movement has for the present stuck there, and is likely
to take a long time to get further. Yet every one recognises the damage
inflicted by industrial disputes, and would admit in the abstract the
desirability of a more rational method of settlement than that of
pitting combination against combination. Such a method may, I would
suggest, grow naturally out of the system which has been devised for the
protection of unskilled and unorganised workers, of which a brief
account may now be given.


THE ESTABLISHMENT OF TRADE BOARDS

Utilising experience gained in Australia, Parliament in 1909 passed an
Act empowering the Board of Trade (now the Ministry of Labour) to
establish a Trade Board in any case where the rate of wages prevailing
in any branch was "exceptionally low as compared with that in other
employments." The Board consisted of a number of persons selected by the
Minister as representatives of employers, an equal number as
representatives of the workers, with a chairman and generally two
colleagues not associated with the trade, and known as the Appointed
Members. These three members hold a kind of casting vote, and can in
general secure a decision if the sides disagree.

No instruction was given in the statute as to the principles on which