s the minimum wage, the objection raised by certain among the
conservative labor leaders has been that it will retard organization
and check independence of spirit. This reasoning seems quite academic,
in view of the fact that it is the most oppressed workers who are
usually the least able and willing to assert themselves. Give them
shorter hours or better wages, and they will soon be pleading for
still shorter hours and yet higher wages. Wherever the regulation
of wages, through that most democratic method, that 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 em