34^ ENTRENCHMENT OF INDUSTRY. 



directly- emplo_vs. The fact must imt be overlooked that, as manufacturing 

 enterprise developed, new demands would be made upon the labour 

 market. And the local market broadens by the increased wants of the 

 growing population. The employees in one class of factory become con- 

 sumers of the articles made in another class of factory. And the pros- 

 perity of the factories and of their employees naturally reacts upon the 

 activities of every branch of commercial and industrial life. 



The existence of a sufificiently wide market l)eino- demon- 

 strated, an enlightened industrial policy affording security for 

 capital would open up factories giving full employment to a 

 much larger jx)pulation ; the spending power of the nation would 

 be increased, and the foundations laid of a ]iermanently pros- 

 ]:)erous national life. 



Proceeding collaterally with the development of industries, 

 legislation requires to be enacted to secure to the worker the 

 full measure of reward for his work. National ])rosperity 

 means the prosperity of the people comprising the nation — not 

 the drones, but the workers — and any state of affairs that fails 

 to ])romote the essential welfare of the whole body of w'orkers 

 must be regarded as unsatisfactory. The old doctrine of the 

 greatest good to the greatest number must be extended to secure 

 the fullest opportunities of material })rogress for all who con- 

 tribute to the sum of the nation's wealth. The worker's inter- 

 ests must not be left unguarded. He also must be entrenched. 

 The whole trend of modern industrial legislation is an effort to 

 restrict the ]>ernicious operation of the old so-called immutable 

 laws of supply and demand venerated by the Free Traders, whose 

 cardinal principle is cheaj) labour as the basis of com|)etition. 

 As a writer has well said : — 



Unrestricted competition in industry nf the needy and heli)!ess pio- 

 duces a standard of animal, not liiiiiiaii life. 



The worker thus occupies very nmch the same position as 

 do industries under Free Trade — they are ground down to starva- 

 tion point. The case of the worker is admirably expressed by 

 Mr. Justice Higgins in the Australian .\rbitration Court. In 

 the course of his judgment in an indttstrial dispute he said: — 



The employer needs no court to enable iiini to reduce wages — he has 

 simply to refuse to give employment at wages which he thinks to be too 

 high. It ought to be frankly atlmitted that as a rule the economic position 

 of tlie employee is too weak for him to hold his own in the unequal con- 

 test. Me is unable to insist on a " fair thing." The ])ower of the employer 

 to withiiold l)read is a much more effective weapon than the power of the 

 employee to refuse to labour. Freedom of contract in such circumstances 

 is surely misnamed; it should rather lie called despotism in contract; ami 

 this Court is empowered to fix a minimum wage as a check on the despotic 

 power. The worker is in the same position in principle as Esau when he 

 surrendered his birthright for a square meal, or as a traveller wlien he had 

 to give up his money to a highwayman for the privilege f)f life. .Adnutting 

 all this, yet an employer often falls back on an economic theory as to the 

 law of demand and supplj' — a theory responsible for much industrial 

 friction, and at the root of many industrial disputes. He thinks that all 

 this regulation of wages is a nu'stake — a deliance of natural laws He 

 treats the so-called " law " as lieing, in matters of wages, etc.. more inexor- 

 able and inevitable in its play than even the law of gravitation — as not 

 being subject, as laws of nalnre ;ire, to ccnmter action, to control to 



