ECONOMICS 205 



which the patent law exacts from inventors. 5 The 

 remedy took time to obtain, but the Association 

 was instrumental in obtaining it. In 1879 a com- 

 mittee on the Patent Law supported the Government 

 bill of that year, and proposed certain amendments, 

 which might have been adopted ; but the bill failed 

 to pass. In 1882 and 1883 Sir John Lubbock 

 (president of the Association in 1881) introduced a 

 bill on behalf of the Society of Arts that had been 

 approved by our committee. In 1883 a Government 

 bill was passed : it did not satisfy the views of the 

 Association, but an amending bill was passed in 1885. 

 The work of the Association in this connexion 

 represents one of the most powerful public acts in 

 its history. 



Levi obtained a committee on wages and their 

 application in 1880, and his estimates of the income 

 of the people and their ' net or national,' ' gross or 

 personal ' expenditure, furnished in the reports of 

 1881-2, are of retrospective interest. In 1885 a com- 

 mittee was appointed to consider sliding scales and 

 wages lists, and in 1887 it reported on the regulation 

 of wages by means of lists in the cotton industry. 

 It approved the principles of these lists, but con- 

 cluded that they had not succeeded in removing all 

 probability of industrial disputes. In view of the 

 comparisons of prices with those of July 1914, which 

 have become familiar to us in more recent years, it is 

 of some interest to observe that in 1890 a committee 

 of the Economics Section proposed the adoption of 

 an official index number for the prices of commodi- 

 ties. In 1900 a committee on the economic effect of 

 legislation regulating women's labour was appointed 

 at the instance of the late Mrs. Ramsay Macdonald, 



