TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 473 
TIl. Some signs of the times :— 
(a) The course of training for Social work. (b) The institution of Barnett 
House. (c) The demand for a Diploma in Commerce. 
IV. New influences from outside or below :— 
(a) Ruskin College. (b) University tutorial classes. (c) Undergraduate 
the University Fabian Society and the University Co-operative 
Store. 
V. The situation and prospect. 
The proper place of economics in the Oxford curriculum as an organic part 
of a school of political, social, and economic studies.—The strategic opportunity. 
Hopes and fears. The reform of economics at Oxford part of the wider 
problem of University reform. 
5. The Statistical and Judicial Determination of the Minimum Wage in 
Australia. By Grratp Licutroot, M.A., F.S.S. 
The object of this paper was to examine the principles which have been 
evolved in the course of Australian experience in the determination of the 
minimum wage under the Wages Board and Arbitration Court systems, and to 
outline the methods adopted for investigating statistically variations in the cost 
and standards of living in the Commonwealth. The Wages Board system was 
first adopted in Victoria in 1896, and was introduced later in South Australia 
(1900), Queensland (1908), and Tasmania (1910). In New South Wales and 
Western Australia, as well as in the Commonwealth (so far as concerns ‘ disputes 
extending beyond the limits of any one State’), minimum wages are fixed under 
judicial systems by Industrial Arbitration Courts. 
In most of the Acts under which the various systems have been established 
there is an absence of definition of the fundamental conception of the living 
wage, with the result that the basis on which the minimum should be fixed has 
been evolved by the tribunals themselves. In recent South Australian and 
Western Australian Acts, however, the minimum rate is defined and must be 
sufficient to secure a ‘ living wage’ to the worker. 
The work of the Wages Boards is conducted in an informal manner, and is 
of the nature of a round-table conference. The boards do not follow any 
common process in arriving at their determinations, and hence no definite prin- 
ciples can be found on which the minimum wage is fixed. Under the judicial 
method of compulsory arbitration, however, certain broad principles have been 
developed. In the early years of the work of the Courts the Judges apparently 
refrained from making any clear or definite statement as to the principles which 
they intended to follow, and it was not until 1905 that the duty of the Court 
to provide a living wage was first recognised in positive terms by Mr. Justice 
Heydon, President of the New South Wales State Arbitration Court. 
The next important pronouncement on the subject was made in 1907 by Mr. 
Justice Higgins, President of the Federal Arbitration Court, who, in ‘the 
harvester case,’ first enunciated the principles which have been consistently 
followed by that Court. The judgment in that case has also been frequently - 
cited and followed by State industrial tribunals. 
In the course of the paper the development of the principles on which the 
living wages for unskilled labour is based was traced, with special reference to 
other controlling factors, such as the ability of an industry to bear the increased 
cost due to a rise in wages, inter-State competition, the deduction of an amount 
equivalent to the value of board and lodging, allowance for ‘tips’ and 
gratuities, the question of ‘equal pay for equal work’ as between the sexes, 
and differential rates of wages due to local differences in cost of living, climatic 
conditions, &c. In fixing the minimum wage for skilled workers the practice 
of first ascertaining the basic wage for unskilled labour and then applying the 
existing differences between unskilled labour and the various grades of skilled 
labour has been generally adopted. 
During the last few years the subject of cost of living has become acute in 
connection with the question of the minimum wage, but owing to the absence 
of ‘ precise, cogent, detailed evidence’ the President of the Federal Court for 
some years declined to give quantitative expression to the increased cost of 
