Section G, 
ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND AGRICULTURE. 
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, 
PROFESSOR W. SCOTT, M.A. 
ON FIXING A MINIMUM WAGE. 
I have first to express my regret that the chair of this section is 
not occupied, as was at first arranged, by His Honour Chief Justice 
Way. As he has been detained by duties of another kind, we are 
deprived of the privilege of hearing an address from him ; and I have 
somewhat reluctantly accepted the invitation of the committee to take 
the place which he would have more worthily filled. 
The subject on which I propose to speak is one of which we have 
heard something lately in the region of practical politics, and are 
likely to hear more— the question of fixing a minimum wa»e. What 
guidance has economic science to give upon this matter ? ° 
The earlier . economists, when they sought to bring their theory 
to bear on practical politics, were, T suppose, aiming at ends essentially 
the same as those which most of us still think desirable, and had in 
view the promotion of the most satisfactory human life. But, looking 
at the industrial world mainly (though not entirely) from the point of 
view of the ‘‘ business man,” they answered the' question “ What is 
it best to do ?” (with some limitations and exceptions, which their 
careless critics often omit to notice) by the general solution “ laissez 
faire.” Let Government, they said, restrict itself to the task of 
preventing any man from taking goods or services from any other man 
without that other’s consent, and give him all possiblo facilities for 
taking them on any terms to which that other docs consent — in other 
words, let the prices of all goods and services be settled by free 
bargaining; and the result will be the best attainable. 
This view was stated in impressive words by Goldwin Smith, in an 
inaugural lecture delivered at Oxford some thirty-five years ago.’ 
“The laws of the production and distribution of wealth,” he says 
—meaning the laws of those processes as carried on by free bargain- 
ing — “are not the laws of duty and affection ; but they are the most 
beautiful and wonderful of the natural laws of God. * * Silently, 
surely, without any man’s taking thought, if human folly will only 
refrain from hindering them , they gather, store, dispense, husband, if 
need be, against scarcity, the wealth of the great community of nations. 
They take from the consumer * * the wages of the producer, * * 
his just wages ; and they distribute those wages among the thousand or 
