president’s ADDRESS — SECTION G. 
155 
In New South Wales, the Department of Public Works has 
recently taken a similar course. In a minute issued by the Minister 
in 1894 it is ordered, “ with the view of preventing the objectionable 
practice known as ‘sweating’ in Grovernment contracts,” that “in 
future in all contracts for works [above a certain sum] it may be 
provided that the contractor shall pay each tradesman and labourer 
he employs at a rate of wages not less than that current at the time of 
tendering , such current rate of wages to be that 'paid for the same 
description of work by the best employers in the city or town nearest 
to the work tendered for.” 
Accordingly, a schedule of minimum wages has been drawn up 
for insertion in all contracts under the Department, subject to altera- 
tion from time to time. Where work is sublet, the sub-contractor is 
to be bound by the same conditions. 
Now, what effect is to be expected from this policy ? In the 
first place it is to be observed that the method of fixing the minimum 
wages is different in the two cases. The London County Council 
leaves it to the trades unions to fix the rates (a proposed amendment 
that the rates and conditions should be those agreed on for the time 
being between employers and trade unions was rejected by the 
Council). The New South Wales Department of Public Works, on 
the other hand, adopts the rates found to be paid in practice “by the 
best employers.” Of the two, the latter is surely the better course. 
There is much force in the objection urged by Sir T. Farrer against 
the former, that the Council, by adopting it, has delegated the important 
task of fixing the minimum to certain private corporations, the interests 
of whose members may not coincide with those of the community, 
which it is the business of a governing body to guard ; and that there 
would be nothing to prevent the employees of the Council from 
organising themselves into a separate union for the purpose of 
dictating the terms of their own employment. 
But apart from these details, what effects are to be expected 
from any such fixing of a minimum P 
In cases where the contractors already pay the wages specified, it 
will produce no effect at all. And there may be practical difficulties 
in the way of making the regulation effective in any case. First, the 
difficulty of settling the minimum judiciously — a difficulty which is 
not unlikely to be increased by parliamentary interference ; and, 
secondly, the difficulty of preventing evasions. It has been suggested, 
for instance, that a contractor who needs the services of boiler- 
makers might announce that he intends to engage only general 
labourers, in which case boiler-makers out of work might be driven 
to work for him at the lower wage fixed for such labourers ; or that he 
might employ workmen in the character and at the pay of apprentices. 
Whether these and other difficulties can be overcome is a 
question that experience only can answer. But assuming that they 
can be overcome, and that contractors are in some cases compelled to 
pay higher wages than they would otherwise pay, who will gain and 
who will lose by it? 
The wages of certain exceptionally low-paid workers will be 
levelled up to the average in their trade ; “ sweating” will be restricted. 
On the other hand, it may be said that the less efficient among them — 
