PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION G. 
157 
satisfy the needs of a mason, it is too little for any other labourer also. 
In fact, the policy of the New South Wales Works Department, as 
well as that of the London County Council, is to take account of skill 
as well as needs in fixing the minimum. It might be easier to defend 
a policy which should fix the minimum on the ground of needs alone — 
one minimum for all — and leave shill to obtain for itself such better 
terms as it can get by free bargaining. 
But if the minimum is to be fixed on the basis of needs , there are 
some occupations in which interference with free bargaining is more 
urgently called for than those included in the New South Wales 
Works Department schedule. The worst-paid workers, both in 
Australia and in England, are probably those persons — women 
especially — employed in the lower grades of the clothing trade. It is 
in that trade that “sweating” is most prevalent — that is, the employ- 
ment of unskilled and unorganised workers at low rates of pay and 
under unwholesome conditions. 
Of private employment in this trade I will not now speak; but 
the condition of some of those employed in Government clothing 
contracts certainly leaves much to be desired. A paper recently read 
by Miss Gordon before the Australian Economic Association in Sydney, 
and based on careful investigation, throws some light on this. She says 
that “ contracts for the making of the uniforms of the military, police, 
railway and tramway men, are let by tender to contractors, who a ppear 
to have nothing whatever to do with the making. These contractors 
sublet the work to another contractor, who again sublets it to several 
Jew sweaters. These last take a room or a dwelling-house in the 
neighbourhood of Surrey Hills, hire a couple of low-class journey- 
men tailors, a cutter, and a presser, and six or eight girls. # ^ * 
The great bulk of the work is done in the workers’ homes. The 
prices paid would indicate that the women would have to work 
hard and long to obtain a sum sufficient to live upon. These tailors 
and sweaters pay nothing to their apprentices, giving a trifling rate 
of wages to the improvers, sometimes offering only 2s. fid. to 5s. a 
week after working two years ; if they ask for more they are turned 
adrift, and their places taken by beginners at no wages at all ; 
sometimes a specially good worker in some particular branch is 
i kept at 10s. a week.” 
As to the rates paid for piece-work in this business, 1 am told on 
| good authority that an unusually quick and highly skilled machine- 
worker can make 4|d. an hour, or 3s. 2d. in a day of eight hours, in 
1 some Government clothing contracts, and 8Jd. an hour or 5s. lOd. in 
j a day of eight hours, in others; from which something has to be 
deducted for wear and tear of the machine. The average worker 
I makes less than this, and some, no doubt, very much less. The wages 
have of late been steadily decreasing, and are likely to decrease 
further. 
It is difficult to get at the facts ; but I think I am not wrong in 
saying that the rate of pay for work under these contracts falls in 
most cases below the not very generous limit of fid. an hour, and in 
many cases far below it. 
It is not the contractor or the sub-contractor that is to blame for 
these low wages. The practice being to accept the lowest tender, 
those only can obtain the contracts who cut down wages to the lowest 
