162 
PRESIDENT S ADDRESS SECTION G. 
That would depend largely on the point at which the minimum 
is fixed. It would be possible (in a Parliament of lunatics) to pass a 
law fixing a minimum wage of £1,000 a year for coal-miners. But the 
effect of that would be to close every coal-mine. That wage would, 
in fact, be not a “living wage” but a starvation wage for miners, and 
would at the same time mean a coal famine for the country. 
Evidently, then, the fixing of a minimum above certain limits 
would be unmixed harm to all concerned. 
But what are those limits? And would the fixing of a minimum 
even a little above the lowest competition rate necessarily and in all 
cases do more harm than good? That is not so certain. 
Any such raising of wages in a particular trade must always have 
a tendency in the direction indicated by the extreme case ; that is, a 
tendency (1) to raise the price of the product to consumers, and (2) 
to diminish employment for workers in the trade— the same effects, 
in fact, which we have already noted as following a rise of wages 
obtained by a trade union. There is the same difficulty here in 
estimating the amount of loss that will be borne by each class and 
group concerned ; that depends on circumstances which differ in each 
case. If, after counting the cost, we should conclude that it is worth 
while to incur it for the sake of the end in view, there is nothing to 
prevent us from so doing. 
The reasons in favour of this course would presumably be strongest 
in the case of those employments in which the competition rate is 
lowest — in the unskilled work of the clothing trades, for instance. If 
it is on the ground of the needs of the workers that Government is 
called on to interfere, these are the workers whose unsatisfied needs 
are greatest ; and in lightening the distress of the worst-paid class of 
all we might have contidence that, whoever may be the loser by our 
action, it must be someone less badly off than they. In the case of 
more skilled and comparatively well-paid workers, on the other hand, 
the need for interference is less, while the danger is greater of inflict- 
ing a loss on others who may be poorer. Eor this reason it might be 
argued that our imaginary paternal Government, instead of drawing up 
a schedule of minimum wages for different grades of labour, would do 
better to fix a single minimum for all employments together— to say 
simply that no human being shall, within its jurisdiction, he employed 
at less than, say, 0d. an hour, or 24s. shillings a week, and leave all 
rates above the minimum to be settled by free bargaining. What 
would be the effect of that ? 
The wages of some people who make clothes, for instance, would 
be doubled or trebled ; and consequently some of those who buy 
clothes would have to give more for them, and to go without some 
clothes or other conveniences which they can now afford to buy. But 
the poorest would find compensation for this in the security that then* 
own wages, as long as they are employed, will not fall below a certain 
figure. 
But that is not all. What would become of all the people whose 
work may be worth 10s. a week aud upwards to their employers, but would 
not, even at the higher selling price that would result, be worth the mini- 
mum wave of 24s. ? The demand for clothes would somewhat diminish 
(some people wearing their old clothes a little longer), and the least 
