PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION G. 
163 
capable workers would be turned adrift. It would be useless for them 
to seek employment in other trades ; for if a labourer’s work is worth 
little in a trade to which he is accustomed, it would be worth still less 
in a new one. The effect, then, of a minimum regulation applying to 
all trades would be to exclude such people from employment altogether. 
Any such measure, therefore, must produce an increase of distress 
among the least skilled workers ; and if we want to avoid that, 
Government must again interfere to relieve them at the cost of the 
richer taxpayers. One way of doing so would be to undertake to 
provide public employment at the minimum wage for all who want to 
work, and arc not absorbed by private employments —a step which 
many people are ready to demand. To take that course would indeed 
in itself be equivalent to fixing a minimum wage; for private 
employers who offered less than Government pays would find no 
workers ; and this might be a simpler and easier way of producing the 
effect intended than the direct enactment of a minimum by law. 
But the cost would be heavy. The work of many of those who 
would come to Government for employment, under this method of 
“ selection of the unfittest,” would certainly not be worth the 
minimum wage assured to them ; and the deficiency must be met by 
increased taxation imposed on those whose incomes are larger. 
Now, assuming a sufficiently wise, able, and honest Government, 
I do not know that it would be impossible to carry out this plan — at 
least in a closed and self-sufficing community; and if it could be 
done successfully, those of us whose incomes are above the minimum 
might well think it worth while to pay the cost, to give up part of our 
incomes for the sake of the great social gain of getting a tolerable 
living secured to every person willing to work. Whether our actual 
Governments — the best that we deserve, because the best that we are 
capable of electing— could attempt it without causing greater distress 
than ever, is more doubtful. The experiment has been tried before 
now ; it was tried in Paris by the French Government in 1848. That 
was a bad failure, and caused far-reaching mischief. The G-overnment 
of New South Wales some years ago tried to give employment in 
land-clearing and road-making to all applicants. The effect w^as 
such as to discredit that policy in Australia from that time to this. 
Have our Governments so much improved in the last few years as to be 
capable of doing now on a larger scale what the Government of New r 
South Wales proved itself incapable of doing then? Before we 
impose on the fairly able and honest public servants whom we call 
collectively by the name of ‘‘ Government 51 so difficult a task as that 
of organising, drilling, setting to w T ork, and superintending all the 
most helpless, inefficient, and ill-conditioned workers in the couutrv, 
\ve ought to consider whether we are not demanding of them more 
highly-skilled work than they are capable of performing. 
But there is still a further difficulty. I said <€ in a closed and self- 
sufficing community.” But all modern civilised nations are largely 
dependent on foreign commerce ; to cut off exports and imports, 
whether in Australia or in England, would be to make our labour do 
so much less towards the satisfaction of our wants that there would 
be too little to go round, however much the distribution were 
improved; and while all of us would lose much, the poorest would 
suffer most. 
