161 
president’s ADDRESS — SECTION G. 
Now, if in any one country wages were greatly raised in the 
trades which supply foreign markets, the raised price of the produce 
would restrict, and might wholly destroy, the foreign demand for the 
produce; for the foreign customer would then prefer to buy elsewhere. 
We see this in the case of the Newcastle collieries, where the choice 
seems to lie between low wages for the miners on the one hand, and 
on the other hand a raised price of coal that drives the foreign buyer 
away to Japan and elsewhere, leaving a great part of the Newcastle 
miners unemployed. So far as foreign commerce goes on— and we 
cannot afford to do without it — the whole world becomes one com- 
munity, and the wages paid in any one country are partly dependent 
on those paid elsewhere. The selling price of the product is settled 
by world-wide competition, and the wages in each country must follow 
the prices. A Government can interfere with competition as much as 
it thinks fit within its own boundaries ; but it is much more difficult to 
interfere with competition in the world at large. 
Is there no way out of this difficulty? Short of a “federation of 
the world,” which may be left to dreamers, the only hope would seem 
to be that each rise of wages may be accompanied by such a rise of 
average character and ability, and consequently such an increase of 
efficiency in the workers, that work will ultimately be done as cheaply 
at the higher wage as it is now done at the lower wage. It is con- 
ceivable that this might be the result in the long run, if higher 
rates of wages could be maintained f or one or two generations. Many 
facts are given by Schulze-Gaevernitz and others as tending to show 
that labour is, on the whole, about as cheap in countries where wages 
are high as in those where wages are low — that the man who draws 
twice the pay also does twice the work. But then a rise of wages can 
only produce this effect gradually, if at ail ; you cannot double the 
efficiency of this or that particular worker at a stroke by doubling liis 
pay, though there may be some reason for hoping that his children 
will be more efficient if his income can be by any means increased. 
And how is the higher rate of pay to be maintained in the meantime ? 
It seems clear then that, in those trades at least in which prices 
are dependent on foreign competition, a slow and gradual rise of 
wages is the utmost that can be brought about, whether by Govern- 
ment or by other agencies. 
To conclude, it is probably in our power, if we think fit to do so, 
to fix a minimum wage above the lowest competition rate in the case 
of all work done directly or indirectly for Government ; and if this 
minimum is judiciously fixed, it will probably produce more good than 
harm. The raising of very low wages in private employments also by 
act of Government is not in theory impossible, and is not necessarily 
mischievous in principle ; but it would have to be carried out with 
very great precautions to prevent it from increasing the very evils 
which it is intended to remedy. It is, after all, on the character and 
ability of all of us together that the welfare of one aud all depends, in 
this matter of wages as in others. The individual worker, if he were 
an abler workman, a wiser and a better man, could as a rule get better 
wages for himself, and at the same time help to improve the conditions 
of liis less favoured fellow-workers ; the “ captains of industry,” the 
employer and the capitalist, if they were better qualified to perform 
their social functions, could so administer the labour under their control 
