interest of Great Britain to lead the way in humanising the conditions 
of employment, it will ratify the Washington Convention establishing 
a forty-eight hour week by international agreement, and will use its 
influence to secure the international adoption of a progressively 
advancing code of Labour legislation. The iniquitous measure by which 
the Conservative Government has imposed a longer working day upon 
the mining population must be repealed, and international safeguards 
must be secured with a view to effecting corresponding improvements 
in the working conditions both of Continental miners and of 
other workers abroad, so as to prevent unfair competition and the 
deterioration of standards of life and work. Such steps as are necessary 
must be adopted to improve the health of the miner and the comfort of 
his home, by securing that pit-head baths, the provision of which by 
mine-owners is compulsory in all the principal coal-producing countries 
of Europe, are brought within the reach of all. The shocking roll of 
accidents—resulting in over 1,000 deaths and 160,000 injuries every 
year—must be reduced, by providing for inspection on a more adequate 
scale. and by prosecuting with rigid impartiality for breaches of the law. 
Moreover, as the greatest of maritime nations, Great Britain is 
under peculiar obligations to her seafaring population, and the need of 
a drastic improvement in their position is equally urgent. The conditions 
at present permissible on British ships are actually inferior to those 
allowed by the majority of other countries, and constitute not infrequently 
a grave national scandal. The Labour Party, which has repeatedly 
championed the seafarers’ cause in the House of Commons, intends that 
that scandal shall be ended. It stands for the amelioration of hygiene 
and living conditions on board, for a reduction of working hours, and 
for the establishment, for all grades of seafarers, of equitable conditions 
of life and employment. 
The Living Wage 
Nor is it only the establishment of effective safeguards against 
overwork, accidents, and industrial disease which will require 
attention. There is also the not less vital necessity of using the power 
of the State to supplement Trade Union action in fixing standards of 
wages compatible with a life of health and comfort. The Labour Party 
has always stood for the widest possible application of the policy of the 
living wage, and for such legislative and industrial changes as 
may be needed in order to enable it to be carried into practical effect. 
The Trade Boards Act, under which legally enforceable minimum rates 
are fixed for more than a million workers, must be extended to include 
within its scope classes of workers who are at present defenceless, and 
the machinery of inspection, through which the payment of the rates 
fixed is enforced, must be enlarged. The Fair Wages clause in public 
contracts must be strengthened and rigorously enforced. Greater 
powers must be vested in the Central Agricultural Wages Board, and 
an end must be put to the scandalous negligence which at present causes 
the minimum rates for agricultural workers fixed by the agricultural 
wages boards to be in some areas systematically, though illegally, 
evaded. 
D