SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF WAGES 143

obnoxious to the better-disposed, but which, if observed
by the latter and ignored by the former, would give a competitive
 advantage to those who ignored them. Certain
principles are, in fact, laid down, aimed at protecting the
zmployees of the less scrupulous from acts from which the
better disposed would be glad to refrain, but for fear of
competition. By imposing on all alike conditions agreed on
between representatives of employers and workmen, the
forces of competition are not destroyed, but diverted into
channels where they are believed to be less likely to involve
injury to the wage-earner.
In passing, attention may be called to one point in the
wages problem noted by the late General F. A. Walker. It
is that the wages problem proper is concerned with the
remuneration of those who are employed in occupations
where the result of their employment is looked to to provide
the means for their payment. Industrial employment, rather
than domestic employment, is our problem. The employer
of domestic servants may become more able to pay high
Wages as the result of his profits in employing other labour,
Sut not as the result of the work of the domestics. A man
does not pay high wages because he is rich in the cases with
which we are most concerned. He may be rich as the result
of paying high wages, if high wages connote great efficiency
of labour. It is not what he has, but what he expects to
get, which enables and induces him to pay wages. These
Wages are the condition of controlling the labour of his
employees, and of being free to direct it to those purposes
of production from which he anticipates making good those
Wages, as well as other expenses, and securing a profit in
addition, The supply of labour available for domestic and
other personal service will, of course, depend in large degree
on the power of the offered remuneration, and other conditions
 of service, to attract labour from other employments,
and hence the level of remuneration in those other employments
 is an important factor in the problem.
Since the efficiency of labour has so important a bearing
on the rate of remuneration of the labourer, some attention
must be given to the influence of the mode in which the