CHAP, 2,~—HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF WAGE FIXATION 9

time Victoria, inspired by the success of minimum wage legislation
for home workers, extended this method of wage fixing more and
more to its whole industrial life. In 1909 Great Britain, doing what
Victoria had done in 1896, established wages boards for home workers.
In 1912 she took a step somewhat similar to the one Canada had taken
n 1907, wages boards for a semipublic service indispensable in the
industrial life of the nation—coal mines—being established. Since
that time the extension of minimum wage legislation from home
workers to other insufficiently organized trades has made great progress
 in the British Isles, particularly since the new wages boards act
of 1918. Minimum wages for agricultural laborers have been fixed
‘n Great Britain, Hungary, and Uruguay. Home workers have been
protected after the Anglo-Saxon model in Norway, Austria, and
Czechoslovakia.
Canada has continued its endeavors for preserving industrial peace
through compulsory arbitration, after the New Zealand model, but
has also been inspired by the American laws to apply the benefits of
minimum wage to female workers generally. But while the American
 legislation has been hampered by the veto power of the courts,
Canada has become the standard bearer of the principle on the North
American continent.
South of the United States, Mexico, in its Federal constitution,
has endeavored to introduce minimum wages into its whole industrial
 life, and Argentina has adopted the minimum wage both for
tome workers and (in the Province of Tucuman) for shop and
factory workers.
In Norway for a short time commercial employees generally beneftted
 by legal minimum wages. France has applied a prudent
minimum wage law to female home workers since 1915, while Germany,
 since her revolution, has established wages boards for men
and women in the home-work trades.
In 1925 South Africa applied minimum wages to all unorganized
trades, both for white and colored workers, excepting only domestic
service, agriculture, and allied activities.
The International Labor Organization, through its labor conference
 of 1927, endeavored to promote uniform and systematic minimum-wage
 legislation, and adopted in 1928 a general convention to
establish minimum wage fixing machinery in the States.
The timid Australasian experiments of the nineteenth century have
spread far and wide. A superficial view might induce one to believe
that the new principle has been applied in rather a haphazard way.
More careful observation, however, shows that its application proceeded
 not so much along the lines of least resistance but rather
along the line of greatest need. Wherever the basic principle of
fixation of wages through the free play of the law of supply and demand
 has led to the greatest inconvenience, legislation has begun
to replace it by fixation of wages by competent authorities, after
examination of workers’ needs and of industrial possibilities.
That necessity appeared clearest in the home-work trades, where
the workers, because of being so scattered, seemed to be helpless, and
m public services which could not be left to unrestricted industrial
war. From these two extremes minimum-wage legislation, from the
bottom of the unorganized trades, and compulsory arbitration. from