10 MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

the top of the highly organized trades, have spread toward the central
 spheres of industrial life, sometimes combining, sometimes overlapping.

To the question as to whether legal fixation of wages will ever
supersede entirely the principle of free play of economic forces, the
experience of these 34 years does not yet allow a decisive and unqualified
 answer. In Victoria wages are fixed everywhere by wages
boards. In the other States of Australasia and in Great Britain a
trend toward the same goal is clearly marked. Canada, South
Africa, and Mexico follow along the same way, while Italy and
Russia advance by different roads in a similar direction. Elsewhere,
however, the movement toward legal wage fixation is slow. :
The principle of legal fixation of wages seems to be particularly
in keeping with the British tradition of continuous legal progress,
of endeavor for harmony between the various branches of national
life. Australasia, perhaps more purely British than Great Britain
itself, has shown the way. Great Britain follows Australasia and
Canada follows Great Britain. In the other countries there are
more cross-currents, more diversity, less continuous development.
The object of this study is to examine the various systems of
minimum wage fixing machinery and to ascertain the results, good
or bad, which have followed.
Minimum wage legislation only will be discussed. The term
“minimum wage ” has sometimes been used also for fixation—by collective
 agreements or awards—of the lowest limit for wages in a
given industry. These private minimum wage provisions, such as,
for instance, the minimum wage for Japanese seamen, agreed upon
on July 1, 1928,* have not been included in this study, which is devoted
 to provisions of public law only.

4 Industrial and Labor Information, Geneva, Aug. 13, 1928, Pp. 179,