33
thereby implied the desirability of equalization, but the act of 1918
(art. 1, sec. 2) eliminated that provision.
Each board has elaborated its own policy in conformity with trade
conditions and the individual strength of its members. No trouble
has been taken to establish cost-of-living budgets or to investigate
their items in a scientific way. E. M. Burns says: ®
No board has ever proclaimed that if its members could not pay a living wage
they had better retire from business. And there is no reason why it should.
lt represents the trade itself; the ordinary members, probably because of their
umerical strength, play a much greater part in the deliberations than is elsewhere
 the case; and both employers and workers are alive to the importance
f maintaining the existence of the trade.
The evidence before the official investigation commission headed by
Viscount Cave, at present Lord Chancellor of England,’ showe ‘
quite in line with these points of view, that most boards based their
awards on their opinion as to what the trade could bear. But the
final decision was generally a compromise between this and other
considerations. Sir A. Hopkinson describes the procedure of the
cotton waste board as follows: “ We consider the fact of the cost of
living; we consider the rates which are paid in similar employments
88 near as may be, and all the other elements of the case; and then
the parties talk it over, and in the result, after talking it all over
logether, we have in that case arrived at what we thought was the
fairest minimum rate ultimately adopted by agreement of employer
and employed.”
Results

T HE awards have profoundly and in various directions influenced
the fate of considerably over a million workers and the development
 of many highly diversified industries. To visualize these influences
 from various angles, some of the main conclusions of the
most representative experts who have examined the subject are here
given,
Sydney Webb, in an article in the Journal of Political Tconomy
for December, 1912 (p- 973), entitled “The economic theory of a
legal minimum wage,” gives it as his general opinion that the legal
minimum wage increases the productivity of the nation’s industry,
as the surplus of unemployed is recruited from the least efficient
workers. The employer (such is Webb’s experience) selects the best
men ; the better wages improve the physical condition of the workers,
and the desire to be kept in work, notwithstanding the employers
obligation to pay minimum wages, stimulates the workers to do their
best. All these phases of evolution—selection of the fittest men and
women; better physical condition and mental stimulug—are therefore
 brought into force by application of the minimum wage. Webb
finds that industries in which sweating formerly prevailed have not
disappeared.
The public has been compelled to pay more for the products
and has thereby enabled the employers to pay higher wages. The
range of the unemployables has been increased, as workers not earn-'

 Burns, B. M.: Wages and the State. london, 1926, p. 27.
Great Britain, Miuistry-of Labor, Minutes of evidence taken before the committee
f inquiry into the working and effects of the trade board acts, London, 1922 B 765;
Seite) Colne League, the Cave report on the British trade board acts 190 —1922,
Naw York, 1923.