could keep tab on the whole situation by means of finger prints. Finger prints could be taken of each immigrant on entry; they could be duplicated at any mill gate or mine entry by the employer, filed and compared rapidly at the Washington bureau.

As compared with joint minimum wage boards affecting men and women alike, as do those of Australia and England, the plan would have the advantage of not being democratic. The workers themselves would not take part in its administration. And the plan would have the signal advantage of being national, so that progressive commonwealths need not penalize their manufacturers in competing with laggard states.

As compared with the literacy test, the plan would not shut America off as a haven of refuge and would not, while it was under discussion, range the racial societies and the internationalists alongside the steamship companies and the exploiters of immigrant labor. And it would have an even more profound influence on the condition of life and labor.

What are the positive benefits to be expected from such a program?

I.

1. It would gradually, but irresistibly, cut down the common labor supply in our industrial centers.

2. Once the unlimited supply of green labor was lessened in these industrial centers, a more normal equilibrium would be struck between common labor and the wages of common labor. Now it is like selling potatoes when everybody's bin is full.

3. It would tend to stave off further congestion in the centers of industrial employment and give us a breathing spell to conquer our housing problems and seat our school children.

4. It would shunt increasing numbers of immigrants to the rural districts and stimulate patriotic societies to settle their fellow countrymen on the land.

5. It would tend to cut down the accident rate in industries where "greeners" endanger the lives of their fellows.

6. It would cut down the crowd of men waiting for jobs at mill gates and street corners, correspondingly spread out rush and seasonal work, and help along toward the time when a man's vocation might mean a year-long income for him.

7. It would give resident labor in the cities a chance to organize at the lower levels and develop the discipline of self-government.

8. It would put a new and constructive pressure on employers to cut down by invention the bulk of unskilled occupations, the most wasteful and humanly destructive of all work.

9. It would bring about a fair living, a household wage, in such routine and semi-skilled occupations as remained.

10. It would tend to change mining settlements and mill towns from sleeping and feeding quarters into communities.

G. COMPULSORY ARBITRATION AND WAGES

281. Arbitration in New Zealand31

BY HUGH H. LUSK

The New Zealand Arbitration Law was the first attempt ever made on anything like a national scale to ensure something like justice for the workers, while at the same time it grappled with the evil that had been an increasing one in every civilized country for half a century. It was recognized that every form of warfare-whether between nations, classes, or individuals, was in its nature an appeal to force, and not to fair-play or justice. It was, in fact, an appeal to the higher intelligence, as well as to the common-sense, both of workers and employers; and it said much for the innate common sense of the classes for whose benefit it was in the first place intended, that they were willing at least to give it a trial.

The Arbitration Law of New Zealand begins with a full recognition of the principle of Trades Unionism, which it makes use of as the basis of the new law. It provides that any Union containing a certain number of members may avail itself of the benefits of the statute by registering the association as one subject to the provisions of the law. The only compulsory feature of the statute is that as long as the association and its members remain registered they shall be subject to the provisions of the statute.

These provisions are aimed directly at the prevention of industrial warfare by making it a punishable offence for any body of workers to leave off work in concert, for the purpose of compelling the employers in any trade or employment to agree to a demand for higher wages, or any other alteration in the conditions of their employment. On the other hand it is equally an offence for any association of employers to discontinue the employment of their workers for the purpose of compelling their agreement to any change in their rates of payment, in their hours of work, or to any other proposed change in the existing conditions of employment. Instead of a resort either to the strike or the lock-out, the law provides that whenever a dispute arises in any trade in which either the workers or the employers are registered as an association under the provisions of the statute, either party may at once call in the assistance 81 Adapted from Social Welfare in New Zealand, 74-88. Copyright by Sturgis & Walton (1913).

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of the local Board of Conciliation, whose duty it is to meet the representatives of the parties, and endeavour by all reasonable means to bring about an agreement on the matters in dispute. In case conciliation should prove ineffectual, however, it becomes the duty of the conciliator to refer the question to the Arbitration Court without delay. This court consists of five members in all, two of whom are chosen by the votes of the registered associations of the workers, and two by those of the registered associations of employers, while the fifth member of the Court is one of the judges of the Supreme Court, who is also President of the Arbitration Court, and is from time to time appointed by the Government to this particular office. The decisions of the Court are declared by the statute to be final, and subject to no appeal, except on the single ground that the question dealt with is beyond the powers given to the Court.

The judgments of the Arbitration Court may be enforced either by fines, levied on the property of the Associations, or of individual members; or by imprisonment of the officers, or of members of such associations as may be declared guilty of contempt of the Arbitration Court.

The methods by which the New Zealand Arbitration Court has arrived at its conclusions are probably without precedent in the history of modern commercialism. Its first duty in all cases where the amount of wages was in dispute was to ascertain what it should cost the average worker, with a wife and family, to live in reasonable comfort and respectability. Its second duty was to determine how much the profits of the employers in an ordinary year would enable them to pay. The first question was one of national policy. The second question was one of fair-play and ordinary justice, as between man and man; and to form a fair and intelligent conclusion it was necessary to learn a good many things that had been regarded in the past as the business of the employers, and of nobody else.

It may be said that the answer to the question of the amount of wages needed to secure a decent living for the workers and their families was, after all, a matter of opinion, and possibly even of prejudice. Fortunately there was in New Zealand, as, indeed, there is probably in every country a court of appeal on matters of opinion that may generally be trusted to take a view of such questions that is tolerably fair. The New Zealand statute has provided for such an appeal, by providing that the proceedings of the Arbitration Court should in all cases be conducted in public, so that the evidence given should be open to the press and known to the people. In different communities, it is true the public opinion thus formed might differ considerably; but in every country, it may be said with confidence, the opinion thus formed would exercise a powerful influ

ence on a court of arbitration. What the Court had to do, therefore. was in the first place to decide on the lowest reasonable living wage— and this was practically the same in every trade or employment. This lowest living standard, as it did not depend on the profits of the business, was not affected by the question either of capital invested, or of the conditions of the trade.

The question of the minimum wage, however, was only a part. and a small part, of the problem with which the Arbitration Court had to deal. While it was clear that nobody could be allowed to pay less than a living wage to those employed, the question of justice demanded a good deal more than this before it could be said to be fairly settled. The old idea that the man who found the money should have everything, and the man who found the labour as little as possible, had been abandoned in New Zealand; the problem which the Court had to solve was the somewhat indefinite one-what was fair? To enable this to be done the law provided that the Court might call on the employers, in any dispute as to wages, to produce the books containing the accounts of their business, and to show exactly what capital was invested in it, and what profits had been earned. The task of the Court was by no means an easy one. Even when the books of a business had been produced, and the capital invested, and the profits made had been ascertained, the question remained what ought the employers to give out of the profits to the workers, without whose assistance no profits could have been earned? What, as a matter of fact, the Arbitration Court of New Zealand has done during the sixteen years of its existence has been to come to some conclusion that seemed fair in each case. The principle of a real partnership has been acknowledged by the Court, but the shares due to the partners have been matters of opinion, and the awards of the Court have, as a consequence, always been open to criticism by one or other party to the dispute.

There have been many such criticisms, both in the colony itself and elsewhere; but as a rule the parties most nearly concerned have admitted that the decisions of the Court were conceived in a spirit of fair-play as between the parties. The law has now been in force during sixteen years, and it has been accepted by both employers and employed as the controlling force of the industrial life of nearly a million people of our own race. Amendments have from time to time been made in the law, as new features have appeared that seemed to call for regulation, but in all essentials the law that was conceived in a spirit of fair-play and justice-recognizing equally the rights of Labour, Capital, and of the people at large, sixteen years ago, remains in force today, and, like all the other laws of New Zealand, is enforced without fear or favour.

282. Compulsory Arbitration in Theory and Practice32

BY JAMES EDWARD LE ROSSIGNOL AND WILLIAM DOWNIE STEWART

There is a pretty well-defined theory in justification of compulsory arbitration in the minds of those who favour that method of settling industrial disputes. The competitive system, in this view, has resulted in two great evils; sweating and strikes. Under sweating the workers receive less than enough to secure a decent subsistence for a human being, and the strike is a form of private war in which the strongest win, not those who have justice on their side, and which causes great inconvenience to the public, who are a third party in every strike. All this evil and injustice should be done away with by an appeal to a court.

On the surface the theory appears to be highly reasonable, but when put into practice serious, if not fatal, difficulties arise. One of these has to do with the discovery of specific principles of justice; the other with the enforcement of awards supposedly just.

The theory of fair wages that appears to prevail is the doctrine of the living wage, stated both in its negative and its positive form. Stated negatively, the theory holds that extremely low wages, such as are found under the sweating system, are not fair wages, because insufficient to afford a decent living according to the colonial standard. Stated positively, a fair wage is a wage which is sufficient to give the worker a decent living according to the colonial standard.

Other difficulties arise when the theories are applied to actual

For example, a wage which would be quite sufficient for a single man might be inadequate for a married man, and should vary with the size of his family and their ability to contribute to their own support. Again, a living wage for a skilled worker must be higher than that for a common labourer, since his standard of living is higher. This arises from the fact that skilled labourers are scarce, but this introduces another complicating factor, the supply of labour, which, in densely populated countries, threatens to destroy, not only the theory, but the possibility of a living wage.

These and other complications prevent the creation of a body of legal principles defining and explaining the nature of fair or reasonable wages, but do not prevent the Court from bearing in mind the desirability of keeping the customary standards of colonial Adapted from State Socialism in New Zealand, 238-247. Copyright by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. (1910).

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