are the workers' compensation and old-age pension laws, which at the time of their enactment in Australia had already been tried in England and Europe. Finally there is a group of laws at the time of their passage in New Zealand and Australia entirely new to modern legislation, which provides for state regulation of wages and other conditions of employment, and incidentally for government supervision of industry.

Only laws of the last class encounter in Australia constitutional difficulties. The organic law of the commonwealth is, as compared with our own, extremely liberal, expressly authorizing old-age pensions and federal intervention in interstate disputes between employers and employees. But the full exercise of the latter power is checked by certain general and special limitations which the constitution has either adopted from other countries or employed in defining the respective spheres of federal and state authority within the commonwealth.

Two methods of regulating wages, and incidentally industry, quite different in form but identical in outcome, arose in New Zealand and Australia between 1890 and 1900. New Zealand, followed by New South Wales, Western Australia, and finally by the federal government, established arbitration courts, which, by judicial procedure and acting upon evidence, fix wages and other conditions of employment. Disputes can be brought before the court only by unions of employers or employees, which are incorporated for this purpose. The orders of the court have the force of law; so that to pay a wage lower than that prescribed by the court, or to impose worse conditions upon an employee renders an employer liable to fines and other penalties, as well as damages, while to engage in a strike or a lockout is a crime.

The most prominent object of the compulsory arbitration laws was to prevent strikes, in which they have partly, but by no means entirely, succeeded. Meanwhile Victoria was trying to stop sweating, by modifications of its factory act providing for boards in different industries with power to regulate wages and do most of the other things, except prohibit strikes and lockouts and grant preference of employment to unionists, that

are done by an arbitration court. But the wages boards are negotiating rather than judicial bodies, and are composed of equal numbers of employers and employees actually engaged in the industry affected, under an impartial chairman. Except that their decisions have the force of law and may be put into effect by an action in an ordinary court, these boards do not differ essentially in organization and functions from the voluntary boards often established to negotiate wage scales in highly unionized trades in the United States. The labor party has preferred arbitration courts to wages boards, in general principle, because the former can grant the closed shop and can in some other respects more radically regulate industries. The right to order the closed shop granted to most of the courts rests on two principles-that a court with authority to prohibit strikes must have power to take into consideration all issues that may occasion a strike; and that inasmuch as unions are required to put the compulsory arbitration law in motion, a court established under that law is justified in fostering the organizations upon which depends its own existence.

The wages boards, however, soon developed two marked superiorities to the arbitration courts. Being composed of men practically familiar with the technical processes and the actual conditions of employment in the industry under consideration, they did not, like the courts, have to depend on evidence for these facts, and consequently did not fall into the grave errors that through faulty information or misunderstanding of testimony-not in frequently characterize a court's decisions and occasion numerous applications for the amendment of awards. And as there is a board for each industry or trade regulated, in case of urgency an early decision of points at issue can be secured, while the congestion of business before a single court, trying to regulate all the industries of a state or commonwealth, sometimes causes delays of over a year in the hearing of important cases. Strikes in defiance of the law have resulted from the impossibility of getting immediate action by a court during a labor crisis.

The present tendency in Australia is to combine the advan

tages of both forms of regulation by providing wages boards as tribunals of first resort, allowing cases to go to the court only where, on account of legal points involved or irreconcilable difference of opinion within the board itself, a decision cannot be obtained without appeal. New South Wales has substituted for its original law, providing only for an arbitration court, a law combining the boards and court; Victoria has added a "court of industrial appeals" to its wages-board system; and Queensland and South Australia have recently adopted laws with provisions similar to those of their two sister states. New Zealand and Western Australia and the federal government retain the arbitration court in more nearly its original form. Tasmania is the only state without legislation upon this subject.

Some understanding of what such a state authority as is instituted by these acts does, is necessary in order to follow the constitutional aspects and implications of this legislation. The court fixes a minimum wage and, as a corollary to this, a maximum working day. As directly affecting wage rates it specifies conditions of apprenticeship, defines who are to be considered journeymen and who helpers, and classifies occupations by particular operations. It regulates piece-work as well as time rates, and may impose either system of payment exclusively upon a factory. In granting preference to unionists the court may define the method of employing workers, and may prevent their discharge under certain conditions. The court in special instances prescribes the speed of machines and defines what should be the normal daily turnout of an operative.

In fixing the wages the court may examine the books of employers and be governed in its orders by the profits shown by an industry. But cost and standard of living are also important factors in determining the equity of a wage scale, and in Australia the courts attach more importance to them than to the rate of profit. Courts sometimes order employers to pay higher wages, even though they may already be losing money, or may stand liable to lose money under the new rate. In the Broken Hill mining dispute the judge ruled: "If a man can

not maintain his enterprise without cutting down wages which are proper to be paid his employees-at all events, the wages which are essential for their living-it would be better that he should abandon his enterprise." The arbitration judge in South Australia has decided: "If any particular industry cannot keep going and pay its employees at least 7 shillings a day of eight hours, it must shut up." In case of an application by coal operators in Western Australia to have the minimum wage previously fixed by the court lowered, on the ground that when paying that wage the industry was not profitable, the court unanimously ruled: "If the industry cannot pay that price, it had better stop, and let some other industry absorb the workers."

Clearly, therefore, state regulation of wages, as enforced in Australia, means state distribution of the net product of industry and the regulation of profits, and may directly determine whether a particular industry shall survive or disappear. The community consciously tries to do what in other countries is left to the unconscious operation of economic forces. The next step is to attempt to regulate the conditions antecedent to wages.

All industries are not identically affected by government control of wages because the influence of the government upon these antecedent conditions varies. In the building trades, baking, housework, and other industries and occupations serving exclusively local wants, an increased wage is passed on in the form of higher prices to consumers. Profits and the benefit of the higher wage to the worker remain unregulated, and consequently in labor ranks there is some demand also for boards to determine prices. A second class of Australian industries, like mining, farming, and grazing, cannot pass on increased wages in the form of higher prices to consumers, because they produce chiefly for export markets where prices are determined by worldwide competition. Meanwhile factory industries, like the manufacture of boots, shoes, clothing, furniture, and machinery, can by sufficient tariff protection, so long as their production does not exceed the demands of the domestic market, pass on

a higher wage to consumers by raising prices. This fact establishes a direct relation between the tariff and compulsory arbitration. And as Australian manufacturers seldom export any of their wares, but are still struggling to win their domestic market from British, German, and American competitors, this relation applies to practically all the factory industries of the commonwealth.

Within the boundaries of the federation, however, competition is free-as it is within the United States-and this tariff area includes districts having very different conditions of production and different rates of wages. Stimulated by the desire to foster the manufactures of their own state, the different state courts and boards bend to considerations of interstate and interurban competition in setting a minimum wage for the trades under their jurisdiction. This interferes with the desire of the labor people to equalize and standardize wages throughout Australia on an ideal basis, related solely to the cost of living and physical conditions of employment, and not in any way to local rivalries.

By way of comment, the moral background of labor policy with regard to competition within the commonwealth and competition between the commonwealth and other countries is absolutely contradictory.

As the tariff is regulated by the federal government; as the control of immigration, with the end of placing as heavy burdens upon the entry of competing labor as are placed by the customs duties upon competing merchandise, is vested in the same authority; and as a national wage system can be created only by the same central power, the highly regulative and socialistic program of the labor party looks logically toward developing federal at the expense of state authority, and results in a policy directly affecting the form and interpretation of the constitution.

The tariff policy of the progressive and labor parties in Australia has been dubbed the "New Protection." This policy, reversing that of the United States, gives first importance to wage protection, treating the protection of industries as only