The British Trade Boards Act of 1909 was based on the Victorian precedent, in that it set up boards for particular trades, with impartial chairmen (to whom it added certain impartial "appointed members"), and with power to fix binding minimum rates, but without any powers of compulsory arbitration. As this act and the still more important Trade Boards Act of 1918 are fully described in a separate article, they are not further dealt with here, save as illustrating the general principle of the legal minimum wage. Nor is there space in this article to deal with the widely varying experiments in minimum wage legisla tion which have been made in other countries. (See WAGES, and under the countries concerned.) It need only be said here that in both Europe and America the greater part of this legislation is confined to women workers, while many of the European acts deal only with home-workers. The French act of 1915, for example, is limited in both these ways.
The decision to institute some sort of minimum wage legislation in Great Britain followed on the Liberal election victory of 1906 and the return to parliament of a Labour Party which then for the first time became formidable enough to exert a real influence on the policy of the State. The ground for the act of 1909 was prepared by the exposures of the evil of "sweating" by the National Anti-Sweating League and other bodies, as well as by trade-union agitation. At the outset, two possible courses presented themselves. The State could have aimed at enforcing, over the whole range of industry and em ployment, a single minimum rate of wages (or perhaps different minima for men and women, boys and girls). But any such rate or rates would have necessarily been very low, as they could only have been based on the situation in the worst-placed industries. As in Victoria, the alternative was preferred of setting up a distinct board for each trade or industry, each with power to prescribe a rate or rates for the particular trade concerned. The boards were also given power, if they thought fit, to prescribe different minima for different localities ; but they chose, as a rule, rather to fix minimum rates for a trade over the whole country, with the object of bringing the worse areas gradu ally up towards the level of the better.
The act of 1909 was only experimental, and covered only a few specially selected trades. The act of 1918 brought in many more (for details see TRADE BOARDS) ; but the regulation of wages by the State was still treated as an exceptional measure, and was extended only to trades in which, because the wages paid were abnormally low or no satisfactory machinery for collective bargaining existed, a special case for regulation was held to exist. In the great mass of British industries,
including most of the great basic services, no legal minimum wage exists to-day. The Trade Boards Acts apply to about three million workers, out of a total employed population of 20 millions. The agri cultural labourers, whose wages were first regulated by law by the Corn Production Act of 1917, have now a minimum wage fixed separately for each county under the Labour Government's Aeri cultural Wages Act of 1924, which was extended to Scotland in 1937 and was being strengthened in March, 1940. Cotton weavers received a minimum wage in and transport workers engaged in road haulage in 1938—in both cases under special Acts.
Though the trade-board method has been gradually extended to new trades—until further progress was stopped with the coming of the post-war slump in many classes of low-paid workers are still outside the scope of any form of State wage-regulation. With many of these it would be possible to deal by the creation of more trade boards ; but any such project is bound to encounter at least two difficulties. The Trade Boards Acts have been applied so far only to trades in which a large proportion of the total number of workers employed has been in receipt of exceptionally low wages. But many sections of low-paid workers are to be found in industries in which, taken as a whole, the rates of wages are relatively high. If the acts were applied to these cases, it would be necessary either to apply them to the whole trade or to the underpaid sections only. Trade unions and employers would probably be opposed in many instances to the former method ; while the latter would involve difficulties of de marcation.
Moreover, even if the acts were extended as widely as possible to clearly defined trades, there would remain a large residue of workers, including many of the worst paid, employed in ill-defined or scattered occupations for which it would be difficult to establish any wage fixing machinery on trade-board lines. It has been suggested that, in order to legislate for workers of this type, there should be set up some sort of general board, with power to prescribe minimum rates for any classes of workers for whom the establishment of a special board is inexpedient.