Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/937

EFFECT OF AN INCREASE IN THE LIVING WAGE 901 present conditions, neither employers nor employed can escape censure. While many employers desire to do the fair thing, most employers suffer from the obsession of profits, and the weight of the dead hand of a traditional industrial organization. On the other hand, while many employees would prefer the substance to the shadow, and are willing to work for other ideals by evolutionary process, the great majority of employees in Austraha are under the leadership of those who mean well, but have very vague concep- tions of exactly what they want, and still vaguer conceptions of the processes involved in the realization, in a complex community, of what they want. If this state of things continues, employers and employed alike will suffer. An industrial court may punish in various ways employees who strike; but even industrial courts cannot maintain a high standard of work. Nor can they, save possibly by a painful and long-drawn-out struggle, bring enlighten- ment or a sense of justice to employees as a class. The present struggle is educative, but expensive. Incidentally, it thwarts the desire which an industrial court may have to insure progressive and all-round adjustments of the rates of wage according to varia- tions in the cost of Hving. W. Jethro Brown. Adelaide, Australia. h-