Ideology and Social Policy: the Origins of the Trade Boards Act

Abstract

The issue of sweated labour formed one of the most intractable social problems of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Numerous remedies to solve sweating, such as the restriction of female and child labour, the abolition of domestic workshops, consumers' leagues, and co-operative production were variously advanced but subsequently found to be wanting. Eventually, and bowing to the inevitable, Edwardians finally sanctioned one cautious measure which they thought would curb sweating at its root – that is the legal control of low pay in the form of the 1909 Trade Boards Act. Initially, the act applied to domestic chain-making, ready-made and wholesale bespoke tailoring, paper-box making, and the machine-made lace and finishing trade. In these four industries in which wages were deemed unduly low, boards were established consisting of equal numbers of employers' and workers' representatives, plus independent members nominated by the state. In effect, the boards were thus a form of compulsory arbitration on pay.