they should be variable; but some have proposed to fix a minimum of wages, leaving the variations above that point to be adjusted by competition. Another plan, which has found many advocates among the leaders of the operatives, is that councils should be formed, which in England have been called local boards of trade, in France “conseils de prud'hommes,” and other names; consisting of delegates from the work-people and from the employers, who, meeting in conference, should agree upon a rate of wages, and promulgate it from authority, to be binding generally on employers and workmen; the ground of decision being, not the state of the labor market, but natural equity; to provide that the workmen shall have reasonable wages, and the capitalist reasonable profits.
Others again (but these are rather philanthropists interesting themselves for the laboring-classes, than the laboring people themselves) are shy of admitting the interference of authority in contracts for labor: they fear that if law intervened, it would intervene