No one denies the right of the individual to cease work. The question involved in this form of legislation is the right to combination in common action by strike. Whatever the right may be, it is a certainty that the working community of the civilized world adheres to this right as an absolute fundamental to their protection. They believe that the aggregation of capital into large units under single control places them at an entire disadvantage if they cannot threaten to use their ultimate weapon of combined cessation of labor. While it may be argued that the State may intervene in such a manner as to substitute the protection of justice for the right of strike and lockout, the belief in the right to strike has become imbedded in the minds of the laboring community of the world to an extent that it will not receive with confidence any alternative in driving its own bargains. There are other difficulties in compulsory adjudication of disputes. The workings of such law necessarily result in ultimate determination of minimum wage for all crafts and industries. Every different industrial unit will claim a different minimum based upon its local economic surroundings. Otherwise the competitive basis upon which industry is established will be undermined. No court has ever yet adequately solved these differentials and some dislocation of industry results. I would expect to see develop out of this type of minimum wage the same phenomenon that existed in some parts of Australia, where certificates of inability to earn the minimum, and therefore permission to undertake employment at less than this wage had to be issued in order that employment might be found for the aged and disabled. The employers will naturally in face of a minimum wage retain in employment that quality of worker that can give the maximum effort. Another difficulty is the tendency for wages of all workers, regardless of their ability, to fall to the minimum, for the employer naturally reduces the good to average with the poor worker. I would not want to be understood to necessarily oppose the possibilities of a minimum wage for women over large areas, as distinguished from craft minimums for men, because certain social questions enter that problem to an important degree.