at the adult male; and it is only within our own time, and as the result of a controversy waged for many years within the trade union world itself, that legislation has avowedly undertaken the task of controlling the conditions of industry, the hours, and at length, through the institution of Wages Boards in "sweated industries," the actual remuneration of working people without limitation of age or sex. To this it has been driven by the manifest teaching of experience that liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result. In place of the system of unfettered agreements between individual and individual which the school of Cobden contemplated, the industrial system which has actually grown up and is in process of further development rests on conditions prescribed by the State, and within the limits of those conditions is very largely governed by collective arrangements between associations of employers and employed. The law provides for the safety of the worker and the sanitary conditions of employment. It prescribes the length of the working day for women and children in factories and workshops, and for men in mines and on railways.[8] In the future it will probably deal freely with the hours of men. It enables wages boards to establish a legal minimum wage in scheduled industries which will undoubtedly grow in number. It makes employers liable for all injuries suffered by operatives in the course of their employment, and forbids any one to "contract out" of this obligation. Within these limits, it allows freedom of contract. But at this point, in the more highly developed trades, the work is taken up by voluntary associations. Combinations of men have been met by combinations of employers, and wages, hours, and all the details of the industrial bargain are settled by collective agreement through the agency of a joint board with an impartial chairman or referee in case of necessity for an entire locality and even an entire trade. So far have we gone from the free competition of isolated individuals.