We see, by this example, that the Arbitration Act does not exclude collective bargaining between workers and employers but allows the registration and enforcement of terms to which the representatives of both parties have agreed. Thus the field of legitimate activity is still left open to organisations both of employers and of workers: the Act merely provides for peaceable and equitable settlement in cases where the parties fail to settle matters for themselves. An instance occurs in the history of the tailoresses in which one district was governed by an agreement, and another by an award. The employers in the latter district complained that the employers in the former were allowed to compete with them on unfair terms; and the court having compared the terms of the agreement with those of the award, found that the agreement was actually in some instances the higher of the two and that, in the instances where it was lower, the wages actually paid were double those set down. This was in 1903. In 1905 the trade was once more in court asking for the establishment of a weekly wage. The court, acceding to what it declares to have been a general wish, did fix a weekly wage, but made the award for a year only, from Jan. 1906 to Jan. 1907. The schedule—rather a long one—fixes the terms of apprenticeship to each class of work, the wages of apprentices (5s. a week, rising at fixed intervals by 2s. 6d. at a time); defines, according to the length of her experience in her special department, a first-class and a second-class “improver,” a “journey woman, and an under rate worker,” and fixes minimum rates for all but the last named. Improvers in coat and vest work are to receive, for second class hands (girls just out of apprenticeship) a minimum of 17s.; first class hands (with another year’s experience) one of £1, 0s. 6d.; journey women are to be paid not less than £1, 5s. 0d.[86] An under rate wage, for old, infirm or incompetent persons, may be fixed by the worker concerned and the trade union, by the Chairman of the Conciliation Board or by any person appointed by the Board. Such settlements of under rate wages continue for only six months, and opportunity is given to the union and to the applicant of “calling evidence and adducing arguments” before the adjudicator. In the four districts to which this award applies a tailoress, who is a “full hand” and a competent worker, can now be sure that her week’s work will not be paid at a lower rate than 25s. a week. There is no prohibition of home work; but the home worker must be paid at the established piece work rates, and an employer paying less exposes himself to fines up to the sum of £100. Thus, in district after district, and in trade after trade, a system has been established which combines the apparently contradictory virtues of uniformity and elasticity.