While it is very desirable that no person shall work at home for very poor pay or under very bad conditions, it is emphatically not desirable that no person whatever shall be allowed to work at home for money. Miss Thear, one of the Victorian inspectors, reports a considerable decrease in home work in the shirt trade, the tasks formerly performed by outdoor hands “and in some cases by elderly women who are now recipients of the old age pension” are now being performed in the factories by herring-boning, button-hole and button sewing machines. “In addition to getting the old age pension and going to work inside of factories, other means of employment seem to have opened up for others who were formerly out workers. Some have boarded-out children to care for, and some are registered under the Infant Life Protection Act.”[97] Miss Cuthbertson, on the same page, says: “The tendency in all trades is to get the work done in factories, where the supervision is closer, and where, with improved machinery, work can be turned out much more cheaply.” The minimum wage law has, in fact, hastened the course of that development upon which most trades, and the clothing trades, perhaps, especially, had already entered. Legislation of a similar character to that of the sister colonies has been established in New South Wales, and the kindness of friends in Sydney has supplied me with much matter published and unpublished; but, after careful consideration, I have decided not to attempt any account of the minimum wage law of New South Wales. The reasons for this abstention are twofold. In the first place the Act is but five years old, and its history, therefore, is far less instructive than that of the legislation in New Zealand and in Victoria. In the second place the accounts received point some one way and some another, so that it is difficult to draw from them any plain conclusion. I am well aware that by passing over the case of New South Wales I expose myself to the accusation of adducing only the favourable examples and of disregarding those that have not succeeded. To this it may fairly be replied that although the New South Wales law has not apparently fully succeeded, neither has it entirely failed. It is still in a stage of probation, and therefore of far less value to the student than such laws as have progressed beyond that stage. Moreover, even if it were true—as most emphatically it is not—that the Colonial experiments had all completely failed, it would by no means follow that to devise a successful minimum wage law was a task beyond the wit of man.