David and all his biblical backers were as eager as Mr. Philip Snowden and his Socialist friends to promote the living wage, and, as they put it, to "deliver the poor from him that is too strong for him." That, in a phrase, is the modern problem of the living wage. The trust, the combine, the limited company, the corporation or Government office are bound in the nature of things to become the spoilers of the poor and needy unless there is some power delegated by the State to some judicial authority to "deliver the poor from him that is too strong for him." But it is not sufficient to cite poetry and Psalms and the "Song of the Shirt"--for then your Thomas Gradgrind comes along--a man of realities, sir, a man of facts and calculations, a man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four and nothing over, and who is not going to be talked into allowing for anything over--Thomas Gradgrind shakes his square finger at you and says: "How are you going to do it?" And I agree that Gradgrind is deserving an answer. I do not say we must wait until we convince him, for Gradgrinds are obstinate, stubborn fellows, but we must satisfy the majority that we have a fair answer to his objections and a practical programme to propose. The problem cannot be shirked for ever. Even in the prophet Carlyle's day it was a matter in regard to which "if something be not done something will do itself one day and in a fashion that will please nobody." And shortly the way in which it will come about is by voluntary conciliation, the erection of joint boards of employers and workmen with a right of appeal to a business legal tribunal--something akin to the Railway Commission--which shall have power to make and enforce a decree to the worker of at least so much of his fair share of an industry as shall amount to a living wage. I can see nothing revolutionary in this proposal. It really only follows out the trend of modern legislation. If a man has a smoking chimney, or pollutes a river, or goes about in public with an infectious disease, we fine or imprison him for his anti-social misconduct. Surely a man who pursues an industry that does not make a living wage for the workers in it is equally an enemy of the people, to be dealt with as such by the law! As Mr. Justice Gordon laid it down in the Australian Labour Courts: "If any particular industry cannot keep going and pay its workpeople a living wage it must be shut up." Some day that will be the law of England. No one can deny the common sense of it.