Page:Liberalism (1919).djvu/86

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where the case was overwhelming. It went on to include the “young person” and the woman—not without criticism from those who held by woman’s rights, and saw in this extension of tutelage an enlargement of male domination. Be that as it may, public opinion was brought to this point by the belief that it was intervening in an exceptional manner to protect a definite class not strong enough to bargain for itself. It drew the line 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