[1] It provided for the creation of boards which could set minimum wage criteria that were legally enforceable.

Winston Churchill, MP then President of the Board of Trade, put the argument for the legislation as follows:[4] It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty's subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions.

It was formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil.

That is the first broad division which we make in the general statement that the laws of supply and demand will ultimately produce a fair price.

Where in the great staple trades in the country you have a powerful organisation on both sides, where you have responsible leaders able to bind their constituents to their decision, where that organisation is conjoint with an automatic scale of wages or arrangements for avoiding a deadlock by means of arbitration, there you have a healthy bargaining which increases the competitive power of the industry, enforces a progressive standard of life and the productive scale, and continually weaves capital and labour more closely together.