ABSTRACT
government intervention in the regulation of wages has come later than in the setting up of standards for hours of work, minimum age of employment, and for health and safety in factories. This lateness was due partly to the great difficulties involved in the regulation of wages by the State. It was also because, although laisser-faire doctrines were set aside in the nineteenth century in order that the State could restrict such abuses as excessive hours of labour of women and children and the employment of young children in factories and mines, stronger resistance was shown by employers to interference by the State with their freedom to regulate wages. In some periods in the Middle Ages the State even intervened to regulate wages in the interests of employers; for example, in the years of labour shortage after the Black Death the State fixed maximum wages, in an attempt to prevent labourers from gaining higher wages.
