exert in this direction is cumulative. Thirdly, they must aid as many as possible of the rising generation to acquire industrial skill, and to join the higher paid ranks of labour: this calls for some self-sacrifice, and is inconsistent with any attempt to raise very high the wages in skilled trades by making the entrance to them artificially difficult. Fourthly, they must strive to develop the great stores of business power and inventive resource that lie latent among the working classes, so that, production being economical and efficient, the National Dividend may be large; and that, business power being cheap, and the share going as Earnings of Management being relatively small, that which remains for wages may be high. The training which Unionists get from the management of Union affairs, though highly beneficial to them as men and as citizens, is yet not exactly what is wanted for this end. But Unions might do much towards it, by undertaking particular contracts and even general business on their own accounts; and by aiding and promoting all forms of co-operative enterprise, and especially such as open the greatest number of opportunities to men of natural business ability to find free scope for their constructive and originating faculties'. Fifthly, they must be always specially careful to avoid action by which one class of workers inflict a direct injury on others. Contests between Unions contending for the same field of employment-as for instance between Unions of

1 Thus sacrificing the shadow for the substance, they should where necessary, relax the rigid forms of some of their own rules in favour of small genuine co-operative productive societies in the few trades in which such societies can successfully contend with the great natural difficulties by which they are opposed. And in particular they should encourage productive branches of distributive stores in which responsibility for risks and power of experiment are very nearly in the same hands; and in which the business energies of men of the working class can be vivified and prepared for taking an important part in increasing the National Dividend and diminishing the share of it which goes as Earnings of Management. (Some aspects of this question are further considered in an address by the present writer to the Co-operative Congress in 1889.)

shipwrights and carpenters, or plumbers and fitters-attract their full meed of attention; but more importance really attaches to the injuries which one trade inflicts on others by stinting the output of the raw material which they have to use, or by throwing them out of work through a strike in which they have no concern.

Connection between the

moral and the economic

problem.

§ 20. As Mill says: 'Except on matters of mere detail, there are perhaps no practical questions even among those which approach nearest to the character of pure economic questions which admit aspects of the of being decided on economic premises alone;" and it is alike unscientific and injurious to the public welfare to attempt to discuss men's conduct in industrial conflicts without taking account of other motives beside the desire for pecuniary gain. The world is not ready to apply in practice principles of so lofty a morality, as that implied in many socialistic schemes, which assumes that no one will desire to gain at the expense of an equal loss of happiness to others. But it is ready, and working men among others are ready, to endeavour to act up to the principle, that no one should desire a gain which would involve a very much greater loss of happiness to others. Of course the loss of £1 involves much less loss of happiness to a rich man than to a poor man. And it would not be reasonable to ask working-men to abstain from a measure which would give them a net gain of £1 at the expense of a loss of 30s. to profits, unless it could be shown that this loss would react on wages in the long run. But many of them are willing to admit that no Union should adopt a course which will raise its own wages at the expense of a much greater total loss of wages to others; and if this principle be generally adopted as a basis of action, then nearly all the evil that still remains in the policy of Unions can be removed by such a study of economic science, as will enable them to discern those remote effects of their action "which are not seen,” as well as those immediate results "which are seen.”

Thus Union policy as a whole is likely to be economically successful provided Unionists as individuals and Power and rein their corporate capacity follow the dictates of sponsibility of morality directed by sound knowledge. In this public opinion. respect Unions derive an ever-increasing assistance from public sympathy and public criticism; and the more they extend the sphere of their undertakings by Federation and International alliances, the more dependent do they become on that sympathy and the more amenable to that criticism; the larger the questions at issue, the greater is the force of public opinion. Public opinion, based on sound economics and just morality, will, it may be hoped, become ever more and more the arbiter of the conditions of industry'.

1 The strength and the responsibility of public opinion as regard the modern developments of trade combinations of all kinds are discussed in an address by the present writer to the Economic Section of the British Association, which is republished in the Statistical Journal for Dec. 1890. And something further is said on the meaning of the phrase "a fair rate of wages " with special reference to Conciliation and Arbitration in an Introduction by him to Mr L. L. Price's Industrial Peace, a book which, supplemented by Prof. Munro's papers on Sliding Scales, throws much light on an important class of problems. The general history of Unions is told in the writings of Mr Howell and Mr Burnett, already mentioned, and in those of Prof. Brentano, also in the Reports of a Committee of the National Association for Promoting Social Science in 1860, and of the Royal Commission on Trades Unions in 1866–9. A great deal of information bearing on these and other questions discussed in this Chapter is being published (1892) by the Commission on Labour.

Among the many aspects of Unionism with which it has not been possible to deal at present are the subtler and more indirect influences of foreign competition; and the claim of Unions to aid, or sometimes even to compel the action of employers in Regulating Trade. No doubt there are occasions on which a trade cannot continue to produce at its full strength without forcing the sales of its wares on an inelastic market at prices disastrous to itself. But since every check to the production of one trade tends to throw others out of employment, what is called the Regulation of trade often tends to increase instability of prices, of wages and of employment in some directions more than it diminishes them in others; and its general adoption would probably increase the uncertainties of trade and of work. If we assume however that it is reasonable for those in a trade to try to regulate it, it seems to follow that the employed should have their say in the matter; and some slight weight must be conceded to that objection to Sliding Scales, which urges that under them wages are reduced when the employers accept lower prices, without the workers being consulted as to whether they would prefer to produce less, so that higher prices could be got and higher wages paid.

INDEX.

Words printed in Italics are technical terms; and the numbers immediately
following them are those of the pages on which they are defined.