secure “fairness” for the worker, it stimulates the employer wonderfully to efficiency.  The same result could never be secured so effectively by the free play of competition.  But this tendency, which is easily the predominant element in the trade union regulations of the cotton trade, is at least an important element in the policy of “The Common Rule” of all trade unions, though it may often be mixed up with the more questionable tendency to eliminate differences of pay for differences of natural ability, and the unquestionably bad tendency to discourage output.  As between different occupations, the insistence of a trade union that wages must be leveled up towards the wages obtaining in similar trades acts again as a far more powerful force than competition.

But the actions of trade unions are by no means wholly of this type.  They often serve rather to secure still higher wages for workers who, comparatively speaking, are already highly paid.  It makes little difference whether this effect is secured directly by wage demands, or indirectly by restricting the right of the entry to the trade.  In either case the consequences are the same, and there should be no ambiguity as to their nature.  They are certainly bad for the community, certainly bad for the other workers of the grade, almost certainly bad for the workers of the grade regarded as a whole.  The higher wages must raise the money costs of production, and result, sooner or later, in fewer workpeople being employed in that occupation; larger numbers must accordingly seek employment elsewhere; and this cannot but depress the wage rates of less strongly organized trades.  Thus the effect is twofold:  a larger proportion of workpeople will be employed in badly paid occupations; and the wages there will be lessened.

The power of a strong trade union to secure wage advances of this type is considerable, but it must not be exaggerated.  Trade unions employ as a matter of course devices which, in the case of trusts, we regard as the extremest weapons of monopoly.  To say, “If you buy from anyone except us, you must not buy at a lower price than ours,” which Messrs. J. & P. Coats are represented as having done, is analogous to insisting that if non-unionists are employed, it shall be at the trade union rate, as every trade union very properly insists.  To say, “You must buy only from us,” the method of the boycott, as it is called, is analogous to the very common refusal to work with non-unionists at all.  But in one important respect the tactical position of a trade union is weaker than that of an ordinary combination.  It has usually got a buyers’ combination up against it, in the shape of an association of employers.  The latter will be governed in their attitude towards the workpeople’s demands, not only by immediate expediency, but also by their own sense of “what should be”; and they will usually resist demands for wages greatly in excess of those obtaining in comparable trades.  In this way, the tendency for workers of the same efficiency to receive the same real wages in all employments is far stronger than might at first sight appear.