Sec. 12. #Competitive aspect of organization and particular wages.# A different question is presented as regards the influence of organization upon particular wages, and primarily upon the wages of organized labor.  The trade-union authority before cited says, “Where there are no unions wages should be lower.  This is exactly the case.”  And he quotes:  “Wherever we find union principles ignored, a low rate of wages prevails and the reverse where organization is perfect.”  But he later explains in part this difference:  “The union men are the best workmen and often employers pay a man more than union wages.  This is not surprising as no man can be a union carpenter unless he be in good health, have worked a certain number of years at his trade, be a good workman, of steady habits and good moral character.”  If this be true, as doubtless it is to some degree in many trades and places, it is in accordance with competitive principles that, as the elite of the trade, the organized laborers should get higher wages than those outside the unions.  Moreover, the unions exist mainly in the more populous places where costs of living as well as wages range higher than in the small towns and in the rural districts.  A comparison merely of wages in money in such cases is misleading as to the conditions of real income.  Further, a higher standard of output prevails in the cities where organization is greatest, and older men and the less efficient that are unable to “keep up the pace” drift away into unorganized shops or to villages where no standard union rate is in force.  So far as unions help to develop the intelligence and promote the sobriety and efficiency of their members, they are a positive economic force making for higher wages.  The book before quoted expresses, somewhat vaguely, an opinion in accord with these facts when it says:  “It is an error to think that the trade union seeks to determine the rate of wages.  It cannot do that.  It can do no more than affect them.”  And so, with organization as well as without, the wages of individuals and of classes of laborers are determined by the general principles of price as applied to their services.  Where neither the employer has a monopoly in his business nor the organized laborers have a monopoly of the labor supply, there is two-sided competition in the labor bargain, and organization may help to raise particular wages inasmuch as it acts in the competitive ways above mentioned and as it helps to restore to the laborers a truer equality of competition.

Sec. 13. #Monopolistic aspect of organization and particular wages.# The action of organized labor is not, however, limited to the competitive field, above discussed.  Wages in particular industries may, by the action of trade unions be raised and maintained above a true competitive rate.  This of course can be done only in accordance with the principles of the service-value to the consumer and of service-price in the employment-market.  The supply of labor