is in a variety of ways artificially limited by the efforts of the unions.  It may be done temporarily by striking when a failure to fill orders will cause the employer exceptional loss.  Violence in strikes and boycotts is often the desperate attempt to create and assert a measure of monopoly power where of itself it does not exist, i.e., where other workers stand ready to take the jobs at the prevailing rates of wages.  Monopoly is created if apprentices are limited to fewer than in the long run would be attracted into the trade by the prevailing wages.  It is created if the unions artificially limit output to less than is consistent with the health of the worker.  Monopoly is created if unions strong enough to keep “scabs” from getting work, fix their dues high or put other obstacles in the way of increasing the membership.  Probably the most striking cases of high wages for organized labor are of this kind.  The element of labor-monopoly evidently is mingled in all degrees from the slightest to a very great amount, in particular economic situations.

Sec. 14. #Open vs. closed shop.# The question of labor monopoly is involved in the very crucial question of the closed vs. the open shop.  A closed shop (or union shop) is a shop in which no non-union men may be employed, even at union wages.  Its existence is evidence that the union is strong enough to compel the employer to act on this principle and thus virtually to force all his employees into the union.  The refusal of a demand for the closed shop is often the ground for a strike.  Where this is so unions usually assert that the closed shop is essential to the existence of the union.  If union and non-union men work side by side there are many ways in which the employer is able to discriminate so as gradually to break down the union.  If business slackens, the union man may be the first to be discharged; if any preference is given it is to the non-union man.  While this may be true, it would seem, on the other hand, that an unmodified closed shop, with the conditions of membership in the control of the union, creates a distinct monopoly of labor leaving the employer helpless in any wage dispute and enabling the union to enforce its every demand regardless of the competitive conditions of the labor-market for that class of services.

Sec. 15. #Political and economic considerations.# The question here takes on a broad aspect, Is the closed shop, and are the other policies of trade unions, morally right; and ought they to be legally sanctioned?  The answer to such questions is not for the economist alone to give.  The questions involve other than economic considerations.  They involve moral and political considerations—­not merely existing formal law, but the fundamental issue of personal liberty and of interference with the liberty of some citizens by another group acting without political authority.  For example, if a workman is unable to earn the standard rate[10] and is not permitted