to take less, he is forced to move to a place where there is no union, or is forced out of the trade entirely.  In the latter case he probably is compelled to take a lower wage than he could get in his regular occupation.  Likewise, this change artificially increases the pressure of competition and reduces the wages of others in the occupation to which he turns.  So in the case of persons prevented from becoming apprentices in a trade, or kept from taking work by threats, or by the dread of boycott, or by the fear of violence, in any degree however slight, there is present an element of personal coercion by the organized laborers.  This is the price others are made to pay for a favorable effect on the wages of the organized laborers.  Now the strictly economic question concerns merely the part as to the effects upon wages, and the economist (as such) is going outside of his special field when he pronounces on the moral rectitude (and the desirability in law) of such acts and policies.  One who fully shares the feelings of the organized workers will believe that the winning of a strike or the general improvement of the strikers’ condition is so important that it outweighs the evils to other individuals and to society as a whole.  Indeed, to one in that state of mind the evils appear very small or nonexistent.  The economist can only issue the warning that the commonest illusion he encounters is the belief of each class—­commercial, banking, manufacturing, wage-earning—­that what is for its particular interest is, in a peculiar manner, for the general interest, so much as to justify favoring legislation or special exemption from the general law, or even sheer lawlessness.

Sec. 16. #The public’s view of unions.# We may, however, observe the view of the onlooker striving to be impartial.  The attitude of the public in labor disputes, and particularly in regard to the closed shop, is a vacillating one.  The general public sympathizes in large measure with the unions in their efforts up to a more or less uncertain point; but the public does not like to see organized labor with the power to dictate terms absolutely to the employers any more than it likes to see employers crush the union.  The unions are effective in varying degrees in strengthening the bargaining power of the workers, and accordingly the results vary not merely in degree but in kind.  The public wishes to see “fair play,” and up to a certain point the union is a device to get fair play.  In truth, what is in the public’s thought, somewhat vaguely, is approval of unions so far as they go to establish a real equality in competitive bargaining with the employers, but disapproval where the power of the union gets greater and becomes monopolistic.  It is at this point that organized labor loses the sympathy of most of “the general public” outside of unions.  When the union tries to force a higher wage than the market will warrant, when it strives not to establish but to defeat competition, the public condemns.  It sees, tho not quite clearly, that such action makes an unstable equilibrium of wages which tempts to constant friction and discord with employers and with unorganized laborers.  It sees also that if the unions force a wage higher than a fair and open market affords, this is rarely done at the expense of the employer; that in the long run it is at the expense of the purchasing public itself, including the unprivileged workmen.[11]