462 LABOUR, WAGES, AND TRADES' UNIONS. 



IV Combinations amongst workmen cannot raise the market price of 

 labour; their natural tendency being rather to depreciate it. 



If the whole labour of the country were fully employed in different 

 manufactures, and a perfect unity and understanding were to exist, 

 not only between the individual members of the different manufac- 

 tures, but between the several bodies of trade, not to interfere or offer 

 any competition with one another, they might increase their demand 

 for wages to almost any conceivable price which the riches of the 

 country could afford. Under such circumstances, combination would 

 be successful for a time, in producing a considerable advance of 

 price. But, fortunately for the world, and for the deluded persons 

 who hope by combination to increase their wages beyond their fair 

 exchangeable value, such circumstances never have, and never can be, 

 found to exist. In the first place, the available labour of the country 

 is not at any time fully occupied ; and in the second place, whatever 

 union or combination may exist between the members of particular 

 trades, and particular grades of those trades, not to interfere with one 

 another's profits, such an union can never be made to hold between 

 the bodies of different trades, nor even between the different grades of 

 the same business. If, therefore, any particular class of workmen 

 were to combine and stand out for an increase of wages, and every 

 individual of them were to agree, and stick to his agreement, not to 

 work until such increased wages were given them, what would be the 

 consequence? The master manufacturer would at the utmost be put 

 to a temporary inconvenience ; the public would, perhaps, remotely 

 feel the effects of that inconvenience. But it would not be long before 

 a supply of hands would be found out of employment, or working in 

 other trades, or in other branches of the same trade, at lower wages, 

 who would gladly take the place of the refractory workmen. Their 

 place would be easily filled up by hands hitherto in a still lower grade 

 of employment, and at low r er wages, till at last a quantity of new 

 hands would be called into operation, from hitherto unemployed 

 sources j whilst those who first refused to work are, probably, for a 

 long time left to a precarious existence upon what resources they may 

 have saved. But mark the consequence still further for the change 

 does not stop here. The refractory workmen being now if they 

 have had resolution to stand out so long effectually forestalled by 

 other hands, there is not the remotest hope of their getting the in- 

 creased wages offered them which they demanded. But more the 

 market being now fully stocked with hands (as sooner or later it 

 must be), there is very little or no demand at all for their services, 

 even if they were willing to take employment on the original terms. 

 There is now a double supply of hands in their particular depart- 

 ment, and such is the force of competition that the instant they 

 are reduced by poverty to offer themselves to their former employers, 

 the price of wages must fall below what they were before ; so that 

 what with the competition of the new hands, who would be willing 

 to take much less wages than they do, rather than the still low wages 

 of their former occupation, and would therefore be continually under- 

 bidding them rather than lose their employment, and what with 



