FALLACIES IN THE TRADES-UNIONS ARGUMENT. 367 



cent more for labor and for materials ; consequently they would 

 continue to live in their old houses, thus reducing the quantity of 

 work to be obtained, thereby throwing hosts of workmen out of 

 employment, and causing a surplus of labor to be offered in the 

 market, to the depression of the wages of those mechanics who 

 have a chance to work. Further than this, in the end, a scarcity 

 of houses would ensue, causing an advance in rents, to the detri- 

 ment of all workmen who do not own the dwellings they live in 

 and must pay the advance in rents. The processes would be some- 

 what slow, and be combined with so many obscure influences, that 

 men would hardly know of any change, but after a few years they 

 would realize that somehow the number of people struggling for 

 a bare living had in no wise diminished, and the hardness of their 

 lot had been in no way ameliorated. 



That laboring-men are gradually coming to see the truth in 

 these things is seen in their changed views in relation to strikes. 

 A few years ago prodigious efforts were made to get . men to 

 strike. It was a favorite remedy with the leaders, and large 

 promises of grand results were made and believed in. The strike 

 was formerly the favorite panacea for keeping up prices of labor, 

 but to-day the long-headed and wise men in the labor movement 

 advise a resort to it only in cases of great aggravation, and not 

 then until after all other known remedies have proved ineffectual. 

 This change in sentiment could not have happened if former 

 strikes had met expectations. It is asserted by labor-men that 

 there is more distress among them than at any former time, and 

 the good old days of thirty and forty years ago, when strikes were 

 almost unknown, are pointed at as the true contrast of the pres- 

 ent. If strikes had measurably succeeded, there would have been 

 no ground for the assertion, for success could be proved only by 

 showing an improvement in the circumstances of the classes for 

 whose benefit they were instituted. If compensation after a strike 

 is no better than it was before, it can not be said that the strike 

 succeeded in securing better compensation ; and, on the other 

 hand, if compensation has been improved, the assertion that harder 

 times prevail now than formerly must be untrue, and there is no 

 reason why laboring-men should not keep on striking. 



But it is said, in reply to this, that strikes are not favored now 

 because the poverty of the working-classes is so extreme that a 

 portion will yield before the proper result can be attained. This 

 is the undoubted fact, and it is one which settles the case against 

 inaugurating strikes. Men can not succeed in anything where 

 their means are inadequate ; and so long as laborers are poor, they 

 can no more cease work long enough to make goods scarce than 

 they can build ships and go into the carrying-trade. The circum- 

 stance of poverty is fatal to the luxury of frequent strikes, and 



