FALLACIES IN THE TRADES-UNIONS ARGUMENT. 365 



the end of twenty-five years at the same point whence it started. 

 In other words, limitation and curtailment of resources inevita- 

 bly tend to poverty, and development and use of resources surely 

 tend to prosperity and comfort. The limitations of the unions, 

 all of them, are on the line of non-accomplishment, and are avow- 

 edly designed to hinder or check production. They are adopted 

 on the theory that with less production wages will rise, and in the 

 rise of wages the laborer will receive as much compensation for 

 one day's labor as he otherwise would for two days' labor. 



Under certain contingencies, and for a time as to some individ- 

 uals, that may happen. In a temporary glut of the market, cur- 

 tailment of production is found to be a remedy, or a partial one, 

 for unduly low prices, but even then the laborer has to lose all 

 of the time needed to free the market from the excess of goods. 

 Labor as a whole gains nothing, but loses. The farmers who raise 

 only half a crop to the acre do not find in the long run that they 

 get as much money as their neighbors who raise a full crop, not- 

 withstanding there are short periods when hay which ordinarily 

 fetches twelve dollars per ton will bring twenty-five dollars. No- 

 body has ever seen a half-crop farmer permanently prosperous out 

 of the resources of his farm, and nobody has seen general prosper- 

 ity when half the laboring population was idle, or when the whole 

 laboring population was idle half the time. It is impossible in the 

 nature of things, because the rewards of labor all come from the 

 productions of labor, and when less is produced there must neces- 

 sarily be less to divide. The price of a ton of hay in the market 

 may go up from ten dollars to twenty, but the laws of production 

 and labor are not cheated, nevertheless ; for the way has not yet 

 been discovered by which the one ton will sustain the life of the 

 ox and the horse as long as the two tons will ; and in spite of the 

 double price the reduction in quantity is a dead loss to somebody, 

 and in the end comes out of the consumers of meat, who are all 

 taxed in higher prices they have to pay. 



The direct effect of less labor is fewer articles for use, comfort, 

 and luxury. This is the avowed purpose of the unions in trying 

 to compel all laborers to agree to a limit for the hours of labor. 

 They propose to sustain prices by creating comparative scarcity 

 of goods, and claim that thereby they can secure as many comforts 

 as before with shorter hours of work. But how ? If they work 

 enough faster, so as to make as many goods in six hours as they 

 before made in ten, they would save in hours, it is true, and get as 

 many goods. But this is not the aim. No scarcity would be at- 

 tained in that way, and consequently prices would not be raised ; 

 and the conditions of poverty and prosperity would remain pre- 

 cisely as they were. It would be simply a question whether it is 

 better on the whole to work leisurely or in a hurry, and unions 



