TRADE-UNIONISM. 545 



Beyond question, then, these various parallelisms (along 

 with the absence of parallelism just named) prove identity 

 of nature between ancient and modern trade-combinations. 



829. The restrictionist is essentially the same in nature 

 whether he forbids free trade in commodities or whether he 

 forbids free trade in labour. I make this remark as intro 

 ductory to a parallel. 



~Not long since a member of parliament proposed that a 

 duty of ten per cent, should be imposed on imports in gen 

 eral. This was urged as a relief not for the agricultural 

 classes only but for all classes. What was the anticipated 

 effect? That if foreign goods were prevented from com 

 peting with English goods to the implied extent, English 

 producers would be severally enabled to obtain so much the 

 more for what they had to sell. There the inference stopped. 

 Every citizen was thought of as a producer, but what would 

 happen to him as a consumer was not asked. The extra 

 profit made by him was contemplated as so much to the 

 good, and there was no recognition of the fact that if all 

 other producers were similarly enabled to get higher prices, 

 the result must be that he, as consumer, would have to pay 

 these higher prices all round for the things he wanted : his 

 income would be raised, but his expenditure would be raised 

 in the same proportion. 



We need not wonder, then, if the members of trade-unions 

 are misled by a parallel fallacy. In each class of them 

 carpenters, bricklayers, engineers, calico-printers, weavers, 

 compositors, pressmen, &c. every worker thinks it an un 

 questionable advantage to get more in return for his work 

 than he might get without combination. He sees only the 

 extra amount of his wages, and does not see how that extra 

 amount is dissipated. But it is dissipated. Even by trade- 

 unionists it is now r a recognized truth that in any occupation 

 the rise of wages is limited by the price obtained for the 

 article produced, and that if wages are forced up, the price 



