TRADE-UNIONISM. 547 



is content with a small profit while Jones greedily demands 

 a large one, he regards Brown as the better fellow of the two. 

 See then how self-interest blinds him. Here are two trans 

 actions completely parallel in their essentials, of which the 

 one is regarded as utterly illegitimate, and the other as quite 

 legitimate. 



Still more startling becomes the antithesis if we make the 

 parallel closer. Suppose it true, as sometimes alleged, that 

 the lowered price of wheat does not lower the price of bread, 

 and that therefore bakers must have combined to keep it up. 

 As a buyer of bread, the artisan has no words too strong for 

 the bakers who, by their nefarious agreement, oblige him to 

 spend more money for the same amount of food than he 

 would otherwise do; and if he can find a baker who, not 

 joining the rest, charges less for a loaf in proportion to the 

 diminished cost of wheat, he applauds, and gladly benefits 

 by going to him. Very different is it if the thing to be sold 

 is not bread but labour. Uniting to maintain the price of it 

 is worthy of applause, while refusal to unite, followed by 

 consent to sell labour at a lower rate, is violently condemned. 

 Those who do the one think themselves honest, and calls 

 those who do the other &quot; blacklegs.&quot; So that the estimates 

 of conduct are in these two cases absolutely inverted. Arti 

 ficially raising the price of bread is vicious, but artificially 

 raising the price of labour is virtuous! 



If we imagine that the real or supposed bakers union, 

 imitating trade-unionists who break the tools of recalcitrant 

 fellow-workmen, should smash the windows of the non- 

 unionist baker who undersold them, the artisan, standing by, 

 and thinking that the police ought to interfere, might also 

 think that the sellers of bread are not the only persons con 

 cerned ; but that the buyers of bread have something to say. 

 He might argue that it is not wholly a question of profits 

 made by unionist and non-unionist bakers, but is in part a 

 question of how customers may be fed most cheaply : seeing 

 which, he might conclude that this violence of the unionist 



