TRADE-UNIONISM. 



to increase the cost of cultivation by giving higher wages, 

 would make farming unremunerative over a yet wider area. 

 Still more land would lie idle, and the demand for men 

 would be by so much decreased. Hence a combination to 

 raise wages would in many localities result in having no 

 wages. 



Now though in most businesses the restraints on the rise 

 of wages are less manifest, yet it needs but to remember how 

 often manufacturers have to run their machinery short 

 hours and occasionally to stop altogether for a time it 

 needs but to recall official reports which tell of empty mills 

 in Lancashire going to ruin ; to see that in other cases trade 

 conditions put an impassable limit to wages. And this in 

 ference is manifest not only to the unconcerned spectator, 

 but is manifest to some officials of trade-unions. Here is 

 the opinion of one who was the leader of the most intelligent 

 body of artisans the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. 



&quot; We believe, said Allan before the Royal Commission in 1867, 

 1 that all strikes are a complete waste of money, not only in relation 

 to the workmen, but also to the employers. &quot; 



On the workmen a strike entails a double loss the loss of 

 the fund accumulated by small contributions through many 

 years, and the further loss entailed by long-continued idle 

 ness. Even when the striker succeeds in obtaining a rise 

 or preventing a fall, it may be doubted whether the gain 

 obtained in course of time by the weekly increment of pay, 

 is equal to the loss suddenly suffered. And to others than 

 the workers the loss is unquestionable not to the employ 

 ers only, by absence of interest and damage to plant, but 

 also to the public as being the poorer by so much product 

 not made. 



But the injury wrought by wage-earners combinations is 

 sometimes far greater. There has occasionally been caused 

 a wide-spread cessation of an industry, like that which, as 

 shown above, would result were the wages of rural labourers 

 forced up. And here, indeed, we come upon a further par- 



