TRADE-UNIONS 31 



ivstrictions devised in the interest of the community. People 

 may think the laws affecting the joint-stock companies bad, 

 and may wish to change them, but no one complains that the 

 great powers of those companies are regulated by positive law. 

 If joint-stock companies were clearly injurious to the com- 

 munity, they might be and ought to be abolished to-morrow, 

 for there is no positive moral right to combine for the pur- 

 pose of trading, nor is there any positive moral right to com- 

 bine for the purpose of selling labour. Those who support 

 trade-unions must therefore argue thus : These unions raise 

 wages; they so far benefit the community by benefiting that 

 section of it which is most numerous and least well off. 

 Diminished profits to capital cause an evil which does not 

 outweigh the good of increased wages, especially as there is a 

 limit beyond which, if wages rise, the whole payment to the 

 working classes will diminish, so that they will learn by experi- 

 ence at what point consistently with the good of the community 

 their wages must cease for the time to rise. Their opponents, 

 granting, as some do, that the unions raise wages, contend that 

 by doing so they injure the consumer, first, by the direct 

 increase of cost of the goods which he buys ; and secondly, 

 by the indirect decrease of production likely to result from 

 diminished profits to capital. Unions raise prices and restrict 

 trade. If the prices of produce rise in all trades, the purchasing 

 power of the wages will remain the same, and the nominal 

 benefit to workmen will confer no real benefit, while the loss to 

 capitalists and annuitants will be doubled. It must, we think, 

 be admitted that if unions become very general and the wages 

 of the whole working classes rise, the purchasing power of the 

 wages will not increase so much as the nominal value of the 

 wages. But as the cost of produce does not wholly depend on 

 the wages paid in this country, nor wholly on wages paid any- 

 where, but partly on the profits of capital, it must equally be 

 admitted that the purchasing power of the wages will rise with 

 their nominal amount, though not equally, and there will result, 

 therefore, a tangible gain to the workman, and a loss to capital- 

 ists and annuitants. Looking at the relative position of the 

 rich and poor, we do not think that the permission to combine 

 should be withheld because it tends to diminish the present 



