TRADE- UNIONS 4 1 



It has analogies in the distinctions between apothecaries, 

 general practitioners, and physicians, between solicitors and 

 barristers. It would be very inconvenient in any workshop if 

 the labourers were generally looking to promotion as mechanics, 

 nor will they ever desire it as a body ; but precisely as there 

 should be no legal impediment to a practitioner who wished to 

 become a physician, or to a solicitor who wished to become a 

 barrister, so there should be no legal, or rather illegal, disabilities 

 preventing a labourer from changing his condition or work. 

 Few of the unions, we imagine, would object to this; they object 

 to a labourer who remains a labourer, but does odds and ends of 

 their work. The objection will never be eradicated, but judged 

 by our rule the men would not be justified in striking against 

 the employment of one or more labourers in ways of which 

 they did not approve. 



There is yet one more form of interference with competition : 

 those who will not work on certain conditions, who are on 

 strike, bribe other men who are willing to work, not to do so. 

 This is indefensible, according to the rule laid down. The 

 union must not contract with any man, or body of men, to the 

 injury of a third person the master. If this simple rule could 

 therefore be enforced against men and masters, it would pre- 

 vent strikes against non-society men, and against the employ- 

 ment of labourers to do any special class of work. It would 

 remove the disabilities which, under unions as they are, do 

 weigh on labourers and similar competitors in the labour 

 market, and it would abolish the system of buying off competing 

 workmen during strikes. The coercion of non-society men by 

 what are sometimes called moral means would remain ; but 

 against this society at large is powerless in all ranks ; and we 

 warn all those who fancy that the unions are oligarchies ruling 

 tyrannically a disaffected multitude outside the pale, that the 

 competition of outsiders against the societies will not be much 

 more active than at present, when all coercion is at an end : for 

 incredible as it may seem, trade-unions are looked up to by the 

 mass of workmen of all grades as the champions of labour, 

 whose rules may injure individuals here and there, but on the 

 whole benefit the great majority. 



From what precedes it is already apparent that, in bargain- 



