TRA DE- UXIONS 53 



tion were imposed wages would fall so rapidly that really the 

 benefit to those admitted into the trade would vanish, and that 

 the union is acting kindly in preventing lads from embarking 

 in a trade in such numbers as would prevent them from ever 

 earning a comfortable livelihood. Specious this, but false as 

 most arguments are which attempt to prove that a rule devised 

 for your own benefit really benefits the person against whom 

 it is aimed. It would no doubt be pleasant for skilled work- 

 men to possess a monopoly of their trades, and only to admit 

 such numbers as would keep their wages at a comfortable rate. 

 Administered with a little good sense, such a rule as this would 

 insure the existence of a class of well-to-do artisans ; but how 

 about those excluded ? No monopoly can be allowed for the 

 benefit of a privileged class of workmen who are to administer 

 the patronage as seems good to them, regardless of the poverty 

 of all applicants whom they refuse. Workmen compare their 

 trades to ships, which when full can receive no more with com- 

 fort ; but if a ship's crew, finding a crowd of famished creatures 

 on an island, told them, ' Really, good people, we should be most 

 inconveniently crowded if you came on board ; why, we should 

 have to be put on short rations, and you know you would not 

 like that yourselves ; ' the answer would be ' Have pity on us ; 

 short rations are not starvation, overcrowding is not abandon- 

 ment ; " and the crew would deserve hanging who left the 

 wretches behind rather than sacrifice some comfort. A low 

 standard of comfort, implying low wages, is an evil and a great 

 evil ; but it is a worse evil to create an artificially high standard 

 among the few, to the detriment of the many. Of course, rules 

 which simply prevented the accumulation of an undue number 

 of lads in one shop would be defensible enough, and educa- 

 tional restrictions might also be permitted, analogous to those 

 which fence round most of the learned professions. These 

 restrictions do limit competition ; but the members of the 

 several professions do not simply select praprio motu who shall 

 and who shall not be free to enter these profession?. Mr. 

 Roebuck told at Sheffield a pitiful story of an orphan lad ' sup- 

 posed to have suffered exclusion under one of these arbitrary 



1 It so happens, the lad was not excluded, but the uni;>n did a*k for his 

 exclusion. 



