AN INDUSTRIAL OBJECT LESSON 727 



the dominant idea, strongly accentuated in all unionist literature, 

 that there is a given amount of work to be done in this world, and 

 not enough to go around; that the unionist, by arbitrarily limiting 

 individual output, can thereby increase the demand for labor, and 

 thus increase the number and the wages of the employed. This pos- 

 tulate of trades-unionism is as old as trades-unionism itself. It has a 

 basis in humanitarianism which renders it praiseworthy as an ab- 

 stract proposition. But it is an abstraction which belongs to the past 

 century; which had its origin in the days when England held undis- 

 puted supremacy in the industrial world, and no combination of 

 events seemed likely to dislodge her from that vantage. It has be- 

 come an anachronism, just as England's supremacy has become a 

 myth; and the same causes have produced the two results. If the 

 commercial isolation of nations which formerly existed continued, 

 the postulate of the engineers would be understandable. If English 

 workmen still made machines for all the world, these hard-headed 

 workmen might well have staked their all upon such an issue with 

 hopeful hearts. But the direct results of their six months' idleness 

 help to illustrate how far beyond their position the world has moved. 

 The suspension of work has been an enormously expensive affair, 

 not merely to the masters and the men, but to the nation. A 

 great hole has been made in British commerce, and it will never 

 be filled. Orders for machinery which the idle works in England 

 could not fill have gone to the continent, and in many instances 

 have come to the United States. The work has been done 

 as well as in England; in most instances it has been done cheaper 

 than England could have done it. The trade thus lost has gone for 

 good. The engineers have not merely lost six months' wages; they 

 have seriously crippled the wage-paying power of their industry. 

 From their own standpoint, instead of increasing the opportunities 

 for labor in England, they have reduced them. The abstract thing 

 they fought for they have lost; but their ultimate loss would have 

 been even greater had they won their battle instead of losing it. 



The difficulty with the English trades-unionist view, then, is the 

 failure to realize that the march of civilization has made the labor 

 question an international question. Their contest was not so much 

 with their employers as with their fellow-laborers in other lands. 

 It is the competition of the latter which makes it impossible for the 

 English iron masters to grant the eight-hour day, or to drag behind 

 the rest of the world in the application of labor-saving machinery. 



One writer, commenting upon the outcome of this strike, de- 

 clares that trades-unionism has lost by its defeat all that it has 

 gained by fifty years of constant contest. On the contrary, it would 

 seem possible that it may gain, by reason of its defeat, a clearer con- 



