498 



NA TURE 



[September i8, 1890 



with the constant tendency of what had been regarded as private 

 and personal issues to become public and national. 



Public opinion acts partly through the Government. The 

 enforcement of the law in economic matters occupies the time of 

 a rapidly increasing number of people ; and though its adminis- 

 tration is improving in every way, it fails to keep pace with the 

 demands resulting from the growing complexity of economic 

 organization, and the growing sense of responsibility of public 

 opinion. A part of this failure is due to a cause which might 

 easily be remedied ; it is that the adjustment of punishment to 

 offences is governed by traditions descending from a time when 

 the economic structure of England was entirely different. This 

 is most conspicuous with regard to the subtler, or, as they are 

 sometimes called with unconscious irony, the more gentlemanly 

 forms of commercial fraud on a large scale ; for which the 

 punishment awarded by the law courts is often trivial in com- 

 parison with the aggregate gains which the breakers of the law, 

 whose offences can seldom be proved, make by their wrong- 

 doing ; and it is still more trivial in comparison with the aggre- 

 gate injury which such wrongdoing inflicts on the public. Many 

 of the worst evils in modern forms of competition could be 

 diminished by merely bringing that part of the law which relates 

 to economic problems of modern growth into harmony with that 

 which relates to the old-fashioned and well-matured economic 

 questions relating to common picking and stealing. And some- 

 what similar remarks apply to the punishments for infringements 

 of the Factory Acts. 



But at best the action of the law must be slow, cumbrous, and 

 inelastic, and therefore ineffective. And there are many matters 

 in which public opinion can exercise its influence more quickly 

 and effectively by a direct route, than by the indirect route of 

 first altering the law. For of all the great changes which our 

 own age has seen in the relative proportions of different economic 

 forces, there is none so important as the increase in the area from 

 which public opinion collects itself, and in the force with which 

 it bears directly upon economic issues. 



For instance, combinations of labour on the one side, and of 

 employers on the other, are now able to arrange plans of 

 campaign for whole trades, for whole counties, for the whole 

 country, and sometimes even beyond. And partly on account 

 of the magnitude of the interests concerned, partly because trade 

 disputes are being reduced to system, affairs which would be 

 only of local interest are discussed over the whole kingdom. 



The many turbulent little quarrels which centred more often 

 about questions of individual temper than of broad policy, are 

 now displaced by a few great strikes, as to which public opinion 

 is on the alert ; so that a display of temper is a tactical blunder. 

 Each side strives to put itself right with the public ; and requires 

 of its leaders above all things that they should persuade the 

 average man that their demands are reasonable, and that the 

 quarrel is caused by the refusal of the other side to accept a 

 reasonable compromise. 



This change is increasing fhe wisdom and the strength of each 

 side ; but the employers have always had fairly good means of 

 communication with one another ; it is the employed that have 

 gained most from cheap means of communication by press, by 

 railway, and by telegraph, and from improvements in their 

 education and in their incomes, which enable them to make 

 more use of these new and cheaper facilities. And while the 

 employers have always known how to present their case to the 

 public well, and have always had a sympathetic public, the 

 working classes are only now beginning to read newspapers 

 enough to supply an effective national working class opinion, 

 and they are only now learning how to present their case well, 

 and to hope much from, or care much for, the opinion of those 

 who are neither employers nor of the working classes. 



I myself believe that in all this the good largely predominates 

 over the evil. But that is not the question with which I am 

 specially concerned at present. My point is that, in the scientific 

 problem of estimating the forces by which wages are adjusted, 

 a larger place has to be allowed now than formerly to the power 

 of combination, and to the power of public opinion in judging, 

 and criticizing, and aiding that combination ; and that all these 

 changes tend to strengthen the side of the employes, and to help 

 them to get a substantial though not a great increase of real 

 wages ; which they may, if they will, so use as to increase their 

 efficiency, and therefore to increase still further the wages which 

 they are capable of earning, whether acting in combination 

 or not. 



And thus public opinion has a very responsible task. I have 



NO. 1090, VOL. 42] 



spoken of it as the opinion of the average man ; and he is very 

 busy, and has many things to think about. He makes great 

 mistakes, but he learns by all of them. He has often astonfshed 

 the learned by the amount of ignorance and false reasoning 

 which he can crowd into the discussion of a difficult question ; 

 and still more by the way in which he is found at last to have 

 been very much in the right on the main issue. He is getting 

 increased power of forming a good and helpful opinion, and he 

 is being educated in mind and in spirit by forming it, and by 

 giving it effect. But in the task which he is undertaking there 

 are great difficulties ahead. 



In an industrial conflict each side cares for the opinion of the 

 public at large, but especially for that of those whose sympathy 

 they are most likely to get : in the late South Wales strike, for 

 instance, the railway companies were specially anxious about the 

 good opinion of the shippers, and the engine drivers about that of 

 the colliers. And there is some fear that when party discipline 

 becomes better organized, those on either side will again get to 

 care less for any public opinion save that of their own side. 

 And if so, there may be no great tendency towards agreement 

 between the two sides as to what are reasonable demands. 



It is true that there is always the action of outside competition 

 tending to visit with penalties either side, which makes excessive 

 use of any tactical advantage it may have obtained. As we have 

 just noticed, the shrewdest organizers of a trust are averse to 

 raising the price of its wares much above the normal or steady 

 competition price. And the first point which courts of con- 

 ciliation and arbitration have to consider is, what are the rates 

 of wages on the one hand and of profits on the other, which are 

 required to call forth normal supplies of labour and capital 

 respectively ; and only when that has been done, can an inquiry 

 be properly made as to the shares in which the two should 

 divide between them the piece of good or ill fortune which has 

 come to the trade. Thus the growth of combinations and 

 partial monopolies has in many ways increased, and in no way 

 diminished, the practical importance of the careful study of the 

 influences which the normal forces of competition exert on 

 normal value. 



But it must be admitted that the direct force of outside com- 

 petition in some classes of wages disputes is diminishing ; and 

 though its indirect force is being increased by the increased 

 power which modern knowledge gives us of substituting one 

 means of attaining our ends for another, yet on the whole the 

 difficulty of deciding what is a reasonable demand is becoming \ 

 greater. The principles on which not only the average man, 

 but also an expert court of conciliation or arbitration should 

 proceed in forming their judgment, are becoming, in spite of the 

 great increase of knowledge, more and more vague and uncertain 

 in several respects. 



And there are signs of a new difficulty. Hitherto the general 

 public has been enlightened, and its interests protected by the ' 

 fact that the employers and employed when in conflict have each 

 desired to enlighten the public as to the real questions at issue ; 

 and the information given on one side has supplemented and 

 corrected that on the other : they have seldom worked together 

 systematically to sacrifice the interests of the public to their own, 

 by lessening the supply of their services or goods, and thus 

 raising their price artificially. But there are signs of a desire to 

 arrange firm compacts between combinations of employers on 

 the one side and of employes on the other to restrict production. 

 Such compacts may become a grievous danger to the public in 

 those trades in which there is little effective competition from 

 foreign producers : a danger so great that if these compacts 

 cannot be bent by public opinion they may have to be broken 

 up by public force. 



It is, therefore, a matter of pressing urgency that public opinion 

 should accustom itself to deal with such questions, and be pre- 

 pared to throw its weight against such compacts as are injurious 

 to the public weal, that is, against such compacts as are likely 

 to inflict on the pubhc a real loss much greater than the gain to 

 that trade ; or in other words, are of such a nature that if their 

 principle were generally adopted in all trades and professions, 

 then all trades and professions v.'ould lose as buyers more than 

 they would gain as sellers. 



I must now close this imperfect and fragmentary study. I 

 have endeavoured to give some illustrations of the changes which 

 are coming over economic studies. I believe that the great body 

 of modern economists think that the need of analysis and general 

 reasoning in economics is not less than our predecessors supposed, 

 but more. And this is because we think economic problems 



