TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 749 



It i.^ lifkl in tbi,^papPT tliat tberp is not an iiioli of groaad wlipr.> tlm la-w of 

 supply aud demand ceases to operate : it is a law of tendency only, but always to 

 an exact ^jomf, not to a plane of prices. Mill's correction is not only unnecessary 

 but untrue in fact. The initiative is not an advantage, but a disadvantage in 

 bargaining. Though the law of supply and demand does not fix the terms of 

 every individual bargain exactly, Mr. Mill's remedy, combination, greatly increases 

 the area of indeterminateness. 



Mr. Alfred Marshall in his ' Economies of Industry ' says that an employer is a 

 much larger unit than bis men individually ; that the workmen are poor audknown 

 to have no reserve price ; and that therefore union among the men is necessary. 

 These propositions cannot be accepted. Wages are not low because workers are 

 poor and uncombined, but because there are many competing for the iob. 



Mill and Marshall are wrong in approving of trades unions, and, as Mill puts 

 no limits to the area in which he holds the law to be inoperative, we might suppose 

 that area to be indefinitely large ; it might indeed cover almost the whole field, 

 and the law of supply and demand be banished from all discussion of labour 

 questions. 



And it is the case that in the economic journals, in the wi-itings of the 

 younger economists and in the constitutions of societies to help the working 

 classes, the idea of there being a law working automatically to a just and satis- 

 factory division is almost, if not quite, absent. Satisfactory division is to be 

 secured through investigations into facts and statistics, and a Government depart- 

 ment is suggested to collect these, which one economist speaks of as ' a necessary 

 preliminary to all social progress.' 



This view is held to be erroneous. Investigations are not required to give us 

 the proper price of iron or cotton, and there is no good reason why they should be 

 necessary in regard to the wages of labour. Adam Smith had hardly any figures 

 and no facts but such as were patent to everybody. 



The want of belief in this equalising law of supply and demand is shown in the 

 ready acceptance of complaints of grievances in particular trades. It is forgotten 

 that all trades have peculiar conditions, but that all tend to an equality of advan- 

 tage ; that the so-called grievance is certainly counterbalanced by some advantage. 

 ^ No human power could make such investigations as would enable it to make 

 a just distribution of the products of industry. Omniscience and omnipotence 

 would be needed for the task, and the law of supply and demand alone has these 

 qualities. A belief in the beneficent and effective operation of that law in the 

 labour market and the practical repudiation of it by economists and philanthro- 

 pists is the chief difference between these classes of which Mr. Goschen spoke. 



2. The Decline of Natality in Great Britain. 

 By Edwin Cannan, M.A., LL.D. 



Between 1876 and 1900 the birth-rate of England aud Wales fell from 36 to 

 29'3 per thousand, but as this rate is calculated on the whole population, it cannot 

 be trusted to show changes iu natality. These may be measured roughly by 

 comparing the births of each year witti the number of persons born, say, twenty-six 

 years before. The ratio of the births of 1877 to those of 1851 was 144 to" 100. 

 Since then the ratio has fallen steadily, till that of 1900 to 1874 was only 108-3 

 to 100. The ratio between the births and the survivors of the persons born 

 twenty-six years before and stiU remaining in this country probably fell still 

 more. 



The decline of natality does not seem to have been due to a decline of nuptiality, 

 but to the fact that the average number of children resulting from each marriao-e 

 has diminished. To compare the marriages of each year with the births in that 

 year is misleading, but it is possible to get a useful result by substituting for the 

 marriages of each year a figure in which due weight is given to the marriages of 

 previous years. The following table gives the ratio between the legitimate birth.s 

 of each year and a weighted marriage figure equal to the sum of 2-5 per cent, of 



