914 REPORT—1890. 
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 
organised, 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 organisers of a Trust 
are averse to raising the price of its wares much above the normal or steady com- 
petition price. And the first point which courts of Conciliation 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 competition 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 substi- 
tuting 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. 
TA 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 em- 
ployed 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 employés on the other to restrict production. Such com- 
pacts 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 prepared 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 public 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 would lose as 
buyers more than they would gain as sellers. 
§ 20. Tosum up. It seems that one cause of the present strength of Protection 
in other countries is, that the earlier English economists lessened the force of the 
valid arguments against it by mixing them up with others which, though valid as 
regards England, did not apply without great modifications to new countries ; but 
economists of the younger generation, however fervent their devotion to Free 
Trade, seldom speak of Protection in new countries with the old, unmeasured bitter- 
ness, The change of mental attitude towards competition in this aspect is in @ 
