153 REPOHT — 1875. 



The employed, on the other haad, confidently appeal to past experience, and 

 point to the fact that almost every increase of wages has been due to the 

 action of trade-unions. They say that without combination workmen 

 cannot secure tlie market-price of their labour, but are to a certain extent at 

 the mercy of their employers ; that in trades where one establishment 

 employs a large number of workmen the employers can discharge a single 

 workman with comxjaratively slight inconvenience, while the workman loses 

 his whole means of subsistence ; that without the machinery of com- 

 bination the workmen, being dependent upon their daily work for their daily 

 bread, cannot hold on for a market. 



Your Committee are not prepared to deny that combinations can render 

 iiscful service in matters of wages ; but they think that it is impossible for 

 them to frustrate or alter the operations of the laws of supply and demand, 

 and thereby to affect permanently the rates of wages. Combinations may 

 hasten the action of those laws which would undoubtedly, though perhaps 

 more slowly, operate their own results. The limited power of combinations 

 is in effect admitted by the workmen themselves. "We do not say," said 

 one of the workmen's representatives, " that trade-unions can absolutely 

 interfere with supply and demand, because when trade is very bad they 

 cannot obtain the standard ; when it is good they easily raise the standard. 

 "What they do is, they enable workmen sooner to strike at the right time for 

 a general advance. They get the advance sooner than if they were an 

 undisciplined mob, having no common understanding ; and when trade is 

 receding, the common understanding enables workmen to resist the pressure 

 put upon them by their employers. It helps them in both ways, and the 

 workmen find they can act together beneficially." The ground here taken 

 by the working men is not at variance with sound economic principles. 

 Eut there is yet another way in which trade-unions may prove useful, and 

 that is by rendering wages more sensitive to the faction of the state of the 

 market, and so preventing the influence of custom to stand in the way of 

 the operation of supply and demand ; for there are such occupations, as 

 agriculture, where custom often exercises imperious rule oven upon wages. 

 As it has been well said by M. Batbie, " Wages do not change unless the 

 causes for the change exercise a strong influence. If the conditions of supply 

 and demand do not undergo a groat change, wages continue the same by 

 the simple force of custom. The variations of wages are not like those of 

 a thermometer, where the least clouds are marked, where one can read the 

 smallest clianges of temperature. They may rather be compared to those 

 bodies which do not become heated except under the action of an elevated 

 temperature, and remain quite insensible to the slight modifications of the 

 atmosphere. Until a great perturbation takes place in the conditions of 

 supply and demand, no one would think of changing the rate of wages " *. 

 After making every allowance your Committee cannot admit that combinations 

 have any power cither to raise permanently the rate of wages or to prevent 

 their fall when the conditions of trade require the same, as recent experience 

 jibundantly shows ; and whilst admitting that combinations may be bene- 

 ficial in accelerating the action of economic laws, your Committee cannot be 

 blind to the fact that they produce a state of irritation and discontent which 

 often interferes with the progress of production. 



Limited as is the power of combinations to affect the rates of wages, still 

 more limited is their power to affect materially the progress of productive 

 industry. The Royal Commission on Trade-Unions reported that it was 



* See M. Batbie's article on " Salaires " iu Block's ' Dictionnaire de la Politique.' 



