TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 553 
’ What are the causes of this unrest? ‘The great centres of industry are too 
congested and expensive for the workers; their housing conditions are unsatis- 
factory, the privacy of home life almost impossible, the expense and distractions 
of town life, as well as high rents and taxes, are a burden on them. 
Employers are faced with the irritating restrictions of trade-unions, liability 
for accidents, insurance of workmen, restraint of Government supervision, and 
a growing taxation, all of which represent increased on-cost charges, and these, 
with a rising wages bill, are a heavy tax on production. 
The pressure and expansion of industrial progress now demand the severest 
economies in every phase of industry, as evidenced by the extended application 
of power to supersede manual labour and by the conservation of the commercial 
value of by-products hitherto considered as beneath notice. In the matter of 
power—the mainspring of all industry—inventors vie with each other in the 
pursuit of economies. 
Coal, with the advent of the steam engine, meant cheap power, and the 
presence of coal and iron ore and shipping facilities in certain localities largely 
explains the origin and location of our great industrial centres to-day. 
Probably coal must ever be our greatest source of energy, but the increasing 
cost of it demands economy in its use, and hence the attention being given to 
other sources of power. Our water-power possibilities are as yet undeveloped, 
and by means of high tension electrical transmission hydro-electric energy can 
now be sold in favourable localities at probably about one-half the expense of 
power from coal. 
It is manifest therefore that where cheap hydro-electric power can be 
generated, where raw material can be got or can be imported—as much of it now 
is—where sea and rail facilities are available, where labour can be got or can be 
attracted by reason of healthy and economical conditions of living, industrial 
development is eminently practicable, and nowhere in Great Britain do these 
conditions exist to such a marked extent as on the seaboard of the Highlands of 
Scotland. 
This locality has hydro-electric possibilities estimated at a million horse- 
power, it has an indented and sheltered coast-line fer shipping and ample rail 
and road facilities, an equable climate, and a healthy, sturdy population unfor- 
tunately being attracted overseas by our competitors there. 
The Government policy of afforestation should be associated with that of 
water-power development. The funds in the hands of the Development Com- 
missioners might also be made available in this direction, and, with the secondary 
possibilities of the land, the necessary stimulus would be provided for an indus- 
trial awakening in the Highlands of Scotland, for which, both by natural and 
by geographical location, they are so eminently adapted. 
3. Dumping as it affects the Steel and Tin Plate Industries of South 
Wales. By J. H. Jones. 
4. Do Trade Unions raise Wages on the Whole? By A. A. MitrcHe.u. 
Trade unions aim not at increasing the total product, but at obtaining a larger 
share for labour at the expense of other factors of production. For the purpose 
of this paper that is assumed to be a good thing. Whether the total sum paid 
in wages will be greater under free competition or under combination enforced 
by strikes has been described by Professor Ashley as one of the open questions 
of economics. : 
The trade-union argument takes various forms. (a) It is argued that combina- 
tion is necessary to put the workman on an equal footing in bargaining. But 
(1) the question is whether combination is in fact a help or a hindrance. (2) The 
inequality is denied. In a trial of endurance, no doubt, the employer may be 
able to hold out longer by converting his capital into a fund for his own sub- 
sistence, but in employing it as capital he is as dependent on his workmen as they 
on him, The alleged inequality therefore exists only in a régime of strikes and 
