554 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 
Inaba optey (3) If both parties are combined, their relative strengths will not be 
altered. 
(6) It is argued that under competition there is no downward limit to wages, 
save the least that will keep the workman and his family in life. But (1) this is 
untrue historically. Wage rates have differed and do differ enormously, and on 
the whole tend enormously upwards. (2) In the form of Ricardo’s iron law the 
argument-depends on an assumption as to population, and applies equally under 
combination. (3) Apart from an indefinite increase of population, wages seem no 
more to tend to a minimum than to a maximum. Competition of employers as 
much keeps them up as competition of workmen keeps them down. 
(c) In particular it is argued that the subsistence level of the lowest workman 
fixed the wage rate. This is fundamentally untrue. The economically strongest 
workman required fixes the rate for the rest. 
(d) It is argued that it is possible to raise wages to a conventional standard of 
living above the de facto scale of subsistence. This is a travesty of Ricardo. 
(ec) It is argued that trade unions may raise wages as capitalistic combinations 
raise prices. But (1) is there any reason to suppose that capitalistic combinations 
benefit capitalists as a whole? The Steel Trust gains at the expense of steel 
users. (2) The necessity for combination arises where there is an on-cost. Thus, 
without combination it might pay railways to compete for any additional traffic 
that would pay the charges incidental to itself and contribute anything, however 
little, to fixed charges. But labour has no on-cost. (3) Capitalistic combinations 
can control the output. Trade unions cannot limit the supply of men. 
The true analogue of labour is a given quantity of perishable goods, and it is 
submitted that there is no way in which such can he disposed of for so large a 
total price as by competition of both buyers and sellers. Any attempt to exact 
more than a competitive price necessarily means that some remain unsold. In 
the sphere of labour, the demand—1.c., the capital—is taken to some other coun-, 
try, and the unemployed workmen, besides the injury to themselves, are a stand- 
ing menace, as potential blacklegs, to the rest. 
It is argued that it may be more profitable to support some men in idleness 
than to lower the rate by suffering their competition; but, e.g., would the home 
producer ever apply that argument to his foreign competitor? 
Nor is it an answer to say that a transference from profits to wages will in- 
crease spending power and so stimulate trade. 
It is argued that lessened profits promote economy and efficiency of manage- 
ment (and in particular the introduction of machinery). This is just the old 
argument that low wages make men work harder, and is not very consistent with 
the modern argument that high wages promote efficiency. 
By lessening the demand for labour trade unionism (a) lessens employment ; 
(b) produces sweating; (c) in addition to general, intensifies periodic, or cyclical, 
unemployment. The proper remedy for lessened demand is, as in the sale of 
stocks or commodities, an all-round diminution of price, not a suspension of trans- 
actions. Other evils are (d) restriction of output; (e) limitation of apprentices; 
(/) opposition to labour co-partnership or any scheme, however beneficent, which 
is believed to impair the efficiency of the strike weapon ; (q) opposition to ameliora- 
tive or regenerative work, of charitable agencies or in prisons, in which, from the 
nature of the case, the standard wage cannot be given; (/) the development of 
the ideal, according to which labour contracts are adjusted between a joint board 
of employers and a union, and the idea of the general strike mean (1) that good 
employers are no better off than bad, (2) that the whole of an industry may be 
paralysed because a single workman is alleged to belong to the wrong union. 
5. The Nationalisation of the Western Railroad. By M. Yves Guyor. 
Was the purchase by the State of the West of France railroad caused by a 
desire to reduce expenditure and to improve the means of transit? No; but 
following the elections of 1906, M. Clemenceau, then Prime Minister, felt a desire 
to give some satisfaction to the Socialist and Radical-Socialist parties by ‘ socialis- 
ing’ something. In November he handed in a proposal for the purchase of the 
Western line. What was the argument put forth in favour of State ownership? 
