104 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
sometimes true, that it is not the consumer who gains by the low price of 
labour, but the employer or some intermediary between the worker and 
the consumer. But whether this be the case or not, the worker sees no 
essential fairness in the fact that his low wages leave others with a pur- 
chasing power greater than they would otherwise possess. It is true, of 
course, that when he consumes the commodities that he helps to cheapen 
he gains with other consumers by their plenty, but, since the consumers 
of a commodity outnumber and are to some extent other than its 
producers, the gain to the worker is less than the gain to others. 
Plenty is generally an advantage to the community. We rejoice if 
land is plentiful in proportion to the population and rents are low. We 
should like capital to be plentiful and cheap, competing for employment 
at a low rate of interest. We are aware also that the owner of a limited 
supply of a commodity that becomes plentiful loses wealth as the con- 
sumer gainsit. Itis one of the anomalies of economic measurement that 
when a country becomes richer through an increased supply of certain 
goods, wealth as represented by those goods may be calculated as being 
less than before, because of the lowering of this exchange value. Plentiful 
crops, the discovery of mineral resources, enrich the world, but the value 
per bushel and per ton is decreased by the very plenty which increases 
general wealth. The owner of anything other than labour may be com- 
pensated, or more than compensated, by the greater amount he possesses. 
Not so the worker. Each worker is lord only of his own labour. His 
energy and his possible working hours are limited, and, given that he is 
using his energy through as many working hours as is compatible with 
efficiency, it is not in his power to balance the low value of each unit of 
energy by multiplying it. 
Recognition of this leads to limitation of output. There are, roughly, 
two ways in which men may increase their own wealth : by increasing or 
by decreasing production ; by adding to general wealth so greatly that 
they command more of it, or by making rare that portion of it which 
they control. Adult workers who have their youth and their training 
behind them have little power of doing the first, and fall back on the 
second. Through limiting output, erecting barriers against new-comers 
into their trades, they may successfully maintain or raise their own 
wages. From this point of view the objection of men to opening to women 
any new branch of industry is perfectly logical. If women be found 
capable of doing work formerly reserved for men, and are allowed to do 
it without let or hindrance, they will tend to have a depressing effect on 
the wage. Not because of their sex, but because of their number. Their 
exclusion from many trades makes their entry to any single trade 
formidable ; they are jealously excluded from one type of work because 
they are jealously excluded from others; thus they come to be considered 
natural blacklegs. 
The erection of barriers swells the numbers of those without and 
lowers their wages further. It may be said in parenthesis that, from 
this point of view, all rates of pay for women are abnormal, below the 
‘fair’ rate. Excluded from any one occupation, they lower wage rates 
in other occupations of the same grade, and if by such exclusion they are 
forced into the occupations of a grade below that to which they would 
otherwise belong they again lower the wage. If this line of thought be 
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