204 CAN STEIKES KEALLY IMPROVE CONDITION OP THE MASSES? 



are actually on the land, but all who are directly or indirectly 

 engaged in providing the appliances or placing the product in 

 the market. A strike of the seamen who carry the coal, or of 

 the artificers who make the mining appliances, will fall on the 

 landlord as surely as will a strike of the actual miners, and for 

 the same reason, viz. : that it increases the cost of placing coal 

 in the market, and so leaves a less surplus available for rent. 

 In every department of industry, then, which is concerned in 

 supplying the raw material of wealth from the land, every 

 enforced rise of wages will be clear gain to the labourer, because 

 the loss will fall upon the landlord, and stay there. 



But in the secondary industries ; in those industries which 

 are concerned, not in extracting the raw materials of wealth 

 from the land, but in working up and distributing those 

 materials (as in manufactures and commerce), in which the 

 land is not an active factor, so to speak, in the work, but is 

 required only as a site, one site doing (within certain limits) as 

 well as another, where consequently trade competition is not 

 for possession of the land but for custom, and the competitors 

 run each other down in price instead of running each other up 

 in rent. In all these industries increased wages will signify 

 increased price of goods. 



But these goods again are of two kinds, those which the 

 masses consume, and those which they do not. On those which 

 they do not consume no increase of price will affect them. 



Few people realise how vast a proportion of the industry of 

 a rich country like England is concerned in providing luxuries 

 and enjoyments for the rich. Taking goods only, and 

 putting mere services aside, one has only to walk down the 

 street glancing in at the goods displayed in the shop-windows 

 to see that the greater part consists of goods quite out of 

 reach of the masses, and in which consequently no increase of 

 price will concern them. The butchers and bakers, the 

 grocers and the clothiers, are the chief shops which the masses 

 deal with, and even in these, in the two latter at any rate, the 

 greater quantity, whether measured in variety or in value, 

 consists of articles of luxury available only to the well-to-do • 

 while in many shops the display exhibited contains hardly a 

 single article within reach of the poor. 



In all those commodities, then, which the underpaid do not 

 consume, the loss due to increased wages will fall upon the 

 overpaid, and stay there, again leaving the whole net gain to 

 the labourer. 



Lastly we come to those goods which the masses do consume, 

 and which will rise in price. Here the strikers will suffer a 

 loss, but the loss will not equal the gain even on these goods. 

 In the case of primary products, such as food, the greater 

 part of the loss due to increased wages will, as we have seen 

 be deducted from the rent instead of added to the price. 



