160 
president’s ADDRESS — SECTION G. 
“ That may be very true,” the miners reply ; “but higher wages 
you must pay ; and if that is impossible at the present selling price 
of coal, you must raise the price until it becomes possible.” 
And that is also the position taken up by the English miners in 
the recent coal strike. 
N ow, is that policy practicable? And if practicable, is it 
desirable in the general interest ? 
To object that it is “ contrary to the law of demand and supply” 
is to talk nonsense. That, if it means anything at all, can only mean 
that the thing will not be done as long as the people concerned do not 
choose to do it, but prefer to leave prices and wages to be settled by 
market bargaining. But suppose they do choose to do it ? Suppose 
that all coal-miners combine in a refusal to work at wages below a 
certain rate; or that the employers combine in an agreement not to 
sell coal below a certain price, and to pay higher wages out of the 
raised price; then, the thing will be done. But would it, on the 
whole, produce more good or harm if done? That is a doubtful and 
difficult question. The raised price will cause some contraction of 
demand, and consequent loss of employment in the trade, especially 
in that part of it which supplies foreign markets. That will be bad 
for the miners thrown out of work, and bad for the men in other low- 
paid trades, with whom they will be driven to compete. How far will 
that contraction go ? 
The raised price will also mean a loss to all who buy coal, whether 
for household use or as a means of production ; and that loss will fall 
in part on low-paid workers. How much distress will that cause? I 
cannot answer these questions ; but they must be answered before we 
can strike the balance of good and harm to the community. 
Even when a trade union is successful in improving the conditions 
of its own members, that is no gain — it is more likely to be a loss — to 
the majority of unskilled and unorganised workers ; that is, precisely 
to those who suffer most from the evil of low wages. Every successful 
attempt of a trade union to fix a higher minimum wage for its own 
members tends doubly to depress this class; it raises the price of 
some necessaries which they buy, and, so far as it diminishes employ- 
ment in its own trade, it thrusts more people down to swell the 
residuum of unskilled labour, and further reduce by their competition 
the wages of this lowest class. If a union of coal-miners or shearers 
succeeds in fixing a satisfactory* minimum for its own members, that 
in no way benefits, and probably to some extent injures, the casual 
labourers and the workwomen in the clothing trades, whose needs are 
presumably as large, but whose means are smaller. 
It would seem, then, that if anything is to be done for the class 
below the aristocracy of trade unionism— the class which needs help i 
most and gets least — it must be done by some other agency ; and it 
is difficult to find any other agency for the purpose than that of 
Government. 
Eor direct Government interference we are hardly yet prepared. 
It would sound strange if anyone here, and now, were to propose that 
Government should forbid, for instance, the employment of sewing 
women, or any other class of workers, at a lower wage than Gd. an 
hour. 
