r for the sale of his
labour, but between a large company or union of employers on the one
hand, and a union of workmen on the other. The last few years have
consolidated and secured this relation in the case of such powerful
staple industries in England as mining, ship-building, iron-work, and
even in the weaker low-skilled industries the relation is gradually
winning recognition.

Sec. 7. Probabilities of Industrial Peace.--This concentrative process at
work in both capital and labour, consolidating the smaller industrial
units into larger ones, and tending to a unification of the masses of
capital and of labour engaged respectively in the several industries, is
at the present time by far the most important factor of industrial
history. How far these two movements in capital and in labour react on
one another for peace or for strife is a delicate and difficult
question. Consideration of the common interest of capital and labour
dependent on their necessary co-operation in industry might lead us to
suppose that along with the growing organization of the two forces there
would come an increased recognition of this community of interest which
would make constantly and rapidly for industrial peace. But we must not
be misled by the stress which is rightly laid on the identity of
interest between capital and labour. The identity which is based on the
general consideration that capital and labour are both required in the
conduct of a given business, is no effective guarantee against a genuine
clash of interests between the actual forms of capital and the labourers
engaged at a given time in that particular business. To a body of
employes who are seeking to extract a rise of wages from their
employers, or to resist a reduction of wages, it is no argument to point
out that if they gain their point the fall of profit in their employers'
business will have some effect in lowering the average interest on
invested capital, and will thus prevent the accumulation of some capital
which would have helped to find employment for some more working men.
The immediate direct interests of a particular body of workmen and a
particular company of employers may, and frequently will, impel them to
a course directly opposed to the wider interests of their fellow-
capitalists or fellow-workers. But it is evident that the smaller the
industrial unit, the more frequent will these conflicts between the
immediate special interest and the wider class