r that, in a very true
sense, practically all men are laborers. That into which a man puts his
energy and by which he earns his living, is his labor, whether it be
work of the hand or the head. But the labor we are to consider in this
chapter is that of the men who work for wages; and we will also make the
arbitrary distinction that it is that of the men who work for wages in
some branch of manufacturing, mining, trade, or transportation, the
great divisions of modern industry which we have thus far considered.

Almost all these monopolies employ large amounts of capital in carrying
on their business; and in the popular speech, "monopolist" and
"capitalist" are often used interchangeably. It is a very common belief
that monopolies are confined to the capitalized industries of
production, transportation, and trade, which we have already considered;
but we are now confronted by the fact that the wage-workers in the
various trades of the country are engaged in exactly the same
monopolistic schemes, in which they have exactly the same ends in view
as have the monopolists who combine millions of dollars' worth of
capital to effect their purposes. On the one hand we have the Standard
Oil Trust and the Railroad pools and the hundreds of other capitalistic
combinations striving to benefit the producer at the expense of the
consumer; while among those whose only capital is their strength and
skill, we find the workers in all the various trades, and even some of
the lower grades of laborers firmly banded together with the avowed
purpose of raising their wages above those which they would receive if
competition alone determined the rate. And they are successful, too.
Notwithstanding the fact that they deal with tens of thousands of
producing units where the combiner of capitalized interests deals with
tens, the success achieved by the combinations of labor is quite
comparable with that reached by combinations of capital. It speaks
volumes for the intelligence and ability of the wage-workers of the
present day--yes, and for the growth of the spirit of fraternity; that
in the advancement of what they deem a just and righteous cause, they
should voluntarily put themselves under discipline and endure patiently
the untold hardships of uncounted strikes, often brought on in the
unselfish work of aiding their brother laborers against what they deem a
common enemy.

The modes in which the combinations of skilled laborers attain their
de