itted to tax the
public be taken away.

If only we could find in any possible plan so excellent a solution of
the problem of labor monopolies as a reduction of the tariff offers us
in the case of trusts! The question is so complex a one that it is
hardly possible to consider it here, except very briefly. Certainly, if
we legalize combinations to restrict competition among capitalists, we
should among laborers as well. Indeed, the decay of the old common-law
principle, that such contracts were against public policy, and that such
combinations were punishable, has been more marked in the case of trade
unions than anywhere else. Besides this, as long as employers have the
right to kill competition in the purchase of labor, workmen should
certainly have the right to avoid competition in its sale. But to
prevent by force other competitors from taking the field, if they
choose, against any labor combination, is an infringement of the
personal liberty guaranteed to every man by the Constitution, and can by
no means be lawfully permitted.

If workingmen only understood how much the apparent gain when they win
in a strike is overbalanced by their loss in the higher prices which
they have to pay for the necessaries of life, and in the reduced demand
for labor, they would be as anxious to protect capital as they now
are--some of them--to injure it. The strikes make timid the men who have
capital to invest. They will not loan their money to business men,
builders, manufacturers, or any one who wishes to use it to employ
workmen, except at a higher rate of interest, to pay for the increased
risk. _Hence_, the cost of the capital used in production is greater,
and the price the public has to pay for the product must be greater.

Again, when men have to pay higher rates of interest for the money they
borrow they are slower to engage in new enterprises. Mr. A. a builder,
intended to put up a block of a dozen houses this season, which would
have tended to reduce rents; but the fear of strikes, with their
attendant damage and loss, has prevented him from borrowing money at
less than 8 per cent. interest. He concludes that, on the whole, this
will eat up so much of his profits that he will not build. Is it not too
plain to need proof that the _moral influence_ alone of the strikes has
robbed the workmen at every point? And this is one of a thousand cases
in a hundred different industries.

The plans we have discussed for the treatment