affect the differences between the wages of
different classes of laborers.

12. In order that any mode of adjusting wages may give fair
comparative rates, monopolies must be repressed; and this can only be
accomplished by measures which are independent of tribunals of
arbitration.

CHAPTER XXVII

BOYCOTTS AND THE LIMITING OF PRODUCTS

When free from the taint of monopoly, trade unions, as has been shown,
help rather than hinder the natural forces of distribution. Collective
bargaining is normal, but barring men from a field of employment is
not so. Connected with this undemocratic policy are certain practices
which aim to benefit some laborers at the cost of others, and thus
tend to pervert the distributive process.

_Restrictions on the Number of Members in a Trade Union._--If a trade
union were altogether a private organization, it might properly
control the number of its own members. Before it is formed all members
of the craft it represents are, of course, non-union workers, and the
aim of the founders is to "unionize the trade"--that is, to enlist, in
the membership of the body, as large a proportion as is possible of
the men already working in the subgroup which the union represents.
From that time on it can fix its own standard of admission, and allow
its membership to increase slowly or rapidly as its interests may seem
to dictate.

_How a too Narrow Policy defeats its Own End._--Very narrow
restrictions, while they keep men out of the union, attract them to
the trade itself. An extreme scarcity of union labor and the high pay
it signifies causes the establishment of new mills or shops run
altogether by non-union men. If these mills and shops are successful,
the union may later admit their employees to membership; and a series
of successful efforts to produce goods by the aid of unorganized labor
thus interferes with the exclusive policy of unions. The number of
their members grows in spite of efforts to the contrary.

_Free Admission to a Trade Equivalent to Free Admission to a
Union._--We may recognize as one of the principles in the case that
free admission to the craft itself involves free admission to the
union. When once men are successfully practicing the trade, the union
is eager to include them, though it enlarges its own membership by the
process.

_How a Government might prevent a Monopoly of Labor._--It is entirely
possible that a government might require trade unions to incorporat