labor of any kind defeats itself by inducing free
labor to break over the barrier that is erected against it. The same
thing happens when we reduce the productive power of organized labor.
If, at a time when the premium that union labor bears above the
non-union kind is at a maximum, the policy of restricting products is
introduced, it so increases the inducement to depend on an independent
working force that there is no resisting it. The palisade which union
labor has built about its field gives way, and other labor comes
freely in. If the ca'-canny policy makes it necessary to pay ten men
for doing five men's work, the union itself will have to give place to
the independent men. No single good word can be said for the ultimate
effect of the policy as carried beyond the moderate limit required by
hygiene. Up to the point at which it will avert undue pressure upon
workers, stop disastrous driving and the early disabling of men, the
effect is so good as amply to justify the reduction of product and pay
which the policy occasions. Beyond that there is nothing whatever to
be said for it, and if it shall become a general and settled policy of
trade unions, it will be a clog upon progress and mean a permanent
loss for every class of laborers.

Notwithstanding all this, it must be true that some motive which can
appeal to reasonable beings impels workers to this policy. No plan of
action, as general as this, can be sustained unless some one, at least
transiently, gains by it. Workers have a tremendous stake in the
success of any plan of action they adopt, and they have every motive
for coming to a right conclusion concerning it. They are in the way of
getting object lessons from every mistaken policy, as its pernicious
effects become apparent, even though some local and transient good
effects also become evident. It is not difficult to see what it has
been that has appealed to so many laborers and induced them
voluntarily to reduce the value of their labor.

_A Common Argument against Product Restricting._--What is commonly
said of the policy is that it is based on the idea that there is a
definite amount of work of each kind to be done, and that if a man
does half as much as he could do, twice as many men will be employed
to do the whole amount. Nobody who thinks at all actually believes
that the amount of work of a given kind is fixed, no matter how much
is charged for it. If workers on buildings charged from five to ten