dollars a day, there would be fewer houses erected than would be
erected if they charged three dollars; and the same thing is true
everywhere. The amount of labor to be done in any field of employment
varies constantly with changes of cost, and making labor more costly
in a particular department reduces the amount of its product that can
be sold.

A trade union often finds that there are too many workers in its field
to be constantly employed at the rate of pay it establishes. The
result is partially idle labor; the men work intermittently, and
though the high wages they get for a part of their time may compensate
them for idle days or weeks, the idleness which is the effect of the
oversupply is inevitable.

A given number of workers in the group which makes A''' when the wages
are three dollars a day becomes an excessive number when the wages are
five, and even if the high wages do not attract men from without and
make the absolute number of workers greater than before, employment is
not constant. The ca'-canny policy is a transient remedy for this. It
is an effort to avoid the necessity for partial idleness and for the
transferring of laborers to other occupations. All the labor may, for
a time, remain in its present field if it will afflict itself with a
partial paralysis. For a while the demand for the product of the labor
will be sufficient to give more constant employment. Time is required
for the full effect of the product-limiting policy to show itself in a
falling off of the consumption of the goods whose cost is thus
increased. When it comes the evil effect of the policy will appear. If
a union were strong enough to keep a monopoly of its field, in spite
of the greater efficiency of laborers that are free to work in a
normal way, it would be strong enough to maintain much higher pay for
its own members if it limited the number of them and encouraged them
to work efficiently. The strongest conceivable union must lose by
substituting the plan of paralyzing labor for that of restricting the
number of laborers. The union may choose to take the benefit of its
monopolistic power by keeping an unnecessarily large number of men in
constant employment, rather than by getting high wages for efficient
work; but in that case any union but one the strength of which is
maintained in some unnatural way is likely to come to grief by the
great preference it creates for non-union labor. The independent shop
will get the bette