roduction, and result,
sooner or later, in fewer workpeople being employed in that
occupation; larger numbers must accordingly seek employment elsewhere;
and this cannot but depress the wage rates of less strongly organized
trades. Thus the effect is twofold: a larger proportion of workpeople
will be employed in badly paid occupations; and the wages there will
be lessened.

The power of a strong trade union to secure wage advances of this type
is considerable, but it must not be exaggerated. Trade unions employ
as a matter of course devices which, in the case of trusts, we regard
as the extremest weapons of monopoly. To say, "If you buy from anyone
except us, you must not buy at a lower price than ours," which
Messrs. J. & P. Coats are represented as having done, is analogous to
insisting that if non-unionists are employed, it shall be at the trade
union rate, as every trade union very properly insists. To say, "You
must buy _only_ from us," the method of the boycott, as it is called,
is analogous to the very common refusal to work with non-unionists at
all. But in one important respect the tactical position of a trade
union is weaker than that of an ordinary combination. It has usually
got a buyers' combination up against it, in the shape of an
association of employers. The latter will be governed in their
attitude towards the workpeople's demands, not only by immediate
expediency, but also by their own sense of "what should be"; and they
will usually resist demands for wages greatly in excess of those
obtaining in comparable trades. In this way, the tendency for workers
of the same efficiency to receive the same real wages in all
employments is far stronger than might at first sight appear.

If we had to rely for this result upon trade unions alone, it would be
highly problematical. For here a psychological curiosity emerges,
which, familiar and intelligible as it is, is none the less a
curiosity. So far from still higher wages for well-paid workpeople
being regarded in the world of manual labor as detrimental to the
interests of other workpeople, it has become almost a point of honor
to believe the contrary. A wage dispute in a particular trade is
conceived as an engagement in a far-flung battle between Capital and
Labor, in which success at any part of the line will facilitate the
victory of the whole army. This conception contains a measure of
truth, as regards immediate and purely temporary effects; though, even