rinciple, and sometimes apply it very
effectually, in the attempt to raise their wages. It was often argued,
indeed, that in this struggle, the employer possessed advantages partly
due to his power of forming tacit combinations. The farmers in a
parish, or the manufacturers in a business, were pledged to each other
not to raise the rate of wages. If that be so, you again complain, not
of competition, but of the want of competition; and you agree that the
labourer will benefit, as in fact, I take it, he has undoubtedly
benefited, by freer competition among capitalists, or by the greater
power of removing his own labour to better markets. In such cases, the
very meaning of the complaint is not that there is competition, but
that the competition is so arranged as to give an unfair advantage to
one side. And a similar misunderstanding is obviously implied in other
cases. The Australian or American workman fears that his wages will be
lowered by the competition of the Chinese; and the Englishman protests
against the competition of pauper aliens. Let us assume that he is
right in believing that such competition will tend to lower his wages,
whatever the moral to be drawn from the fact. Briefly, denunciations of
"competition" in this sense are really complaints that we do not
exclude the Chinese immigrant and therefore give a monopoly to the
native labourer. That may be a good thing for him, and if it be not a
good thing for the Chinaman who is excluded from the field, we perhaps
do not care very much about the results to China. We are so much better
than the heathen that we need not bother about their interests. But, of
course, the English workman, when he complains of the intensity of
competition, does not propose to adopt the analogous remedy of giving a
monopoly to one section of our own population. The English pauper is
here; we do not want to suppress him, but only to suppress his
pauperism; and he certainly cannot be excluded from any share in the
fund devoted to the support of labour. The evil, therefore, of which we
complain is primarily the inadequacy of the support provided,
not,--though that may also be complained of,--the undesirable method by
which those funds are distributed. In other words, the complaint may so
far be taken to mean that there are too many competitors, not that,
given the competitors, their shares are determined by competition,
instead of being determined by monopoly or by some other principle.