o standard union
rate is in force. So far as unions help to develop the intelligence
and promote the sobriety and efficiency of their members, they are
a positive economic force making for higher wages. The book before
quoted expresses, somewhat vaguely, an opinion in accord with these
facts when it says: "It is an error to think that the trade union
seeks to determine the rate of wages. It cannot do that. It can do no
more than affect them." And so, with organization as well as without,
the wages of individuals and of classes of laborers are determined by
the general principles of price as applied to their services. Where
neither the employer has a monopoly in his business nor the organized
laborers have a monopoly of the labor supply, there is two-sided
competition in the labor bargain, and organization may help to raise
particular wages inasmuch as it acts in the competitive ways above
mentioned and as it helps to restore to the laborers a truer equality
of competition.

Sec. 13. #Monopolistic aspect of organization and particular wages.# The
action of organized labor is not, however, limited to the competitive
field, above discussed. Wages in particular industries may, by
the action of trade unions be raised and maintained above a true
competitive rate. This of course can be done only in accordance
with the principles of the service-value to the consumer and of
service-price in the employment-market. The supply of labor is in a
variety of ways artificially limited by the efforts of the unions. It
may be done temporarily by striking when a failure to fill orders will
cause the employer exceptional loss. Violence in strikes and boycotts
is often the desperate attempt to create and assert a measure of
monopoly power where of itself it does not exist, i.e., where other
workers stand ready to take the jobs at the prevailing rates of wages.
Monopoly is created if apprentices are limited to fewer than in the
long run would be attracted into the trade by the prevailing wages.
It is created if the unions artificially limit output to less than
is consistent with the health of the worker. Monopoly is created if
unions strong enough to keep "scabs" from getting work, fix their dues
high or put other obstacles in the way of increasing the membership.
Probably the most striking cases of high wages for organized labor are
of this kind. The element of labor-monopoly evidently is mingled in
all degrees from the slightest to a very