legitimate business activity and upon a basis of business acumen and foresight. The minimum wage and other union regulations, place a premium on scruples. The employer who cannot gain an advantage by robbing his workmen is obliged, in order to secure profits, to obtain the latest machinery, to effect economies in production, to seek a wider or a better market, to improve the quality of his goods, or to branch out into new industries. Thus, the necessity imposed by the trade unions becomes the mother of invention in all legitimate fields of business activity. The establishment of a fixed minimum price for labor acts upon the employer like the establishment of a fixed charge for transportation. It prevents men from securing unfair rebates from workmen, just as the law prevents or seeks to prevent, shippers from securing rebates from the railroads, and it thus puts all employers upon an equal footing, where the fittest may survive. There is nothing so certain, nothing so advantageous and promising as the gradual improvement in the mental and moral calibre as well as in the business methods of the employing class, and in this improvement trade unionism has played a not unimportant part.

Trade unionism not only increases the ability of manufacturers to pro- | duce, but equally their ability to sell. To an ever increasing extent, the working classes are becoming consumers of the nation's products, and with every increase in their wages, there comes an increase in their ability and willingness to purchase the products of labor. The industries of the country flourish best when there is a large and constant demand for the products of labor, and this demand can best be stimulated by increased wages and shorter hours. The consumption of wealth by the very rich is more inconstant and less beneficial to the community than is that of the great wage earning class. Most of the articles made by machinery are purchased by the working classes, and periods of great prosperity are those in which the producers of wealth themselves furnish the demand for the articles of consumption.

If we look about us at the present time, we will notice an ever increasing

demand of the working classes for the products of labor. Even a millionaire cannot wear many more shoes, hats, coats, or shirts than a poor man, and his consumption of food is also not much greater. The majority of the articles offered for sale in a store are purchased by men of small or moderate income, and most of the public services, such as street-car transportation, are for the benefit of men of limited means. The crises which periodically visit modern communities result from an unequal distribution of the wealth of the community-too large a share being in the control of employing and investing classes, and too small a portion in the hands of the consumers, especially of the working classes. Society can escape from such a crisis only by one of two ways-by destroying or decreasing the amount of capital invested in production, or by increasing the ability of the consumers to pay more for necessaries and comforts. Unfortunately, when such periods of depression come, they are rendered more grievous by a lowering of wages, which decreases the purchasing power of the workingman. These ever recurring crises may be moderated to a certain extent by the action of trade unions in raising wages, increasing consumption, and creating and maintaining a permanent stimulus to production by increasing the popular demand for the articles produced.

CHAPTER XX

THE PROBLEM OF THE UNSKILLED

The Problem of Poverty. The Dilemma of the Unskilled. What Trade Unionism has Already Accomplished. The Unemployed and the Partially Employed. Raising Sections of the Unorganized. Progress by Selection. The Limited Possibilities of the Untrained Workmen. The Incapables. The Duty of Society. Will the Unions of the Unskilled Live? Mutual Aid.

THE great problem of poverty

"THE

resides in the conditions of

the low-skilled workman. To live industrially under the new order he must organize. He cannot organize because he is so poor, so ignorant, so weak. Because he is not organized he continues to be poor, ignorant, weak. Here is a great dilemma, of which whoever shall have found the key will have done much to solve the problem of poverty.'

In the above paragraph a noted political economist sums up the problems of poverty as they exist to-day in the more advanced nations of the world. The author of this book believes that the destruction of the unskilled workingman is his lack of organization, and that owing to his absence of skill and his lack of intelligence, it is impossible to bring him into labor organizations. Trade unions have always recognized that in this question of the unskilled lies the very essence of the trade union problem. The great mass of unskilled, untrained men residing in a community, living by odd jobs, and willing to take any work at any price at any time, is a serious drawback to the trade union movement and a menace to the society in which they live. In the slums of our great cities reside hundreds of thousands of men, brutalized by poverty and forced by their needs to lead an anti-social life. There is in every city an army of men who, by reason of their lack of means, are forced to perform work unsteadily and fitfully,

1 Hobson, John A. Problems of Poverty (London, 1891), page 227.