Here,again,instead of hearing clearly why or how the wage-fund is fixed,we are at once referred to Malthus.The factory legislation suggests the same question.The rigid economists had maintained that here again the attempt to interfere must be injurious.It would hamper the growth of capital,and therefore injure those dependent upon capital.Mill treats the case with remarkable brevity.He apparently regarded the whole movement as savouring of quackery.But he discusses the question briefly from the moral point of view.Children,he says,should of course be protected from overwork,for in their case ,freedom of contract is but another word for freedom of coercion.'(111)Women,he notes,are protected by the factory acts;but this is only excusable,if excusable at all,because,as things now are,women are slaves.If they were free,it would be tyrannical to limit their labour.The old political economy still suffices.Meanwhile the problem was coming up in other shapes.The Utilitarians have been active in procuring the repeal of the laws against combination.They had thought,indeed,that the workmen,once set free,would find combination needless,and would learn to act by means of individual competition.Trades-unionism,on the contrary,had developed,and was producing long and obstinate struggles with the capitalist.Were these struggles attempts to interfere with a 'natural'order?Were they wasteful modes of attempting to secure a share of the 'wage-fund'which would come to them in any case by the spontaneous play of the industrial machinery?Socialists were beginning to declare that instead of an identity there was a radical opposition of interests.The answer made by orthodox economists implies some wage-fund theory .They were never tired of declaring that all attempts to raise wages by combination were fallacious.The struggle was always costly,and,even if successful,could only benefit one section of workmen at the expense of others.What precise assumption might underlie this doctrine is another question not so easily answered.It is taken for granted that there is a definite fund,such that no struggling can wring more from the capitalist;and all the rugging and riving of labourers and unions can only succeed in one body getting a larger share out of the mouth of the others.Mill's final view seems to be given in his discussion of erroneous methods of government interference.Legislation against combinations to raise wages is most vigorously condemned.(112)The desire to keep wages down shows 'the infernal spirit of the slave-master,'though the effort to raise them beyond a fixed limit is doomed to failure.We ought to rejoice if combination could really raise the rate of wages;and if all workmen could combine such a result might be possible.But even then they could not obtain higher wages than the rate fixed by 'supply and demand'--the rate which distributes the 'whole circulating capital of the country among the labouring population.'(113)Combinations are successful at times,but only for small bodies.The general rate of wages can be affected by nothing but the 'general requirements of the labouring people.'
While these requirements (corresponding to the standard of living)remain constant,wages cannot long fall below or remain above the corresponding standard.The improvement,indeed,of even a small portion would be 'wholly a matter of satisfaction'if no general improvement could be expected.But as such improvement is now becoming possible,it is to be hoped that the better artisans will seek advantage in common with,or 'not to the exclusion of,their fellow labourers.'The trades-union movement,therefore,is taken to be equivalent to the formation of little monopolies through which particular classes of labourers benefit at the expense of others.Yet Mill is evidently anxious to make what concessions he can.Strikes,he thinks,have been the 'best teachers of the labouring classes'as to the 'relation between labour and the demand and supply of labour.'
They should not be condemned absolutely --only when they are meant to raise wages above the 'demand and supply'limit;and,even then,he remembers that 'demand and supply'are not 'physical agencies';that combinations are required to help poor labourers to get their rights (the 'demand and supply'rate)from rich employers;and,that trades-unions tend to advance the time when labourers will regularly 'participate in the profits derived from their labour.'Finally,it is desirable,as he characteristically adds,that 'all economical experiments,voluntarily undertaken,should have the fullest licence.'
