Principles of Political Economy Part 10

Fixed rates of wages under Henry VII. and Henry VIII., in the interest of workmen. (_Gneist_, Verwaltungsrecht, II, Aufl., 461 ff.) The fact that in 5 Elizabeth, c. 4, another attempt was made to fix the rate of wages by governmental provisions, in which the person paying more than the sum fixed was threatened with 10 days' imprisonment, and the person receiving less with 12, was in part akin to the English poor laws. If a poor man had the right to be eventually employed and supported by the community, it was, of course, necessary that the justice of the peace should be able to determine at what wages anybody should be prepared to work before he could say: I can find no work. Extended by 2 James I., c. 6, to all kinds of work for which wages were paid. (_Eden_, State of the Poor, V, 123 ff., 140.) The buyers of labor in the eighteenth century frequently complained that these fixed wages were more to the advantage of workmen than of their masters. (_Brentano_, English Guilds., ed. by _Toulmin Smith_, 1870, Prelim. CXCI.)

In Germany, the depopulation caused by the Thirty Years' War explains why, before and after the peace of Westphalia, so many diets were concerned with fixing the rate of wages of servants. Compare _Spittler_, Gesch., Hanovers, II, 175.

Among the most recent instances of English fixed rates of wages, is 8 George III., for London tailors, and the Spitalfields Act of 1773, for silk weavers who had, a short time before, revolted. Also in New South Wales, about the end of the last century, on account of the high rate of colonial wages. (_Collins_, Account of the English Colonies of New South Wales, 1798.) Later, _Mortimer_, Elements of Politics, Commerce and Finance, 1174, 72, maintains fixed rates of wages to be necessary. In Germany the imperial decree of 1830, t.i.t., 24, and again the ordinance of Sept.

4, 1871, provide that each magistrate shall fix the rate of wages in his own district. _Chr. Wolf_, Vernunftige Gedanken vom gesellsch. Leben der Menschen, 1721, -- 487, would have the rates so fixed that the laborers might live decently and work with pleasure.]

[Footnote 175-2: Proposal for a fixed sale of wages in the protocols of the Chamber of Lords of Na.s.sau, 1821, 12.]

[Footnote 175-3: The Spitalfields Act was repealed in 1824, for the reason that the manufacturers themselves attributed the stationary condition of their industries for a hundred years to the fact that they were hampered by that act.

_Ricardo's_ and _Huskisson's_ prophecies, on this occasion, fulfilled by the great impulse which the English silk industries soon afterwards received.]

[Footnote 175-4: Compare _Brentano_, Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, II, 288. However, fixed rates of wages equitably arranged, in the establishment of which neither party has been given an advantage over the other, have continued to exist much longer than our distrustful and novelty-loving age would think possible. Thus compositors' wages in London, from 1785 to 1800, from 1800 to 1810, from 1810 to 1816, and from 1816 to 1866, remained unaltered; those of London s.h.i.+p builders, from 1824 to 1867; of London builders, from 1834 to 1853, and from 1853 to 1865. (_Brentano_ II, 213. Compare II, 250, 267 ff.)]

SECTION CLXXVI.

WAGES-POLICY.--STRIKES.

Where the wages-receiving cla.s.s feel themselves to be a special cla.s.s, _vis-a-vis_ of the purchasers of their labor, they have frequently endeavored, by the preconcerted suspension of labor upon a large scale, to force their masters to pay them higher wages, or grant them some other advantage.[176-1] It is hard to say whether such strikes have more frequently failed or succeeded.[176-2]

As a rule, a war over prices, carried on by such means, and without force on either side, must generally issue in the victory of the richer purchasers of labor.[176-3] The latter require the uninterrupted continuation of labor for their convenience and profit; but the workmen need it to live. It is but seldom that the workmen will be in a condition to stop work for more than a few months, without feeling the sting of hunger. The purchaser of labor can live longer on his capital; and the victory here belongs to the party who, in the struggle, holds out longest. Hence, a strike that lasts more than six weeks may, for that reason alone, be considered a failure. The employers of labor, on account of their smaller number and greater education, make their counter-coalition much more secret and effective. How many instances there are in which labor-saving machines have come into use more rapidly than they otherwise would have come but for the influence of these coalitions![176-4]

On the other hand, it cannot be ignored that a host of workmen, by means of an organization which provides them with a unity of will, such as the heads of great enterprises naturally possess, must become much better skilled in carrying on a struggle for higher wages. Where wages in general tend to rise, but by force of custom, which is specially powerful here (-- 170), are kept below their natural level, a strike may very soon attain its end. And workmen are all the more to be wished G.o.d-speed here in proportion as employers are slow to decide of their own motion upon raising wages, and where, under certain circ.u.mstances,[176-5] a single cold-hearted master might force all his compet.i.tors to keep wages down. If even the entire working cla.s.s should follow the example of the strikers, so that all commodities, in so far as they are products of labor, should grow dearer to an extent corresponding to the rise in wages, there would still remain an improvement of the condition of the working cla.s.s at the cost of the interest paid on capital and the profits of enterprise. It is, of course, otherwise with the struggle of workmen against the natural conditions which determine the rate of their wages (---- 161-166) in which they might, in turbulent times, possibly succeed[176-6] temporarily, but would, in the long run, have to fail.[176-7]

The working cla.s.s will be best fortified in such a struggle for higher wages when their organization is a permanent one, and when they have taken care, during good times, to collect a certain amount of capital to protect their members, during their cessation from work, against acute want. This is the object of the trades-unions as they have grown up in England, especially since the total decline of the guild system and of governmental provisions relating to apprentices, fixed rates of wages[176-8] etc. But it cannot be denied that these unions, although democratic in form, often exercise a very despotic sway over their members;[176-9] that they have, so far as the employers of labor are concerned, and the non-union laborers, gone back to a number of measures, outgrowths of the guild and embargo systems, which it was fondly hoped had been forever banished by the freedom of industry.[176-10] What many of the friends of this system hope it may accomplish in the future, viz.: regulate the whole relation between capital and labor, and thus, on the whole, control the entire public economy of a people,[176-11] is, fortunately, all the more certainly a chimera, as any national or universal approximation to this end would be the most efficacious way to compel employers of labor to the formation of corresponding and probably far superior opposing unions.

Notwithstanding this, however, I do not doubt that the recent development of trades-unions in England is both a cause and an effect of the rise in wages in the branches of industry in question, as well as of the moral elevation of the condition of the working cla.s.s which has simultaneously taken place.[176-12] The mere possibility of a strike is of itself calculated, in the determination of the rate of wages, to procure for the equitable purchaser of labor the desirable preponderance over the inequitable.[176-13]

[Footnote 176-1: Even _Boisguillebert_, Traite des Grains, was acquainted with instances of this kind in which from 600 to 800 workmen simultaneously left their masters. There are much earlier instances in Italy. Thus, in Sienna, in 1381 and 1384, in which the n.o.bility sided with the workmen.

(Rerum Ital. Scriptores, XV, 224, 294.) Strikes of journeymen began to be much more frequent in Germany in the guilds, from the time of the prospect of their becoming masters themselves, and of their living in the family of the masters had decreased. On similar strikes at Spires, in 1351, at Hagenau in 1409, and Mainz in 1423, see _Mone's_, Zeitschrift, XVII, 56; XIII, 155, and _Hegel,_ Stra.s.sb.

Chr., II, 1025. A remarkable strike of the Parisian book printers under Francis I. (_Hildebrand's_ Jahrb., 1873, II, 375 ff.) In so-called "home manufactures," where the "manufacturer" is both orderer, preparer and seller, but strikes are scarcely possible without much fixed capital.

The strike of the factory spinners in Lancas.h.i.+re in 1810 caused 30,000 workmen to stop work for four months.

Among the next following coalitions of labor, those of the Glasgow weavers in 1812 and 1822 were very important. In the latter, two workmen who would not partic.i.p.ate with the strikers were blinded with sulphuric acid. In 1818, great strike by the Scotch miners. The Preston strike of 1853 lasted 36 weeks. It is said that 6,200 male and 11,800 female working people took part in it. (_Athenaeum_, 30 Sept., 1854.) Compare _Morrison_, Essay on the Relations between Labor and Capital, 1854. For a history of Swiss strikes, especially of the Zurich compositors' strike in 1873, see _Bohmert_, Arbeiterverhaltnisse, II, 287 ff. Comic type of a strike of married women in _Aristophanes_, Lysistrata. A practical one in Rome at the departure of the plebeians for the holy mountains, 492 before Christ.

(_Livy_, II, 32,) then, on a small scale, on the removal of the pipers after Tiberius, 311 before Christ. (_Liv._, IX, 30.)]

[Footnote 176-2: Instances of successful strikes: Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1865. Similarly in Germany, in 1865; but there, in truth, many strikes were only defensive and intended to restore the former thing-value of the declined money (Werke, XIII, 151). The English strikes, in 1866 and 1867, failed nearly all, so that wages again declined to their level in 1859, and in many places, to what they had been in the crisis-year 1857. (Ausland, 16 April, 1868.) As to how even in Victoria, strikes which opposed a decline of wages from 16 to from 8 to 10 s.h.i.+llings a day failed, after doing great injury, see Statist. Journ., 1861, 129 ff.]

[Footnote 176-3: The Preston strikers of 1853 got even from their non-striking colleagues, 30,000. Had their masters prevented this, the affair would have been terminated much sooner. (Quart. Rev., Oct. 1859.) But employers are much more frequently divided by rivalries than workmen, especially in strikes against new machines or when a manufacturer, who has too large a supply of goods on hand, desires a strike himself. On account of their smaller number, too, they are less in a condition to declare a recusant colleague in disgrace. _Adam Smith's_ remark that coalitions of capitalists are much more frequent than those of workmen, only that much less is said of them, is hardly applicable to our time. (Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8, p. 100, ed. Bas.) But, since the strike of the London builders in 1859, capitalists have begun to form more general opposing unions. On a very energetic one among the s.h.i.+p builders on the Clyde, see _Count de Paris_, Les a.s.sociations ouvrieres en Angleterre, 1869, ch. 7. Examples on a smaller scale, Edinburg Review, Lx.x.xIX, 327 ff. On the other hand, a "lock-out" on the part of capitalists is very difficult, from the fact that it is impossible to prevent idle workmen from being supported from the poor fund. Moreover, there can be no greater folly than for the workmen to add insult to their masters to their demand for higher wages, because then the limits within which the latter are willing to continue the business at all, are made much narrower, than they would be on a merely economic estimate.]

[Footnote 176-4: Thus the "iron man," by which a single person can put from 1,500 to 3,000 spindles in motion; also an improved plane-machine, by means of which several colors can be printed at once. (_Ure_, Philosophy of Manufactures, 366 ff.) Machines for riveting cauldrons. (_Dingler_, Polytechnisches Journal, LXXV, 413.)]

[Footnote 176-5: Compare the statements in the Statist.

Journal, 1867, 7.]

[Footnote 176-6: Thus in several places in 1848, and in Paris in 1789, where even the lackeys and apothecary clerks formed such unions. (_Wachs.m.u.th_, Gesch. Frankreichs im Revolutionszeitalter, I, 178.) Similarly, frequently in isolated factories.]

[Footnote 176-7: _Thornton_ mentions six instances in which strikes and strike-unions may permanently raise wages: a, when those engaged in an enterprise have a virtual monopoly in their own neighborhood; b, when the country has, for the industry in question, great advantage over other lands; c, when the demand for the product of the industry is necessary on account of an increasing number and increasing capacity to pay of customers; d, when the progress of the arts, especially of machinery, makes the industry more productive; e, when the rise in the rate of wages affects all branches of industry to the same extent, and at the same time; f, when the industry is carried on on so large a scale that it yields greater profit, even while paying a smaller percentage than other industries. (On Labour, III, ch. 4.) It is easy to see that many of these conditions meet in the building industries in large cities.]

[Footnote 176-8: Compare _Brentano_ in the Preliminary Essay to _T. Smith's_ English Guilds, ch. LXXII ff. The same author's Die Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart Bd., I, 1871.]

[Footnote 176-9: The greater number of strikes begin with a small minority, generally of the best paid workmen, whom the others follow unwillingly but blindly. (Edinb. Rev., 149, 422.) The despotic power of the Unions over their members depends princ.i.p.ally on the fact that their treasury serves not only to maintain strikes but at the same time as an insurance fund for old age and sickness, and that every case of disobedience of a member is punished by expulsion, i. e., with the loss of everything he has contributed. Hence the Quart. Rev., Oct., 1867, advises that these two purposes which are so hard, technically speaking, to reconcile with each other, should be required to be kept separate, especially as most of the unions, considered as benevolent a.s.sociations, are really insolvent. (Edinb. Review, Oct., 1867, 421 ff.) On the other hand, both the _Count of Paris_, ch. 3, and _Thornton_ are favorable to the admixture of humane and offensive objects in the trades-unions, because the former contribute to make the latter milder. _Brentano_, I, 153, has no great objection to the insolvency shown by the books of the unions _vis-a-vis_ of their duties as insurers, since, hitherto, the subscription of an extraordinary sum has never failed to make up the deficit. A strike is detrimental in proportion as the striking workmen represent more of the previous preliminary operations that go to finish a product; as when, for instance, the 50 or 60 spinners in a factory strike, and in consequence, from 700 to 800 other workmen are thrown out of employment and forced into idleness against their will. What might not have been the consequence of the great union of the coal miners of Durham and Northumberland, the members of which numbered 40,000 men, and stopped work from April to the beginning of September, 1864, so that at last it became necessary to carry Scotch coal to Newcastle! Compare _Engels_, Lage der arbeitenden Kla.s.sen in England, 314 ff.]

[Footnote 176-10: The English unions even forbid their members to exceed the established time of work, or the established task. Thus, for instance, a penalty of one s.h.i.+lling for carrying at any time more than eight bricks in the case of masons, and a similar penalty inflicted on the person's companions who witness the violation of the rule and do not report the guilty party. Equality of wages for all members; piece-wages allowed only when the surplus earned is divided among one's companions. Hence the complete discouragement of all skill or industry above the average.

If an employer exceeds the prescribed number of apprentices; if he engages workmen not belonging to the union; if he introduces new machines, a strike is ordered. With all this the severest exclusion respectively of one cla.s.s of tradesmen by the other. If a carpenter lays a few stones, a strike immediately! (Quart. Rev., October, 1867, 363, 373.) Rigid shutting out of the products of one district from another. (Edinburg Rev., October, 1867, 431.) The poor hand-weavers were thus prevented going from their over-crowded trade into another. (_J. Stuart Mill_, Principles, II, ch. 14, 6.) However, many trades-unions still seem to be free from these degenerations, and the most influential unions the most moderate in their proceedings.

(_Count de Paris_, ch. 8, 9; _Thornton_, III, ch. 2.) _Brentano_ expressly a.s.sured us that such degeneration of the unions in England is confined to the building trades-unions. (I, 68, 188.)]

[Footnote 176-11: "They have no notion of contenting themselves with an equal voice in the settlement of labor questions; they tell us plainly that what they aspire to is to control the destinies of labor, ... to dictate, to be able to arrange the conditions of employment at their own discretion." (_Thornton_, III, ch. 1.) The members.h.i.+p of the English trades-unions was estimated, at the Manchester Congress, June, 1868, at 500,000 by some, and at 800,000 by others. _Brentano_, II, 310, speaks of 960,000. Since 1830, there have been frequent endeavors to effect a great combination, with special organizations of the different trades. During recent years, there have been even beginnings of an international organization, although in Germany, for instance, at the end of 1874, there were 345 trades-unions, with a members.h.i.+p of over 21,000. (_M. Hirsch._) A formal theory of workmen's unions to culminate in popular representation, in _Duhring_, Arbeit und Kapital, 1866, especially, p. 233; while the American _Walker_ accuses all such combinations, which used compulsion on any one, of moral high treason against republican inst.i.tutions. (Science of Wealth, 272.)]

[Footnote 176-12: The former view, for instance, of _Harriet Martineau_, "The tendence of strikes and sticks to produce low wages" (1834) is now unconditionally shared only by few.

When _Sterling_ says that the momentary success of a strike is followed by a two-fold reaction which restores the natural equilibrium, viz.: increase of the number of workmen and decrease of capital (Journal des Econ., 1870, 192), he overlooks not only the length of the transition time which would certainly be possible here, but also that an altered standard of life of the workmen prevents the former, and one of the capitalists the latter. The _Count of Paris_ and _Thornton_ do not doubt that the elevation of the condition of the English working cla.s.ses, as proved by _Ludlow_ and _Jones_, is to be ascribed, in part, to the effect of the trades-unions. Many of the unions work against the intemperance and quarrelsomeness of their members. The people's charter of 1835, came from the London "workingmen's a.s.sociation."]

[Footnote 176-13: On the great utility of the arbitration courts between masters and workingmen, by which the struggle for wages is terminated in a peaceable manner and without any interruption of work, see _Schaffle_, Kapitalismus and Socialismus, 659. More minutely in _Thornton_, III., ch. 5.

_Faucher_, Vierteljahrsschr., 1869, III, 302, calls attention to the fact that such "boards" may be abused to oppress small manufacturers.]

SECTION CLXXVII.

WAGES-POLICY.--STRIKES AND THE STATE.

Should the state tolerate the existence of strikes or strike-unions?

Legislation in the past most frequently gave a negative answer to the question, as well from a repugnance for high wages as for the self-help of the ma.s.ses.[177-1] But even leaving the above reasons out of consideration, every strike is a severe injury to the national resources in general,[177-2] one which causes that part especially to suffer from which those engaged in the various enterprises and the working cla.s.s draw their income. And, even for the latter, the damage endured is so great that it can be compensated for only by very permanently high wages.[177-3] How many a weak man has been misled by a long cessation from work during a strike, which ate up his savings, into lasting idleness and a devil-may-care kind of life. When employers, through fear of strikes, keep all large orders, etc. secret, the workmen are not in a condition to forecast their prospects and condition even for the near future. And in the end a dread of the frequent return of such disturbances may cause capital to emigrate.[177-4]

However, where there exists a very high degree of civilization, there is a balance of reasons in favor of the non-intervention of governments,[177-5] but only so long as the striking workmen are guilty of no breach of contract and of no crime. Where every one may legally throw up his employment, there is certainly no plausible legal objection to all of them doing so at once, and then forming new engagements.

Coalitions of purchasers of labor for the purpose of lowering wages, which are most frequent though noiselessly formed, the police power of the state cannot prevent. If now it were attempted to keep the working cla.s.s alone from endeavoring to correspondingly raise their wages, the impression would become general, and be entertained with right, that the authorities were given to measuring with different standards. Where the working cla.s.ses so sensitively feel the influence of the government on the state of their wages, they would be only too much inclined to charge every chance pressure made by the circ.u.mstances of the times to the account of the state, and thus burthen it with a totally unbearable responsibility. Since 1824, freedom of compet.i.tion has prevailed in this matter on both sides in England.[177-6] The dark side of the picture would be most easily brightened by a longer duration of contracts of labor.[177-7]

Whether the trades-unions, when they shall have happily withstood the fermentative process now going on, shall be able to fill up the void created by the downfall of the economically active corporations of the latter part of the middle ages, we shall discuss in our future work, Die Nationalokonomik des Gewerbfleisses. One of the chief conditions precedent thereto is the strict justice of the state, which should protect members of the unions from all tyranny by their leaders, and from violations of the legal rights of non-members.[177-8]

[Footnote 177-1: Thus even 34 Edw. III., c. 9. Journeymen builders were forbidden by 3 Henry VI., c. 1, to form conspiracies to enhance the rate of wages, under pain of felony. Finally, 39 and 40 George III., c. 106, threatened any one who, by mere persuasion, should induce a workman to leave his master's service, etc., with 2 months in the work-house, or 3 months' imprisonment. In France, as late as June and September, 1791, all conspiracies to raise wages were prohibited under penalty, the incentive to such prohibition being the opposition to all _interets intermediaries_ between the _interets particulier_; and the _interet general_ which is characteristic of the entire revolution. Compare the law of 22 Germinal, 11. The German Empire on the 16th of August, 1731, threatened journeymen strikers even with death, "when accompanied by great refractoriness and productive of real damage." (Art. 15.)]

[Footnote 177-2: The strike of the spinners of Preston, to compel equal wages with those of Bolton, lasted from October to the end of December, 1836. The spinners got from their treasury 5 s.h.i.+llings a week (previously 22 s.h.i.+llings wages); twisters, 2 to 3 s.h.i.+llings; carders and weavers lived on alms. In the middle of December, the funds of the union were exhausted. Altogether, the workmen lost 400,000 thalers; the manufacturers, over 250,000; and many merchants failed. (_H. Ashworth_, Inquiry into the Origin and Results of the Cotton Spinners' Strike.) The Preston strike of 1853 cost the employers 165,000, the workmen, 357,000.

(Edinburgh Rev., July, 1854, 166.) The North-Stafford puddlers' strike, in 1865, cost the workmen in wages alone 320,000. Concerning 8 strikes that failed, mostly between 1859 and 1861, which cost in the aggregate 1,570,000, of which 1,353,000 were wages lost, see Statist. Journ., 1861, 503. A great mortality of the children of workingmen observed during strikes!]

[Footnote 177-3: _Watts_ a.s.sumes that the strikers seek to attain, on an average, an advance in their wages of five per cent. Now, a week is about equivalent to two per cent. of the year. If, therefore, a strike lasted one month, the increase of wages it operates must last one and three-fifths years to compensate the workmen for their loss. A strike that lasts 12 months would require 20 years to effect the same, and this does not include interest on lost wages.

(Statist. Journal, 1861, 501 ff.) However, it is possible that the striking workingmen themselves should lose more than they gained, but that, for the whole working cla.s.s, the gain should exceed the loss; since those who had not partic.i.p.ated in the strike would partic.i.p.ate in the increased wages. _Thornton_ is of opinion that employers have won in most strikes, but surrendered in the intervals between strikes, so that now English workmen receive certainly 5,000,000 more in wages than they would be getting were it not for the trades-unions. (III, ch. 3-4.)]

[Footnote 177-4: By the Norwich strike, about the beginning of the fourth decade of this century, what remained of the industrial life of that city disappeared. (_Kohl_, Reise, II, 363 ff.) Similarly in Dublin. (Quart. Rev., October, 1859, 485 ff.) In Cork, the workingmen's union, in 1827, allowed no strange workmen to join them, and, it is said, committed twenty murders with a view to that end. The builders demanded 4s. 1d. a day wages. This discouraged the erection of new buildings, and it frequently happened that they found employment only one day in two weeks. (Edinb.

Rev., XLVII, 212.) When workingmen struggle against a natural decline of the rate of wages, they, of course, add to their misfortune.]

[Footnote 177-5: The grounds on which _Brentano_, following _Ludlow_ and _Harrison_, justifies the intervention of the state, have a very dangerous bearing, inasmuch as they do not suppose, as a condition precedent, a perfectly wise and impartial governmental authority.]

[Footnote 177-6: 5 George IV., c. 95: "provided no violence is used." Further, 6 George IV., c. 129, and 122 Vict., c.

34. The law of 1871 declares the trades-unions lawful, allows them the right of registration, and thus empowers them to hold property. In France, the law of May 25, 1864, alters articles 414 to 416 of the _Code penal_ to the effect that only such strikes shall be punished as happen _a l'aide de violences, voies de fait, manuvres frauduleuses_; also coalitions against the _libre exercise du travail a l'aide d'amendes, defenses, proscriptions, interdictions_.

But these amendments were rendered rather inoperative by the fact that meetings of more than 20 persons could be held only by permission of the police.]

[Footnote 177-7: As, for instance, the coal workers in the north of England required a half year's service. So long as the trades-unions consider themselves, by way of preference, as instruments of war, it is conceivable how they oppose all binding contracts for labor. So now among the German journeymen book-printers, and so, also, for the most part, in England. (_Brentano_, II, 108.) In quieter times, when the trades-unions shall have become peace inst.i.tutions, this will be otherwise. We cannot even enjoy the bright side of the freedom of birds without enduring its dark side! In Switzerland, breaches of contract by railroad officers are guarded against by their giving security beforehand; in manufactures, by the holding back of from 3 to 14 days'

wages. (_Bohmert_, Arbeiterverhaltnisse, II, 91, 388 ff.)]

[Footnote 177-8: In Switzerland, the trades-unions have shown themselves very powerful against the employers of tradesmen, but rather powerless against manufacturing employers, and thus materially increased the already existing inferiority of the former. (_Bohmert_, II, 401.) They may, however, by further successful development, const.i.tute the basis of a new smaller middle cla.s.s, similar to the tradesmen's guilds at the end of the middle ages; and indeed by a new exclusiveness, in a downward direction. This would be a bulwark against the destructive inroads of socialism similar to that which the freed peasantry in France were and still are. While this is also _Brentano's_ view, _R. Meyer_, Emanc.i.p.ationskampf des vierten Standes, 1874, I, 254 ff., calls the trades-unions a practical preparation for socialism to which the English "morally went over" in 1869 (I, 751); which indeed loses much of the appearance of truth from the fact that _Marx_ (_Brentano_, Arbeitergilden, II, 332) and the disciples of _La.s.salle_ (_Meyer_, I, 312) hold the trades-unions in contempt. _John Stuart Mill_ approves of all trades-unions that seek to effect the better remuneration of labor, and opposes all which would bring the wages paid for good work and bad work to the same level. (Principles, II, ch. 14, 6; V, ch. 10, 5.) Compare _Tooke_, History of Prices, VI, 176. Reports of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Organization and Rules of Trades-Unions, 1857.]