Legitimate province of the trades unions.
It is not by encouraging useless strikes, or by making an attempt, which in the end must always be defeated, to sustain a vast body of workmen and their families, when not in the receipt of wages, that the wire-pullers of the trades unions will best serve the interests of their clients, or enhance their personal influence among them. But there is a wide field of usefulness open to these captains of our great hosts of workmen, in which success is to be attained, not by war, but by diplomacy. The state of the trades, in which their clients are employed, should be carefully watched, and every variation in the prices quoted, every fluctuation in the cost of the raw materials should be noted. And here I may frankly admit that the proposal of the International for a universal strike contained a few grains of wisdom; for it is clear that, if the cost of producing an article in England were so much enhanced by an advance of wages, that the foreign manufacturer would be enabled to undersell us in every market, it would be an act of self-destruction for English workmen to insist upon a rise, which would have the inevitable effect of depriving them of employment.
In such a case, unless the workmen in the competing countries can agree to act in concert, an advance is impossible; unless by superior skill or machinery the more highly paid workman is able to turn out a larger amount of work.