creates a fund from which the laborers could draw if they had the power, these union leaders are inclined to believe that they can secure their full share of the funds thus brought about by the increased savings. They, therefore, assume no especially hostile attitude toward the combinations, which they consider inevitable, but are, on the whole, rather inclined to favor them, thinking that the laborers have the power to secure their proper share of any savings which may accrue to the community from combination.

It will be noted, of course, that if wages are thus increased to the wage earners, the result must inevitably be a checking of either the profits of the employer, or, what is perhaps more likely, of the lowering of the price to the con

sumer.

The real contest in many cases when laborers press their employers for higher wages is with the consumers. Wages can be increased if prices rise; and employers not infrequently find the consumer more docile than the laborer. Under such circumstances the workman at times, as consumer, gives back to his employer a good part of what he has received from him as an increase of wages; but even in this case

the new distribution proves to the advantage of the laborers as a class. Not all is paid back, for there are other consumers.

If by combination of capital with its saving of energy a new fund of wealth has been created, the capitalist and employer will try first to take it, and will claim that it is theirs justly, for they have by their intelligent action created this fund. The workmen will strive to secure it in the form of higher wages, and claim that it is justly theirs, for some of them have been thrown out of employment to make it, and theirs is the labor that is used to better advantage. The consumers will try to secure it through demanding lower prices, and they, too, will try to justify their claim. These savings, they say, would not have been possible save under modern social and economic conditions and laws, for which society as a whole, and no one special class, should have the credit.

The actual disposition of the fund will be arranged by struggle. If the combination does not succeed in hoiding competition down, the largest part will probably in the long run get to the consumers in lower prices, though, at times, as indicated in the last chapter, the employer

will take it and probably be forced to divide with his workmen. If competition is kept down, the employer will take the larger part at first; but he will be compelled soon to give part to the wage earners, if they are well organized and insistent, while the consumer, too, will probably eventually get part under the influence of a threatened competition.

It will probably be true that, in the case of a contest between organized capital and organized labor, the sympathy of the public will be on the side of labor; so that whatever benefit comes to either side from the pressure of public opinion is likely to accrue to the laborer. There is, to be sure, on the part of a good many a prejudice against labor unions, and particularly against those that have assumed great proportions and acquired great strength. It is possible that public opinion might even turn against them, provided they were to control substantially all of the working men in any line of industry. But it is much more likely that, for a long time to come, the aggressions of capital will arouse much more hostility on the part of the public than those of iabor. In this contest, then, between the Trusts and the laborers, the advantage of public

opinion will remain chiefly with the laborer. But, for the present, contests between the Trusts and their employees have rarely arisen, excepting in the case of certain classes of workingmen who have been discharged by the combinations because their services are no longer needed.

Attention has already been called to the fact that certain classes of workingmen, such as commercial travellers, are no longer needed in so great numbers by the combinations as by the separate competing establishments. It will be recalled that the Whiskey Combination was able to dispense with the services of some three hundred travelling men upon its organization; that the American Steel and Wire Company was able to discharge some two hundred travelling men; and many other similar instances have

been found.

Naturally the travelling men themselves, and in many cases others, are inclined to think that this discharge of travelling men is in itself a serious industrial evil. Reflection, however, will show that if the work is rendered really no longer necessary in order to supply the needs of consumers, or if the work can be equally well done by fewer men, the saving of this labor is a

distinct industrial gain similar to that which is found upon the introduction of a new machine. It is true, of course, that suffering is likely to be the lot of those discharged; as, in earlier days, upon the introduction of the power loom, many of the weavers were reduced to poverty, even to starvation. If, however, as seems to be the case, a real saving is effected by combination, though individuals may suffer, the working classes as a whole will be benefited, not merely by the reduced price of the article itself (if the Trust permits it to be reduced), so far as they are consumers, but also, within a comparatively short time, by the increased demand that will come for their services through the increased demand for the goods brought about by lowered prices. The advocates of the combinations do not hesitate to claim that this will be the effect, and any careful thinker will be inclined to agree that if the saving is a real one this must be the case, unless the Trust itself absorbs all the savings.

Aside from the commercial travellers, however, the class of employees that seems to be injured most is that of the superintendents or of the higher officers of the corporations which enter into the combination. In not a few in