there would have been no reason for protection); hence loss of capital or wealth-a lessening of the total amount of accumulated savings in the nation. But, as I showed you under the head of Property, every loss of capital is an injury primarily to the mass of those who labor for wages; secondarily to the whole community.

295. Moreover, protection, by offering the special temptation of a bounty to a few industries, and these of kinds in which the laborers are on the whole least benefited and made most helpless, exposes these industries to over-production, and thus causes commercial revulsions, stagnation in trade, and general loss, with particular suffering to the laborers in the protected industries, who are at such times thrown out of employment; and a general derangement of wages in all employments.

296. I have told you before that no merely selfish policy can in the long run prosper. God did not make the world so. Unselfishness is as much a natural law as the law of gravitation; and he who seeks to benefit himself by injuring others strives against nature, and though he may succeed in his direct purpose, is sure in some other way to sustain greater injury. And what is thus true of individuals is still more true of nations, which, as their life extends beyond that of individuals, are very certain to reap as they sow.

XXVII.

OF STRIKES.

297. When laborers for wages make a demand upon their employer, accompanied with a threat that if he refuses they will leave him, they are said to "strike."

298. Of course, every workman has a right to make his own terms with his employer; and it can make no difference—so far as right goes-whether he acts singly or whether he joins a number, great or small, of his fellow-laborers in arranging or rearranging these terms. All laws having for their object the prevention of such combinations and strikes are therefore unjust and oppressive. Every man has an inalienable right to seek to better his condition, and the means he uses for that end lie within his discretion, saving only, of course, that he must keep the peace. As a workman has no defense against an oppressive employer except the threat to leave him, it is the extreme of injustice to deprive him of that.

299. His strike may bring loss and inconvenience not only upon his employer, but upon the general community that does not lessen his right to strike, or to combine with others in a strike. It may be unwise, and bring suffering upon him and his associates and their families that, too, does not impair his right. In short, when a laborer strikes, he exercises only the liberty of deciding to whom and on what terms he will give his

labor; and to interfere with that right would be to take away his freedom and make him a slave.

300. But the rights he has and uses he must allow to others; and the striker has no right to coerce any other working-man to join him: when he does that, he becomes a criminal of a very grave kind, for his wrong affects the rights of all working-men. If it were granted that a striker might rightfully force another workman to join him, he would thereby give up his own rights and liberties; for clearly, if he may abridge the freedom of another, somebody else, by the same right, may lessen his. If you have a right to force me not to work, another may by the same right force you to work. The striker therefore commits the grossest and most absurd tyranny when he interferes to force some other man to cease work. We see such attempts made in this country occasionally, but usually only by the most ignorant of our laborers; every interference of the kind ought to be severely and sternly punished, as a dangerous attack upon society.

301. In our times strikes usually take place upon a great scale. The organization of trades-unions has brought hired laborers into close connection, and enabled them to act in large masses for various purposes. Hence we have seen, in this country, strikes in which thousands of men were united; and in England, where the trades-unions are more powerful and compact organizations than here, it has happened that a general strike of the laborers in one industry was supported by those engaged in others, out of a general fund of their societies. In all this the workmen were exercising only the inalienable right of determining for whom and on

what terms they would labor; and so long as they did. not attempt to force unwilling laborers to join them, and did not otherwise break the peace, interference with them would have been the grossest injustice.

302. Whether strikes have or have not on the whole benefited the workmen is a question on which political economists differ, and which it is not easy to decide upon facts. My own belief is that strikes, as they are conducted, have done no lasting good to the strikers or to the mass of laborers, but, on the contrary, have injured them. Take, for instance, an industry which yields direct employment to ten thousand men; and suppose them to unite in a strike: while they stand out, they are not only consuming their savings or those of other workmen who support them-and are thus the poorer; but also they are idle, and are tempted to form bad habits. Idleness itself is a very bad habit. If they succeed, the increased rate of wages which they have compelled will not probably for a long time to come restore to them their former savings and comforts. Meantime, however, it is probable that other persons have been drawn into their industry, and thus by their own act the number of persons seeking their bread by this industry has been increased, and in the nature of things the demand for wages is greater, proportioned to the capital available for wages, than before; and either wages will presently fall again, or some part of the laborers will be thrown out of employment.

303. Trades-unions have apparently sought to prevent this natural consequence by arbitrary and tyrannical regulations concerning the employment of apprentices and of non-unionists; and by attempts to shorten the

hours of labor, which is of course only an indirect way of increasing the rate of wages. Also they have endeavored to "make work" by forbidding men to do more than a certain amount of work in a given time. All these are deplorably rude and temporary expedients, the contrivance of men ignorant of natural laws, and, what is even more mischievous, flying in the face of the golden rule. To forbid a boy to learn a trade which he desires, to prohibit the employment of non-unionists, are acts of pure selfishness; and the whole spirit of the trades-unions in this matter is one which seeks to monopolize benefits at the expense of other men. But, as I told you before, nothing is truer, or more plainly proved by the whole experience of society, than that no merely selfish policy can achieve a great or lasting success. God did not make the world so.

304. When wages are permanently too low in any wellestablished industry, that means that too many persons are seeking to share in the gross returns of that industry. The remedy lies in either increasing the demand for the goods, which means widening the market for them, which can be done only by an extension of commerce, when more capital would be profitably invested in the industry; or in decreasing the number of persons desiring employment in it. Now a strike certainly does not widen the market for goods; it does not extend commerce, which is the only way to permanently increase demand; and, by alarming capital, is far more likely to decrease than to increase the proportion used in the given industry; and by stopping work it checks the accumulation of that which is already invested. But it does not decrease the amount of labor offering-for the