union strikes to enforce a wage demand. Each group or agent tends
to favor or resist changes in laws, industrial methods, and institutions
according as it expects to be benefited or otherwise by the change. This
may be seen in the discussions surrounding the introduction of the eight
hour day, or concerning the limitation of immigration. However, it is a
careless exaggeration to state, as is frequently stated, that the
attitude of groups to economic legislation must inevitably be determined
by their economic interest.

Every part of the industrial system yields at some time and occasion to
the impact of the human will. Even changes in the arts of production may
result therefrom, as is well exemplified in Mr. Clay's analysis of the
way in which the standard of life of the wage earners may exert an
influence over wage rates.... This conception of a standard of life,
though fluctuating, is a relatively fixed thing in the flux of forces
determining distribution. The workman, by combination tacit or explicit,
fixes it and his employer adjusts production to it. The employer will do
all in his power, usually with success, to secure an increase in output
in return for every increase of wages, and where the local standard
compels him to pay higher wages than his competitor in other districts
to extract an amount of work correspondingly greater.[25] Or, take the
hope entertained by the advocates of the living wage, that its
enforcement would produce a better type of management in those
industries to which the legislation is applicable.

It is characteristic of the present industrial situation that no group
should rest quietly under the dictation of what it is told is economic
law or necessity. Given its way, each group tests anew the habits and
arrangements by which it is constrained. Every time an industrial method
is modified, the agents which share in distribution strike a slightly
new balance. The direction of the stream of product changes with every
modification of its banks. Some of these modifications occur so
unexpectedly that they are not to be found upon the maps. The pilot, as
Mark Twain said of the Mississippi, must carry the conformation in his
head.

Thirdly (this is usually stated as a limitation of the precision of
economic analysis), such a simple analysis of the action of the factor
of relative plenty or scarcity as has been given, takes no account of
the existence of certain human traits and qualities. As a