ound. There would be a sufficient variety
of work for all kinds of industrial workers; while at the same time
there would be a systematic attempt to prevent the poorer and less
competent laborers from competing with those of a higher grade and
hindering the latter's economic amelioration. Such a result would be
successful only in so far as the unions were in full possession of the
field; but if the unions secure full possession even of part of the
field, the tendency will be towards an ever completer monopoly. The
fewer trades into which the non-union laborers were crowded would drift
into an intolerable condition, which would make unionizing almost
compulsory.

If all, or almost all, the industrial labor of the country came to be
organized in the manner proposed, the only important kind of non-union
laborer left in the country would be agricultural; and such a result
could be regarded with equanimity by an economic statesman. The existing
system works very badly in respect to supplying the farmer with
necessary labor. In every period of prosperity the tendency is for
agricultural laborers to rush off to the towns and cities for the sake
of the larger wages and the less monotonous life; and when a period of
depression follows, their competition lowers the standard of living in
all organized trades. If the supply of labor were regulated, and its
efficiency increased as it would be under the proposed system,
agricultural laborers would not have the opportunity of finding
industrial work, except of the most inferior class, until their
competence had been proved; and it would become less fluid and unstable
than it is at present. Moreover, farm labor is, on the whole, much more
wholesome for economically dependent and mechanically untrained men than
labor in towns or cities. They are more likely under such conditions to
maintain a higher moral standard. If they can be kept upon the farm
until or unless they are prepared for a higher class of work, it will be
the greatest possible boon to American farming. Agriculture suffers in
this country peculiarly from the scarcity, the instability, and the high
cost of labor; and unless it becomes more abundant, less fluid, and more
efficient compared to its cost, intensive farming, as practiced in
Europe, will scarcely be possible in the United States. Neither should
it be forgotten that the least intelligent and trained grade of labor
would be more prosperous on the farms than in the