of monopolies have for
their object a benefit to the people at large, by enabling them to
purchase the products of industry and of natural wealth free from the
tax now levied upon them by monopolies. If we can effect this, we shall
not have a millennium; there will still be injustice and suffering
enough in the world; but we shall have reduced the pressure upon the men
who work with their hands for their daily bread, enough so that we shall
no longer see the strange spectacle of over-production and hunger and
nakedness existing side by side. Men's desires were made by an All-wise
Creator to be always in advance of their ability to gratify them. And
the commercial supply of that ability--the supply of men willing to
work--ought always to be behind the demand for men.

It seems beyond dispute, then, that whatever will remove these
obstructions to the wheels of production will increase the demand for
labor, as well as increase the wages of labor by lowering the prices of
the necessaries of life. This the plan we have discussed promises to do,
and it also promises to benefit the whole people by lowering the cost of
monopolized articles.

The men and women who work with their hands, and those dependent on
them, form 97 per cent. of the population of the country. Instead of
combining to stop production in this shop or that factory, why not join
hands to work for reforms in the interest of the whole people? Be sure
that in so doing, organized labor will have the hearty co-operation, and
leadership if need be, of the best men in every class of society.

But while the reforms proposed promise great and important benefits to
the workers on whom the tax laid by monopoly falls most cruelly, the
question, "What shall fix the rate of wages, if competition cannot?" is
still left undecided. The best answer the author can make to this is as
follows: The monopoly formed by the trade unions in the sale of labor is
unnatural, because the number of competing units is great instead of
small. As new competitors must continually arise, the monopoly can never
be successful without the use of unlawful means. If it raises the price
of labor above what free competition would determine, it as truly lays a
tax on the whole people as did the copper monopoly. On the other hand,
we must recognize the fact that competition is now often absent in the
_purchase_ of labor, and this is a chief and sufficient cause for the
existing attempts to kill compet