l to the numerous unskilled workers
eliminated, or the still more numerous workers whose employment is thus
lessened at every slack season. Mr. Edmond Kelly shows how the principle
acts--"Where there is a minimum wage of $4 a day the workman can no
longer choose to do only $3 worth of work and be paid accordingly, but
he must earn $4 or else cease from work, at least in that particular
trade, locality, or establishment."[254] The result is that the highest
skilled workmen obtain steady employment through the union, while the
less skilled are penalized by underemployment. The unions have equalized
daily wages, but the employer has replied by making employment and
therefore annual wages all the more unequal, and many of the workers may
have lost more than they gained. Whereas if each man could secure an
equal share of work, he might be paid according to his efficiency and
yet be far better off than now. But the only way to secure an equal
amount of work for all is through a union where all have an equal voice
and where the union is strong enough to have a say as to who is to be
employed.

It is this tendency either automatically or intentionally actually to
injure unskilled labor, that has led men like Mann and Debs and Haywood
to their severe criticism of the present policies of the unions, and
even affords some ground for Tolstoi's classification of well-paid
artisans, electricians, and mechanics among the exploiters of unskilled
labor. In the days of serfdom, the great writer said, "Only one class
were slave owners; all classes, except the most numerous one--consisting
of peasants who have too little land, laborers, and workingmen--are
slave-owners now." The master class, Tolstoi says, to-day includes, not
only "nobles, merchants, officials, manufacturers, professors, teachers,
authors, musicians, painters, rich peasants, and the rich men's
servants," but also "well-paid artisans, electricians, mechanics," etc.

Mr. Mann thus defines the attitude of this new unionism to the old:--

"It is well known that in Britain, as elsewhere, there is only a
minority of the workers organized; of the ten millions of men
eligible for industrial organization only one fourth are members of
trade unions; naturally these are, in the main, the skilled
workers, who have associated together with a view to maintaining
for themselves the advantage accruing to skilled workers, when
definite restrictions a