exposing fallacies; and yet,
so long as they survive, they have to be met by truisms. While people
are proposing to lengthen their blankets by cutting off one end to sew
upon the other, one has to point out that the total length remains
constant. Now, I fancy that, in point of fact, these fallacies are
often to be found in modern times. I read, the other day, in the
papers, an argument, adduced by some advocate, on behalf of the Eight
Hours Bill. He wished, he said, to make labour dear, and would
therefore make it scarce. This apparently leads to the conclusion that
the less people work the more they will get, which I take to be a
fallacy. So, to mention nothing else, it is still apparently a common
argument in favour of protection in America, that the native labourer
requires to be supported against the pauperised labour of Europe.
Americans in general are to be made richer by paying higher prices, and
by being forced to produce commodities which they could get with less
labour employed on the production of other things in exchange. I will
not go further; for I think that no one who reads the common arguments
can be in want of sufficient illustrations of popular fallacies. This,
I say, is some justification for dwelling upon the contrary truisms. I
admit, indeed, that even these fallacies may apply to particular cases
in which they may represent partial truths; and I also agree that, as
sometimes stated, the wage fund theory was not only a truism, but a
fruitless truism. It was, however, as I believe, an attempt to
generalise a very pertinent and important doctrine, as to the way in
which the actual competition in which labourers and employers are
involved, actually operates. If so, it requires rather modification
than indiscriminate denunciation; and it is, I believe, so treated by
the best modern Economists.

I consider, then, that the Economists were virtually attempting to
describe systematically the main relations of the industrial mechanism.
They showed what were the main functions which it, in fact, discharges.
Their theory was sufficient to expose many errors, especially those
which arise from looking solely at one part of a complex process, and
neglecting the implied reactions. It enabled them to point out the
inconsistencies and actual contradictions involved in many popular
arguments, which are still very far from being destroyed. Their main
error--apart from any particular logical slips--was, namely, that