employer, non-union workers, and every one in any way befriending
them, is an effort to drag every one else into a dispute that is
primarily a private matter.

Sec. 11. #Effects of organization upon general wages.# The crucial
economic problem in connection with trade unions is not as to their
methods (that being rather a political problem) but as to their effect
upon wages. There must be distinguished two questions: first, as to
their effect upon the general level of wages; and next, as to their
effect in raising the wages of the organized laborers alone. As to the
first, the thought has sometimes been expressed by sympathetic social
students outside of trade-union circles that but for the organization
of labor wages in America would be no higher than they were in 1850.
This seems to be assumed in much of the argument of labor leaders,
for they speak as if all wages, but for trade unions, would be at the
starvation level; and they credit everything above that level to the
work of the union.[7] This claim is peculiarly effective in America,
where wages are and always have been relatively high. But proof of the
claim is lacking. As we have seen, even now fewer than 1 in 16 of
all gainfully employed, and fewer than 1 in 12 of those working for
contractual wages are organized. On no principle of value could
the mere organization of one-twelfth of the wage-earners, without
permanently withdrawing them from the labor market, explain the
relatively high wages of the other eleven-twelfths. In many lines
where labor is not organized, as in teaching, clerical, professional,
domestic, and agricultural services, wages have risen as much or even
more than in most of the organized trades. The underlying economic
forces determining the general level of labor-incomes in a country
are much more fundamental in nature than labor unions or protective
tariffs.[8] The trade-union authority already cited seems in another
passage to admit a view not essentially unlike that just expressed
when he says: "Capital is increasing faster than population.... It
seems therefore merely in obedience to natural laws that wages should
rise."

The only reasons ever suggested for thinking that the organization of
one-twelfth (or any larger proportion of the wage-earners) could in
any general way raise the labor-incomes of those remaining unorganized
are: first, that organized labor sometimes leads the way in securing
favorable legislation; and, secondly