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POLITICAL  ECONOMY

and  employers,  one  of  the  objects  of  both  of
which  is  to  regulate  the  sharing  of  wealth
between  capital  and  labour  ;  and  it  becomes
the  less  surprising  when  we  allow  that  even
if  economic  tendencies  were  not  naturally
retarded  under  competition  it  might  conceivably ­
  pay  certain  people  to  retard  them
(as  we  have  learnt  in  the  chapter  on  Monopoly)
or  it  might  be  thought  that  it  would.
It  seems  likely,  though  it  cannot  be  firmly
established  by  a  rigid  logic,  that  trade  unions
have  had  a  large  effect  on  the  level  of  earnings ­
  :  and  they  have  certainly  influenced  the
position  of  the  wage-earning  classes  in  a  variety
of  other  ways,  in  improving  their  status,
curtailing  their  hours  of  labour,  and  rendering
the  conditions  of  their  work  more  agreeable.
We  shall  now  consider  in  some  detail  how
wages  can  be  controlled  by  trade  union
action,  keeping  our  discussion  throughout
hand-in-hand  with  theory.  In  the  first  place,
we  shall  suppose  that  the  organisation  of
labour  is  accompanied  neither  by  improvement
nor  deterioration  in  its  efficiency.
It  needs  no  proof  that  the  strong  organisation ­
  of  a  section  of  the  labour  world,  in  the
absence  of  organisation  on  the  part  of  other
workpeople  or  in  the  presence  of  weaker
organisation  on  the  part  of  other  workpeople,