SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF WAGES 141

of appliances, etc., that amount of product will be in demand
at the same price as before, and less will be demanded if the
price be raised. The former earnings may, then, be distributed
 among the enlarged number of workers, or else the
amount of work needed to be done will be decreased. As
the reduction of hours is generally accompanied by a demand
for equally high daily earnings, it is clearly based on a
conception, of the relation of the different features of the case
to one another, at variance with the simple conditions likely
to be encountered in fact.
The minimum wage doctrine is not unconnected with
similar ideas. It is claimed that wages must not be allowed
to fall below a stated minimum. The assumption that employment
 for all can be found at or above that minimum is
not justified. Fixing wages, so as not to fall below a stated
level, means excluding from the possibility of employment
all whose efficiency is so low as to make their net product
worth less than the minimum. To assert that these must
find employment in other trades or localities does not secure
that such employment shall be procurable, in sufficient
quantity, at acceptable wages. Where the members of a
trade are able to set up, and maintain, a high level of minimum
wages through limitation of their numbers, they are not
necessarily to be blamed for consulting their class interests.
The advocacy of a like policy for universal application is
not so simple as its application to individual trades. If the
minimum standard is higher than would have been secured
without some limitation of freedom of entrance into the
respective trades, an ultimate residue, of those unable to
attain to the level of capacity needed to earn any of the
established minima, must be left unemployable so long as
the minima are maintained. An unsolved problem, how to
dispose of this residue, would call for attention. Could it
be solved without breaking down the minima? If these
incapables were supported out of public funds or by private
charity, would not the drain to provide the needed funds
practically reduce the minima?
The practice of collective bargaining in the matter ot
wages, that is, settling the rates for entire classes of labour