142 ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

through negotiations between employers and more or less
expert representatives of the workmen, acting on their behalf,
is calculated to operate to the advantage of those thus represented,
 if only to their immediate advantage. How far
their ultimate advantage as a class is secured, and whether
at the expense of other bodies of wage-earners or not, will
depend on the wisdom and ability of the negotiators. If
nothing more is secured, the hastening of a rise of wages
which circumstances tend to establish, or the retarding of a
fall, are clearly advantages. Whether the organisation of
labour has created the conditions assuring a rise in wages,
or better earnings through more continuous employment,
when those conditions would not have been established
through the changes in the general economic situation, is an
unanswered question. The influence of the trade unions, in
gathering information as to where labour is in short supply,
in enabling out-of-work members to go to places where
employment is abundant, in providing for the maintenance
of labourers when out of work, thus avoiding the loss of
working power, for the maintenance of which the inadequate
savings of workmen do not sufficiently provide, in providing
relief in case of sickness, and other friendly-society benefits,
is important and tends to the improvement of the condition
of their members.
It is not proposed to discuss strikes and their economic
effects here, but it may be noted that the consciousness that
an opponent is strong enough to make a good fight may
stimulate to the settlement, by peaceful negotiations, of points
which would have led to a struggle with a weaker opponent.
Strong unions serve, therefore, to substitute negotiation for
strikes in the settlement of industrial difficulties, though
they have by no means rendered strikes unnecessary, or
deprived them of some of their most obnoxious features.
A strong, well-officered union, too, can do more to ensure
the observance of a contract between employers and workmen
 than a weak, ill-disciplined union.
The operations of large unions, covering the whole of a
trade, sometimes result in compelling the observance of rules
by the less scrupulous employers which are by no means