230 
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 con 
ceivably 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 earn 
ings : 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 organisa 
tion 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,