ABSTRACT
Labour, considered as a commodity, is sold by wage-earners and bought by capitalists. Given an increasing population and free competition among wage-earners, wages must tend to fall to subsistence level. Trade unions are, at least in their origin, an attempt to prevent this result by combination among the sellers of labour-at first only in particular crafts, but gradually over a widening area, embracing at last, in Great Britain, an overwhelming majority of industrial wage-earners. There can be no question that the economic bargaining power of wage-earners, and the general status of labour, have been immensely enhanced by trade unionism, but the early steps were difficult, and early excessive hopes were repeatedly disappointed.
