But here came in a very difficult question, which is before us also whenever unionism becomes dominant in any trade. It is all very well to let unions pillage capital, or even pillage each other, but can they be allowed to pillage the poor? This at once clashes with the favouring of the proletariat. It has already raised an acute difficulty in England. The Bricklayers' Union cannot be competed with from abroad, except very slightly by means of imported wooden houses. Hence this union has been able to close its grip firmly on the throat of the public; it has raised wages, and it has cut down work from eight hundred or nine hundred bricks laid daily to two hundred and seventy or three hundred and thirty in different standards now. By raising the cost of labour to about three times the amount, the cost of building as a whole must be nearly doubled. The dearness of lodging of the poor is really due to the remorseless extortion of the bricklayers, abetted by the extravagant building regulations locally in force in their interest, to increase the expenditure on a building. In the country there is disgraceful overcrowding for lack of cottage accommodation, and in towns miserable rooms fetch high rents. The ground-landlord, who is so much abused, has little to do with this; for ground-rents are seldom more than a tenth of the house rent and taxes. If all land were confiscated to-morrow it would not lower most rentals more than a fraction. If the Bricklayers' Union and all its results were abolished, rentals would descend to nearly half the present amounts. If we were to meet this difficulty in the way that Rome dealt with it, the Government would give the Bricklayers' Union an absolute monopoly of building, on condition that dwellings under a certain value were charged at a third of the cost of labour, that is on the old terms of a full day's work fifty years ago, leaving all later profits to be gained from the wealthier classes. In the present straits about housing it is by no means certain that this would not be a popular course. In Rome the grain importers and the bakers were the two trades which touched the proletariat most closely. And early in the third century these, and probably other essential trades, were organised as monopolist unions, on condition that the union was bound over to do a certain amount of work for the poor at a nominal rate. Thus the wastrel was favoured and protected, with his right to maintenance; and all profits of the business were to be made from work done for those who could afford to pay for it. This is unquestionably an ideal toward which a great deal of social legislation is tending at present. Railway companies and tramways are bound to carry workmen at nominal rates, while all their profits are to be earned from wealth. So far has this burden been imposed, that the construction of one railway line at least has been prevented by the heavy toll of cheap transport which was demanded before sanctioning it.