◆¹ Thus the extent to which Trade Unionism can assist in raising wages, no matter how wide and how complete its development, is far more limited than appearances lead many people to suppose. For the labourers, not only in this country, but all over the world, are growing yearly more expert in the art of effective combination, and are increasing their strength by a vast network of alliances; ◆² and from time to time the whole civilised world is startled at the powers of resistance and destruction which they show themselves to have acquired, and which they have called into operation with a view to enforcing their demands. The gas-strikes and the dock-strikes in London, and the great railway-strikes, and the strike at Homestead in America, are cases in point, and are enough to illustrate my meaning. They impress the imagination with a sense that Labour is becoming omnipotent. But in all these Labour movements there is one unchanging feature, which seems never to be realised either by those who take part in them or by observers, but on which really their entire character depends, and which makes their actual character entirely different from what it seems to be. That this feature should have so completely escaped popular notice is one of the most singular facts in the history of political blindness, and can be accounted for only by the crude and imperfect state in which the analysis of the causes of production has been left hitherto by economists. The feature I allude to is as follows. [Sidenote ◆1 The imperfect state of economic science has allowed a totally false idea to be formed as to the force which Trade Unionism represents.] [Sidenote ◆2 The force which it represents is not Labour at all, but a power of combining in order to abstain from labour.] [Sidenote ◆3 And even this power could never be universal, nor last long; and whilst it lasts it depends on Capital.]