Accepting, as will some sections of Labour, that their demands cannot be met out of employers’ profits on present output, the alternative is, they say, that the manufacturer must raise his selling price by an amount sufficient to cover the extra cost. In this it is assumed, of course, that the rate of production remains the same. It is a fixed idea that every manufacturer and the owners in every industry can raise prices without any difficulty whatsoever. In discussing this delusion, as I have frequently done, it becomes quite obvious that workmen do not appreciate the effect which an increase in the cost of production has in reducing the ambit of the market for the sale of the commodity in question, or in lessening the demand for it in a specific market, with consequential curtailment of employment, and undermining of standard rates of wages. The regulation retort is that any trade not able to pay proper wages ought not to live. That, of course, depends on what is “proper,” When the wages are starvation wages, every one will agree the industry ought not to live. When the wages, though sufficient to cover (1) subsistence, are not sufficient for (2) reasonable amenities of life, nor to allow adequately for (3) trade-skill, there may be difference of opinion, according to the circumstances of the particular industry, whether it should be maintained or not. When, however, full and adequate remuneration is paid to cover (1), (2) and (3), it is suicidal policy for Labour to insist on such advances in wages as must kill the industry. In advancing the contention that if the employer cannot, out of his existing profits, pay the advance on wages claimed, it should be added to the sales price, workmen invariably repudiate as wholly immaterial the resultant effect on trades other than their own, and especially on the consuming community. If those claiming the advance are engaged in what is inelegantly called a “key industry,” that is to say, where their output is raw or semi-raw material for other industries, it is obvious that any rise in its cost may inflict serious damage on both employers and employed in the dependent industries. But the workman’s retort is “let them pass it on.” I have had that put to me on hundreds of occasions. The effect on the community is dismissed as quite irrelevant.