At the same time, a stern caution must be administered to certain employers. With labour charges forming so large a proportion of the costs of production, some employers are constantly on the alert to pull down wages by fair means or foul. A slight alteration is made in the method of manufacture, or some device that would not deceive a first year’s apprentice is fitted to a machine, and it is then claimed that the work has become such as entitles the employer to put unskilled or semi-skilled men on to it, or alternatively, to reduce the skilled man’s price. Sharp practice of that sort sours the shop. It intensifies enormously the difficulty, at present great enough, of the good employer, struggling to reorganize his business fairly and properly on efficient and honest subdivision lines. Present trade customs, as long as they effectively exist, must be honoured. No employer should be entitled to vary the accepted trade grading of the work or its accompanying rate of wages or prices unless there is a genuine and substantial change in process or machinery which in reality supplants the skill of the worker and manifestly increases production. So far as improvement of production is concerned, the difficulty first, last, and all the time is the bitter enslavement of the mind of the worker, and, if I may borrow the phrase, the “collective mind” of the Trade Unions, by economic fallacy, and this must be attacked and vanquished before any real progress can be made. The remedy is education. CHAPTER XXIX THE RIGHT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDUSTRY AND THE COMMUNITY The Formation of Sound Public Opinion—The Responsibility of the Consumer—The Duty of the Citizen. If too little consideration for the community has been exercised by industry—and that is unquestionably proved in the foregoing chapters—the community has scarcely realized its duties to the workers in industry. The Formation of Sound Public Opinion