Next, the main effort to raise the status of the workmen is ill-directed towards raising or sustaining the _rate_ of wages, else towards dictating concerning the management. This effort is ill-directed, first, because it is liable to aim at an impossibility--i.e. to extort from a master a wage so high that he prefers not to light his engine fires; next, because to raise the _rate_ of wages does not secure continuous work, and idle days neither tend to sobriety nor give pay. Strikes which inflict vast loss upon the workers cause loss to the masters also, and make them less able to pay high wages. But beyond all these, if the Unions were wise, they would struggle against the system of wage-earning, wherever it is new and needless; that is, as far as possible, strive to recover the system of domestic manufacture. For certain new and peculiar industries undoubtedly combine, and large capital is essential; even in them the effort ought to be towards uniting, _as far as possible_, the interests of each workman, and of the company, the opposite of which is in general the Union policy. But for every old trade independent work is physically possible, under the condition that the workman have a fixed homestead. To effect this ought to be the main effort of the Unions. In the thirty-two years between the battle of Waterloo and the Irish famine, the farmers and manufacturers were like two buckets of a well; when one was up, the other was down. But now, both at once are down. The causes are clearly separate. Our manufacturers when allowed to accept payments from abroad In wheat and sugar and foods and all raw produce, Immensely increased their foreign sales; and during the Cotton Famine, capital was largely invested in building new cotton mills, as if we were to supply all the world. But the European Continent more and more chooses to compete with us, and from more causes than one deprive our merchants of their customers. Between us and our rivals more of the _same sort_ is produced than the existing markets can take: this is again Overproduction. Hence stagnation in our manufacturing districts. Meanwhile, in near thirty years of manufacturing prosperity after 1847, the increased riches of these towns enriched the farmers and enabled the landlords to raise rents in England, and in consequence, by dint of landlord power, rent rose in the whole United Kingdom. At the same time, Englishmen found too little encouragement to invest their savings on English soil, and preferred to invest many millions on foreign railways and on foreign loans; and the payment of their dividends is made largely by imported foreign food. Their investments at first were an advantage to our manufacturers, while they sent out railway plant and carriages and locomotives. Now foreigners compete with us even as to these, and the imported food competes with the farmers. Thus a double failure convulses us.