less profitable to the employers, and the next wages-portion would certainly be less than the one before, and thus the outcome of the _remedy_ would be worse than the _disease_. Now let alone the artificial interference of government, and all natural accessions to Capital at that point, all investment of profits in an enlarged business, all saving from expenditure for the sake of further production, tend strongly of their own accord to enlarge the wages-portion, and thus, the number and intelligence of the laborers continuing as before, are sure to raise the rate of wages. Or, if there be no accessions to Capital, or other influence swelling the wages-portion, and the number of laborers be diminished at that point, as by migration to new fields of effort or enlistment in armies, the competition of wages-givers for laborers will be quickened, and the rate of wages will rise. Reversed conditions will of course give reversed results. 2. A second popular remedy for low Wages, not only proposed, but also for a long time brought into practical action, is Labor-Unions in their various forms and with their manifold methods of operation upon employers. It is important to note here and to remember, that the Guilds of the mediæval times, from which the modern Trades-Unions have borrowed something of form and much of nomenclature, were in substance extremely different from their modern imitators. Those were combinations of Masters with their journeymen and apprentices and dependents in order to control the entire manufacture and sale of a certain class of products, from the name of which the Guild usually took its own name, as "Cloth-workers' guild," "Shoemakers' guild," and so on. Whittier, himself a shoemaker in his boyhood, apostrophizes the latter guild in words which more or less describe them all:-- "Ho! workers of the old time styled The gentle Craft of Leather! Young brothers of the ancient guild, Stand forth once more together! Call out again your long array, In the olden merry manner! Once more on gay St. Crispin's day, Fling out your blazoned banner!"