[Footnote 176-7: _Thornton_ mentions six instances in which strikes and strike-unions may permanently raise wages: a, when those engaged in an enterprise have a virtual monopoly in their own neighborhood; b, when the country has, for the industry in question, great advantage over other lands; c, when the demand for the product of the industry is necessary on account of an increasing number and increasing capacity to pay of customers; d, when the progress of the arts, especially of machinery, makes the industry more productive; e, when the rise in the rate of wages affects all branches of industry to the same extent, and at the same time; f, when the industry is carried on on so large a scale that it yields greater profit, even while paying a smaller percentage than other industries. (On Labour, III, ch. 4.) It is easy to see that many of these conditions meet in the building industries in large cities.] [Footnote 176-8: Compare _Brentano_ in the Preliminary Essay to _T. Smith's_ English Guilds, ch. LXXII ff. The same author's Die Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart Bd., I, 1871.] [Footnote 176-9: The greater number of strikes begin with a small minority, generally of the best paid workmen, whom the others follow unwillingly but blindly. (Edinb. Rev., 149, 422.) The despotic power of the Unions over their members depends principally on the fact that their treasury serves not only to maintain strikes but at the same time as an insurance fund for old age and sickness, and that every case of disobedience of a member is punished by expulsion, i. e., with the loss of everything he has contributed. Hence the Quart. Rev., Oct., 1867, advises that these two purposes which are so hard, technically speaking, to reconcile with each other, should be required to be kept separate, especially as most of the unions, considered as benevolent associations, are really insolvent. (Edinb. Review, Oct., 1867, 421 ff.) On the other hand, both the _Count of Paris_, ch. 3, and _Thornton_ are favorable to the admixture of humane and offensive objects in the trades-unions, because the former contribute to make the latter milder. _Brentano_, I, 153, has no great objection to the insolvency shown by the books of the unions _vis-a-vis_ of their duties as insurers, since, hitherto, the subscription of an extraordinary sum has never failed to make up the deficit. A strike is detrimental in proportion as the striking workmen represent more of the previous preliminary operations that go to finish a product; as when, for instance, the 50 or 60 spinners in a factory strike, and in consequence, from 700 to 800 other workmen are thrown out of employment and forced into idleness against their will. What might not have been