Now the keynote of their practical conclusions was that Governments were doing immense mischief by meddling with a great many matters, which they would have done better to leave alone. In this they were in general agreement with one another; incidentally--let there be no mistake about it--they were right. But, as invariably happens in public controversy, their opinions became crystallized in a compact formula, or cry, with unduly sweeping implications. This was the cry of "_laissez-faire_." Let Governments preserve law and order; and leave the economic sphere alone. The economists picked no quarrel with this formula; it served well enough for workaday purposes to indicate the lines of policy which they rightly thought essential in their day. The history of this cry is the history of every cry which has won a wide acceptance from mankind. It did good work for perhaps half a century; but then many crimes were committed in its name. The instrument which had been forged to clear away a noxious tariff jungle and the monstrous laws of Settlement, was turned against Lord Shaftesbury and the Factory Acts. Not only was inaction recommended to Governments as the highest wisdom; other institutions, like trade unions, were warned off the economic grass. An ideal of perfect competition became an idol to which much human flesh and blood were sacrificed. But, what is more to our present purpose, the idea took root of an intimate association between the laws of economics and the policy of _laissez-faire_. People who opposed some long-overdue measure of State regulation believed themselves to be justified by the eternal verities of economic law, and this claim even the advocates of the measure seldom ventured to dispute. They took refuge rather in a conception of economic law as a dangerous monster, whose claws must be clipped in the interests of the higher good. This notion that all interference with so-called "free competition," is a violation (though very likely fully justified) of economic laws has sunk deep into our common thought. So that to this day, whenever we see at work the hand of a State department, a trust or a trade union, we are apt to say "Demand and supply are here in abeyance," and possibly we add "A good thing too." Since in the matter of wages, the hand of the trade union is very generally evident, it is impossible to discuss the subject-matter of this chapter, until we have rid our minds of this quite baseless prepossession. To sweep away this cobweb, I urge the reader to recall here the general tenor of the analysis of the preceding chapters. Whether we were dealing with the price of an ordinary commodity, with joint products, land or capital, we came across relationships which seemed altogether more fundamental than our present industrial system; nor, we may incidentally observe, were we ever required to suppose that the present system was one of "perfect competition." These relationships were almost invariably such that