If the nature of labour were as generally apprehended as is the nature of prussic acid, the laws of our country (which are laws of the other kind—laws of command) would gradually be so altered as to prevent and punish that kind of robbery which was practised, for years, by that prosperous gentleman who, year after year, paid girls for their work at a trifle under a penny an hour, and died thereafter wealthy and highly respected. It is more than conceivable that persons now living may survive to a day in which wealth so accumulated will be held as discreditable as wealth accumulated by slave trading, and when the stealing of labour will be held no less criminal than the stealing of cash. The foundation upon which any such reform must rest will be the recognition that labour is a commodity differing in its nature from every other commodity; and that while there is, intrinsically, no such thing as a fair price, there is, intrinsically, and in every case, such a thing as a fair wage. PART II THE MINIMUM WAGE CHAPTER I EXISTING CHECKS How it is that some workers are not “sweated”—Non-competitive systems—Co-operation—Public services—Trade unions—Who is to blame for strikes?—How trade unions promote trade—Limits of their success—Factory Acts—How restriction raises wages—An example—How restriction drives the employer into better ways—Limit of legal restrictions in Great Britain. If it be true that unlimited competition tends to reduce the wage earner to the lowest possible rate of subsistence, how does it happen, some reader may enquire, that under our present competitive system all wage earners are not, in fact, at that low level, but that, on the contrary, there are occupations in which wages tend steadily to rise. The answer is that the course of competition among ourselves is not unchecked, and that, wherever concerted human action has interposed a check, the downward course of wages has been stayed. Nor, indeed, is the competitive system, though the most widely prevalent, the only system in existence among us. A very considerable proportion of the trade of these islands is carried on not upon a competitive but upon a co-operative basis. The actual sales of goods made by industrial co-operative societies in the year 1904 amounted to £90,681,406,[69] and this total was “exclusive of the sums (amounting to £11,874,643 in 1904) representing the value of the goods produced by the productive departments of the wholesale and retail societies and transferred to their distributive departments.” The membership of the various societies included in 1904 no less than 2,103,113 persons, an appreciable fraction of the population. The great movement known as Industrial Co-operation has two forms: (_a_) Associations of Consumers; (_b_) Labour Copartnerships.