At this point the question “How about strikes?” becomes almost physically audible. Certainly, a strike, during its continuance, hinders trade and prosperity in exactly the same way as warfare does. It is in fact warfare on a lesser scale and—in our country—with restrictions upon the weapons that may be employed; and war is always an evil, though sometimes the lesser of two evils. In a strike, as in greater wars, responsibility rests upon both parties, but seldom in equal degrees. The apportionment of blame must largely depend upon the cause in which each is fighting. The employer, in nine cases out of ten, is fighting for cheap labour; the union primarily for access to amenities of life which the employer enjoys already. In nine cases out of ten, therefore, the union is really fighting the battle of the whole nation, while the employer is fighting against it. Mr Schoenhof, a grave State official, sent by his own government to examine economic questions in Europe, declares of the acts of British trade unions that: “economically these acts speak of a high degree of wisdom. On the other hand the attempts of the employing classes to depress the rate of wages show frequently an entire misapprehension of the principles under which production is conducted. Most of the strife would disappear if it were more fully recognised that a high rate of wages has all the time been the powerful lever to reaching the low cost of production which practically rules to-day in the industries of the United States.”[72] If therefore that combatant is to be held most responsible who is fighting in the worse cause, it is not the trade unionist but the employer, who, on the whole, is chiefly to be blamed for the occurrence of strikes. There may, indeed, have been cases—I believe there has, in our own day and country, been at least one—in which a union has followed a mistaken course, has restricted output, and so lessened the volume of trade, and to that degree injured the country. In so far as unions have occasionally done this, they have been blind to the larger issues; but not so blind, even thus, as those employers who thought to cheapen production by lowering wages. Poverty, always and everywhere, hinders production; the wise employer desires to see more money in the pockets of working class purchasers, and the wise statesman more money in the pockets of working class taxpayers. Some day, when the history of Great Britain comes to be seen in the truer perspective of retrospect, it will be the leaders of trade unionism and the promoters of Factory Acts who will stand out among the real makers of this nation’s wealth.