But trade unions have seldom been really successful among unskilled workers—precisely those who, having no natural monopoly, are most liable to the pressure of economic competition and most likely to be underpaid. Women workers, too, have always been difficult to organise; not primarily, as is sometimes supposed, because they are women; but partly because women, in our present social state, expect to leave the labour market upon marriage, and therefore are comparatively indifferent about earning high wages; and partly because women have, as a rule, less of companionship with one another and of common social life out of working hours than men, and therefore less opportunity of that “talking over” of affairs out of which concerted action grows. Home workers are, of course, especially isolated; and the successful organisation of a union among unskilled female home workers would be an industrial miracle not looked for by the most sanguine toiler in the industrial field. Co-operation and trade unionism have both been, in the main, working class movements, and both are examples of that curious inarticulate instinct for right collective action which seems to be inherent in the English democracy. From an assembly of average English artisans—I say, English, not British—you will not get logically reasoned statements; you will very seldom get a clear exposition of principles; but you will, very generally, get that main line of conduct which true principles and sound logic would dictate. Not all the checks, however, in the course of free competition have come from the workers. The direct interposition of the law was invoked and secured by men whose personal concern in the question was only that of fellow citizens. These men were actuated by a horror of the sufferings undergone by the poorest workers; they felt that moral order was outraged and the nation disgraced by the existing industrial conditions. Restriction of hours was the first check imposed by British law, which has shrunk hitherto from directly fixing a rate of wages.[73]