If this be true, it is in accordance with strict competitive principles that, as the elite of the trade, they should get higher wages than those outside. Moreover the unions exist mainly in the more populated places where cost of living, wages, and all prices range higher than in the towns. A much higher standard of work prevails in the cities, both among union and non-union men, and the old men and the inefficient drift away to the smaller towns and the places where wages are lower. Many of the differences are explicable without taking any account of the union. So far as unions tend toward intelligence, education, sobriety, efficiency, fuller and fairer competition, they are economic factors in all branches of industry, and it cannot be doubted that they do work in some measure in all these ways. So far also as they strengthen the bargaining power of the laborers, or as they can enforce a monopoly of labor in a particular trade and locality, they can secure the full competitive or even a monopoly price. [Sidenote: Labor organizations a minor factor in lifting the mass of the workers] [Sidenote: The chief factors determining wages] 3. _Wages viewed in general industry, and in the long run, are determined mainly by impersonal economic forces._ That implies the converse, that they are not determined mainly by the trade-unions. This statement, in fact, is admitted in calmer moments by the extreme partisans of the unions. Even the book before quoted says somewhat vaguely that "it is an error to think that the trade-union seeks to determine the rate of wages. It cannot do that. It can do no more than affect them." Again it says: "Capital is increasing faster than population.... It seems therefore merely in obedience to natural laws that wages should rise." Men can easily see personal and immediate results. They cannot follow out the impersonal and ultimate workings of economic forces. The leaders make exaggerated claims; laborers believe them and pay their dues more readily; the public believes them and is the more inclined to pardon the excesses of so important an institution. That wages in a number of special trades are raised in a considerable degree cannot be questioned. The open or secret use of violence and other antisocial forces make much of this boasted service to some of the workers, an injury to others, and an occasion of reproach from the citizen who condemns the spirit of lawlessness thus encouraged. The chief factors tending to raise the general standard of wages are the productiveness of industry, peace, order, and security to wealth, honesty in man and master, in lawmaker and in judge, the efficiency and intelligence of the workers, and an earnest effort on their part to get the share that competition would accord them. Chiefly, though not exclusively, because of their bearing on this last factor, trade-unions have a useful, even though subordinate, part in the regulating of wages over the whole field of employment.