I am purposely leaving out of account the contemporary growth of rings and trusts. Paradoxical as it may seem to say so, they are not an essential element of the problem. The employers will (as is happening) form unions in face of the men's unions, and the strain laid on individual employers and small companies will favour the growth of trusts. In so far as these make for economy, they are clearly useful; but no doubt they will be tempted to use their monopoly to dictate arbitrary prices. When, however, the workers have a majority-power, they can either slay the trusts or draw their teeth. On the other hand, a beneficent or labour-saving trust will not afford any advantage to the less skilful workers, who make up the great army of the poor, and it will reduce prices only by an unimportant fraction. The chief significance of trusts is that they tend to annihilate the individualist employer, who was once considered an indispensable institution, and they may thus dispose obstinate admirers of the older industrial order to welcome a radical change. They are more deadly to the middle-class than to the working-class. The really vital question is whether the raising of wages and reduction of hours, accompanied by a large amount of secondary legislation to the advantage of the worker, will solve _the_ social problem: which is not the problem of the existence of a few thousand prostitutes, but the problem of the existence of, in every country, several million people who live in privation and squalor, and cannot develop human personalities. On this I offer two or three observations. Does the price of commodities rise in proportion to the rise of wages? If it does, the securing of a nominally higher wage is clearly a delusion. This seems, however, to be our experience. In England, during sixty or seventy years of trade-combination, wages have risen, and hours and conditions of labour have been improved, to a remarkable extent, in spite of open competition in an overcrowded market. But prices and rents also have risen, and it is not clear that there has been a net advantage to the worker. It is very difficult to answer the question precisely, because other factors (such as the application of science) have increased the productiveness of labour and have cheapened certain commodities (books, clothes, pictures, tea, etc.). The workers have shared these advantages, and are in a position of far greater comfort than they were formerly. But in seriously testing the claim and promise of the Trade Unionist and the Labour politician we have to endeavour to subtract the improvement in the workers' condition which is due to the application of science, and of better methods, to production and distribution. When we make allowance for this, it is certainly not clear that the rise of wages shows a margin over the increased price of commodities: that, in other words, the higher wage is a real advantage.