Both sides know that a strike is a costly business: costly to labor, to management, to the union, to the nation. In many cases the threat of a strike has been enough to force the employers to give way. Inevitably, the higher cost of production resulting from the new wage rates is passed on to the consumer. The merry-go-round of rising prices, rising wages, and rising costs spins dizzily onward. Overseas the buyer who is choosing between a Jaguar or a Mercedes finds that the price of the former has suddenly risen, so he buys the German car rather than the British one. This is what the economists mean when they warn British labor and industry about pricing themselves out of the export market. As we have seen, the industrial worker is doing pretty well in Britain, even if the rise in prices is taken into consideration. The average weekly earnings for all male adult workers, according to the records kept by the Ministry of Labor, show a rise from £3 9_s._ 0_d._ in 1938 to £10 17_s._ 5_d._ in 1955--an increase of 215 per cent. The coal-miners who were earning £3 2_s._ 10_d._ in 1938 are now earning a weekly wage of £13 18_s._ 6_d._ The figure does not represent wealth by American standards, for it amounts to approximately $38.99. But it is high pay by British standards, and when the low cost of subsidized housing and the comparatively low cost of food are taken into account it will be seen that the British miner is living very well. The miner's view is that he does a dirty, dangerous job, that he has never been well paid before, and that if a union does not exist to win pay rises for its members, what good is it? The miners and the union members in the engineering industry belong to strong unions able to win wage increases by threats of a strike. Once these increases are granted, other smaller unions clamor for their share of wage rises. The merry-go-round takes another turn. Government attempts to urge restraint, through the TUC, upon the unions customarily fall afoul of the snag that each union believes that it is a special case and that although other unions can postpone their demands for higher wages until next year, it cannot. So one union makes a move and the whole business begins again. If the increase is not granted, there is a strike or a threat of a strike. The national economy suffers, class antagonism increases, and export production is delayed. For such is the interdependence of the British industrial machine and so great is the drive for exports that any industrial dispute that reaches the strike stage inevitably affects exports.